Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) had no equal in Elizabethan England, other than the queen herself, in his combination of intellectual and worldly accomplishments. Sidney was a leading writer of poetry, prose fiction, and literary criticism. As the nephew and heir to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sidney was an important political figure. Leaders on the Continent, especially in the Netherlands, regarded Sidney as the central figure in a potential pan-European Protestant political and military alliance. Elizabeth herself, however, was wary of Sidney's ambitions, and never gave him a position of great authority. Sidney's early death from a wound received in battle against the troops of his godfather Philip II stunned England, and transformed Sidney into a legendary figure embodying the ideals of the Renaissance.