Philip Sydney died at age 31 from a musket wound sustained at the Battle of Zutphen, mourning his life as 'vain, vain, vain' in his final hours.

54:40and then returned. The second time his horse had been shot from under him. He got another horse. Again, very gallant, very heroic. The third time again he'd ridden through the enemy lines, but then when he's turning to ride back to the English positions, he gets hit above his left knee by a musk ball. And as Lester wrote in appalled tones later, it was a very dangerous wound, the bone being

55:03broke in pieces. So Lester is very anxious for his nephew and his heir, of course, puts him in a barge, has him carried down the river to Arnum, um, 20 mi south of Zuken. And in Arnum, surgeons operate on the wound. But unfortunately, their attempt to extract the bullet only makes things worse. and Gangarine sets in and to quote, "So Phillip presently gave this severe doom upon himself that it was inward

55:31mortification and a welcome messenger of death. And sure enough, on the afternoon of the 17th of October 1586, Sir Phillip Sydney died at the tender age of 31. And it's a wretched unhappy end rather like Byron's end was wretched and unhappy. And in his dying hours, Sir Philip Sydney mourned that all things in my former life have been vain, vain, vain. But this is not how his uncle, the Earl

56:00of Leester, sees it. And Lester may have been irassable, incompetent, arrogant. But one thing he does know is how to create a martyr. And so Lester ensures that um Sydney's funeral cage is is very slow, very somber, very stately. and it processes from Arnham to the sea and then to London. And in London, his coffin is carried to St. Paul's Cathedral by 14 men. He's accompanied by

56:29the Lord Mayor, by 300 Londoners in full armor, and by a page riding Sydney's waror trailing a broken lance. So shades perhaps of the funeral of of JFK. And the streets were so thronged with people that the mourers had scarce room to pass. And so in death, Sydney becomes what he had yearned to be all his life, a hero to every English Protestant and indeed to every Protestant in

56:58Christendom. And for Elizabeth and her uh PR team, her propaganda team, this must be a tremendous coup because it happens at precisely the point when it looks as though the storm clouds of war are moving over the English Channel towards our own beloved country. >> Yeah. About to break. They are about to break, aren't they? Because I mean, all of this has been it's been building and