His mother, the Lady Katharine Willoughby, the only daughter and heiress of William the ninth lord by a Spanish lady of high birth, Mary Salmes, after the death of her first husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, brother-in-law of King Henry VIII., became the wife of Richard Bertie. On the accession of Queen Mary she was forced to fly from her own country to escape the cruelties and persecutions of Bishop Gardiner, whose enmity she had drawn upon herself by some imprudent manifestations of her dislike of his character in the preceding reign. Accompanied by her husband, she sought refuge in the Low Countries. "On an October evening," says Lucy Aikin in her "Memoirs of the Court of Elizabeth," "followed only by two maid-servants, on foot, through rain and mire and darkness, the forlorn wanderers began their march to Wesel, one of the Hanse towns. On their arrival, their wild and wretched appearance gave them, in the eyes of the inhabitants, so suspicious an appearance that no one would harbour them; and while her husband ran from inn to inn vainly imploring admittance the afflicted duchess was compelled to betake herself to the shelter of a church porch; and there, in that misery and desolation and want of everything, was delivered of a child, to whom, in memory of the circumstance, she gave the name of Peregrine." The son who first saw the light under these inauspicious circumstances was, at her death in 1580, and in her right, summoned to Parliament as tenth Lord Willoughby. Two years afterwards, when Elizabeth, on account of the hostility of Philip of Spain, was desirous of cultivating a closer friendship with the Northern Powers, Lord Willoughby was selected as her special envoy to the King of Denmark to invest him with the Garter as a token of her goodwill. Subsequently, when the battle between the two great principles that divided Europe was being fought out by England and Spain, he had many opportunities of distinguishing himself and won undying fame. Elizabeth had sent an army to assist the Protestant people of the Low Countries to maintain their civil privileges and their religious faith against Philip and against Rome. Leicester, who had the chief command, was unable to cope with so skilled a general as the Prince of Parma, and the campaign was a disastrous one. Among the heroes in that little band was the rare scholar, the accomplished writer, the perfect gentleman, the darling of the English people, Sir Philip Sidney, and with him his intimate friend, the brilliant and quick-witted--the bravest of the brave on the battle-field--the "good Lord Willoughby"--"Good Peregrine," as his "most loving sovereign," Elizabeth, familiarly styled him in one of her letters. The following story of his prowess at the battle of Zutphen, in which Sidney received his mortal wound, is related in a comparatively modern work, "Five Generations of a Loyal House":--