Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney

Who was Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney?

Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney was born in Paris, a son of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, of Penshurst Place in Kent, England, and his wife, born Lady Dorothy Percy, a daughter of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland and sister of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland.

Sydney was a brother of Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester, who was born in 1619; Algernon Sydney, the Republican martyr, who was born at Penshurst Place in 1622 but was executed, having been found party to the "Rye House Plot" 1683; and Robert Sidney. His sister was Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland.

Sydney entered Parliament in 1679 and, as a statesman, was one of the Immortal Seven to invite the Protestant William III of Orange to take the throne through the Glorious Revolution, when King James II & VII was deposed under legislation intended to bar him from the succession. King William created Sydney Baron Milton and Viscount Sydney in 1689.