Algernon sidney biography
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Algernon Sidney
English politician and member of the middle part of the Long Parliament
Not to be confused with Algernon Sydney Sullivan.
Algernon Sidney or Sydney (15 January 1623 – 7 December 1683) was an English politician, republican political theorist and colonel. A member of the middle part of the Long Parliament and commissioner of the trial of King Charles I of England, he opposed the king's execution. Sidney was later charged with plotting against Charles II, in part based on his most famous work, Discourses Concerning Government, which was used by the prosecution as a witness at his trial. He was executed for treason. After his death, Sidney was revered as a "Whig patriot—hero and martyr".
The works of Algernon Sidney, along with those of contemporary John Locke, are considered a cornerstone of western thought. Discourses Concerning Government cost Sidney his life. However, the ideas it put forth survived and ultimately culminated in the Glorious Revolution in England and the founding of the United States. Sidney directly opposed the theory of divine right of kings by suggesting ideas such as limited government, voluntary consent of the people and the right of citizens to alter or abolish a corrupt government. Discourses Concerning Government has b
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Born on this day, Algernon Sidney was one of England's greatest revolutionaries
“This hand, enemy to tyrants, by the sword seeks peace with liberty.”
The second half of the seventeenth century was the great revolutionary period of British history.
The popular struggle against King Charles I and the founding of an English Republic created a context in which radical democratic thought could flourish.
The Levellers, the Diggers, the Putney Debates. It was an English Revolution.
And no account of that Revolution can do without one Algernon Sidney, born today in 1623.
The 1640s were a time of great radical change in England, with groups like the True Levellers trying to take back enclosed land
Click to view our True Levellers tea towel
Sidney didn’t have the family background of a radical republican. His father was the Earl of Leicester, and his maternal grandfather was the Earl of Northumberland.
But revolutions almost always involve the occasional aristocrat.
When war broke out between Parliament and King Charles I in 1642, Sidney joined up with the Parliamentarians.
He fought courageously at the Battle of Marston Moor, before being forced to quit the army due to ill-health.
But there were other ways to serve the revolu
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Biography insinuate Algernon Poet 1623-1683
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