Person:William Sydney (4)

William Sidney, eldest son of Robert and Barbara Sidney, was born 10 November 1590 at Flushing (in the province of Zeeland), and, because of his birth in the Low Countries, was later made a British citizen by parliamentary decree. he was a student at Gray’s Inn in 1605; he matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford in February 1607 (aged 16). He was knighted 8 January 1610. He died of smallpox late in 1612. In 1613 Joshua Sylvester’s Lachrymae Lachrymarum (largely devoted to mourning the death of Henry, Prince of Wales) contained ‘An Elegie-&-Epistle Consolatorie, against immoderate sorrow for th’immature Decease of Sr William Sidney Knight, Sonne and Heire apparant to The Right Honorable, ROBERT, LORD SIDNEY,