Barbara Sidney, Countess of Leicester

Barbara Sidney with six of her children, painted c.1596 by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561–1636), collection of Viscount de Lisle, Penshurst Place

Arms of Gammage of Coity Castle, Glamorgan: Argent, five fusils in bend gules on a chief azure three escallops of the first

Barbara Sidney, Countess of Leicester (1563 – 24 May 1621) was a Welsh heiress, and the first wife of Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester.

Origins

Barbara was the sole child and heiress of her father John Gamage (d.1584) of Coity Castle, Glamorgan. On the death of her father she was granted by the crown in wardship to Sir Edward Stradling of St Donat's Castle, Glamorgan, until her marriage.

Marriage & progeny

On 23 September 1584, she married Robert Sidney, later created Earl of Leicester, at St Donat's Castle, the home of her guardian. Although Sidney was MP for Glamorgan, the couple lived chiefly at Baynard's Castle in London and at Penshurst Place in Kent. They had eleven children:

• Sir William Sidney
• Henry Sidney
• Philip Sidney
• Mary
• Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester
• Catherine
• Philippa
• Margaret
• Dorothy
• Elizabeth
• Bridget
• Barbara, married Thomas Smythe, 1st Viscount Strangford

According to the editor of Ben Jonson's poem 'To Penshurst', the 'My Lady's Oak' and 'Gamage copse' mention in the poem are reference to Barbara Sidney. The first because, according to tradition, she "was taken in travail [labour] under an oak in Penshurst Park, which was afterwards called My Lady's Oak ", and secondly that she liked to feed the deer under the shade of the copse.