Philip Sidney, Robert Beale, and Mary Queen of Scots

• In Event: Sidney Circle III: The Sidneys and International Politics

Abstract

This paper evaluates two manuscript copies of a legal treatise created for Sir Philip Sidney, which has remained little-known even among Sidney’s modern biographers. The commentary focuses on civil-law jurisdiction relevant to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and to the Spanish ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza in the mid-1580s. One copy survives among the state papers of Sidney’s father-in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham. The other copy is preserved among the state papers of Walsingham’s brother-in-law and Privy-Council colleague Robert Beale. Reevaluating the material circumstances of these two copies helps shed new light on the issues of patronage and textual transmission, as well as on the legal argument itself. As a result, we may raise new questions about Sidney’s identity and motives as a patron of legal scholarship in relation to his personal, legal, and political concerns while writing and revising the Arcadia.

Author

• Timothy D. Crowley, Northern Illinois University