Philip Sidney's Funeral Procession 1588

When Sir Philip Sidney died of a wound received at the battle of Zutphen (1586) his body was brought home to England for an elaborate public funeral. Sidney was the earliest national hero to be awarded a State funeral.

The next year Thomas Lant published a series of engravings of the funeral procession. The following engravings depict the funeral cortege of Sir Philip Sidney on its way to St Paul's Cathedral 1587. 

Pictures from The Procession at the Obsequies of Sir Philip Sidney, drawn by his servant, Thomas Lant, and engraved by Theodor Dirk de Bry, 1587 (From the series of 32 plates featuring 344 engraved figures on a 38 foot long roll in the possession of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.)

Above: Henry Danvers, aged 13, Philip Sidney's page, seated upon Sidney's war horse and trailing a broken lance, leading the coffin.