'Four long and weary months have these been since the news of Sir Philip's
death came to cast a dark shadow over this country. Much there has been to
harass those who are intimately connected with him. Of these troubles I
need not write. The swift following of Sir Philip's death on that of his
honoured father, Sir Henry Sidney, caused mighty difficulties as to the
carrying out of that last will and testament in which he so nobly desired
to have every creditor satisfied, and justice done.

'But, sure, no man had ever a more generous and worthy father-in-law than
Sir Philip possessed in Sir Francis Walsingham. All honour be to him for
the zeal and care he has shown in the settlement of what seemed at the
first insurmountable mountains of difficulties.

'Of these it does not become me to speak, rather of that day, Thursday last
past, when I was witness of the great ceremony of burying all that was
mortal of him for whom Queen and peasant weep.

'Mary! you can scarce picture to yourself the sight which I looked on from
a casement by the side of my dear mistress. All the long train of mourners
taken from every class, the uplifted standard with the Cross of St George,
the esquires and gentlemen in their long cloaks of mourning garb, these
were a wondrous spectacle. In the long train was Sir Philip's war horse,
led by a footman and ridden by a little page bearing a broken lance,
followed by another horse, like the first, richly caparisoned, ridden by a
boy holding a battle-axe reversed. All this I say I gazed at as a show, and
my mistress, like myself, was tearless. I could not believe, nay, I could
not think of our hero as connected with this pageant. Nay, nor with that
coffin, shrouded in black velvet, carried by seven yeomen, and the pall
borne by those gentlemen who loved him best, his dearest friends, Sir
Fulke Greville, Sir Edward Dyer, Edward Watson, and Thomas Dudley.

'Next came the two brothers, Sir Robert--now Lord of Penshurst--chief
mourner, and behind, poor Mr Thomas Sidney, who was so bowed down with
grief that he could scarce support himself.

'Earls and nobles, headed by my Lord of Leicester, came after; and the
gentlemen from the Low Countries, of whom you will have heard, and all the
great city folk--Lord Mayor and Sheriffs--bringing up the rear.

'My dear mistress and I, with many other ladies of her household, having
watched the long train pass us from the Minories, were conveyed by back
ways to St