High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Henry Sydney (or Sidney), 1st Earl of Romney (8 April 1641 8 April 1704) was born in Paris, a son of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, of Penshurst Place in Kent, England, by Lady Dorothy Percy, a daughter of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (a descendant of Edward III) and sister of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland. Henry was a brother of Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester, who was born in 1619; Algernon Sydney, the Republican martyr, who was born at Penshurst Place in 1622 but was executed, having been found party to the "Rye House Plot" 1683; and Robert Sidney. His sister was Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland. Henry entered Parliament in 1679 and, as a statesman, was one of the Immortal Seven (the author of the letter, in fact) to invite the Protestant William III of Orange to take the throne through the Glorious Revolution, when King James II was deposed under legislation passed to exclude Charles II's Catholic brother (the Duke of York) from the succession. King William created Sydney Baron Milton and Viscount Sydney in 1689.