‘Thy Necessity is Yet Greater than Mine’
Elizabethan courtier and soldier Sir Philip Sidney shows that a nobleman can also be a gentleman.
1586
Queen Elizabeth I 1558-1603
Elizabethan courtier and soldier Sir Philip Sidney shows that a nobleman can also be a gentleman.
1586
Queen Elizabeth I 1558-1603
Writer and courtier Sir Philip Sidney died on October 17th, 1586, from a wound he had suffered while fighting in support of Dutch independence from Spain at the Battle of Zutphen on September 22nd. He was just 31. The account below is by Philip’s devoted friend Fulke Greville, who served James I as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
abridged, spelling modernised
THE weather being misty, their troops fell fatally within shot of their [the Spanish Army’s] muskets, which were laid in ambush within their own trenches. An unfortunate hand out of those trenches brake the bone of Sir Philip’s thigh with a musket-shot.* The horse he rode upon, was rather furiously choleric, than bravely proud, and so forced him to forsake the field.
Passing along by the rest of the Army, where his uncle the General was,* and being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, which was presently brought him; but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor soldier carried along, who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly calling up his eyes at the bottle. Which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his head, before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man, with these words, Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.* And when he had pledged this poor soldier, he was presently carried to Arnhem.*
abridged, spelling modernised
Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. Robert’s sister Mary married Sir Henry Sidney, and Philip was their son, and Robert’s favourite nephew.
Greville tells us that Sidney had originally worn armour on his thigh, but seeing other captains were more lightly armoured, took his own protection off.
Generally remembered as ‘Your need is greater than mine’. For a not dissimilar tale from a slightly later period, see The Price of Treachery.
At Arnhem, the wound turned gangrenous and Sir Philip died there on October 17th, 1586. He was buried with honours in ‘Old’ St Paul’s Cathedral on February 16th, 1587; however, that church was destroyed in ‘London Was, but Is No More!’ in 1666, and nothing of Sidney’s resting place remains.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Where was Sir Philip wounded?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Other officers wore no thigh armour. Sidney saw this. He removed his thigh armour.