First, the King could be tried by noe court; secondly, that noe man could be tried by that court. This being alleged in vaine, and Cromwell using these formall words (I tell you, wee will cut off his head with the crowne upon it) I...immediately went out of the room, and never returned.

...such was the power and wisdom and integrity in those that sat at the helm, and their diligence in chusing men only for their merit was blessed with such success, that in two years our fleets grew to be as famous as our land armies; the reputation and power of our nation rose to a greater height, than when we possessed the better half of France, and the kings of France and Scotland were our prisoners. All the states, kings and potentates of Europe, most respectfully, not to say submissively, sought our friendship; and Rome was more afraid of Blake and his fleet, than they had been of the great king of Sweden, when he was ready to invade Italy with a hundred thousand men.

Since the Parliament hath acknowledged a king, I knowe... I owe him duty and the service that belongs unto a subject, and will pay it. If things are carried in a legall and moderate way, I had rather be in employment, than without any.

... came to De Witt, and pressed him to think of an invasion of England and Scotland, and gave him great assurances of a strong party: and they were bringing many officers to Holland to join in the undertaking. They dealt also with some in Amsterdam, who were particularly sharpened against the king, and were for turning England again into a commonwealth. The matter was for some time in agitation at the Hague: but De Witt was against it, and got it to be laid aside. He said, their going into such a design would provoke France to turn against them: it might engage them in a long war, the consequences of which could not be forseen: and, as there was no reason to think that, while the parliament was so firm to the king, any discontents could be carried so far as to a general rising, which these men undertook for, so, he said, what would the effect be of turning England into a commonwealth, if it could possibly be brought about, but the ruin of Holland? It would naturally draw many of the Dutch to leave their country, that could not be kept and maintained but at a vast charge, and to exchange that with the plenty and security that England afforded. Therefore all that he would engage in was, to weaken the trade of England, and to destroy her fleet; in which he succeeded the following year beyond all expectation.

At the moment my most intimate liaison is with Mr. Algernon Sidney; he is the man in England who seems to me to have the greatest understanding of affairs; he has great relations with the rest of the Republican party; And nobody in my opinion is more capable of rendering service than him.

Trial and execution

... uphold the Common rights of mankind, the lawes of this land, and the true Protestant religion, against corrupt principles, arbitrary power and Popery... I doe now willingly lay down my life for the same; and having a sure witness within me, that God doth... uphold me... am very littell sollicitous, though man doth condemne me.

They who are already fallen into all that is odious, and shameful and miserable, cannot justify fear... Let the dangers never be so great, there is the possibility of safety while men have life, hands, arms and courage to use them but that people must surely perish who tamely suffer themselves to be oppressed.

... a man of the most extraordinary courage, a steady man, even to obstinacy, sincere, but of a rough and boisterous temper, that could not bear contradiction, but would give foul language upon it. He seemed to be a Christian, but in a particular form of his own. He thought it was to be like a divine philosophy in the mind, but he was against all public worship, and every thing that looked like church. He was stiff to all republican principles, and such an enemy to every thing that looked like monarchy, that he set himself in a high opposition against Cromwell when he was made protector. He had indeed studied the history of government in all its branches beyond any man I ever knew.

I have lately undertaken to read Algernon Sidney on government. ... As often as I have read it, and fumbled it over, it now excites fresh admiration [i.e., wonder] that this work has excited so little interest in the literary world. As splendid an edition of it as the art of printing can produce—as well for the intrinsic merit of the work, as for the proof it brings of the bitter sufferings of the advocates of liberty from that time to this, and to show the slow progress of moral, philosophical, and political illumination in the world—ought to be now published in America.

Never was there less of national feeling among the higher orders than during the reign of Charles the Second. That Prince, on the one side, thought it better to be the deputy of an absolute king than the King of a free people. Algernon Sydney, on the other hand, would gladly have aided France in all her ambitious schemes, and have seen England reduced to the condition of a province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him to establish his darling republic".

It would be unjust to impute to them the extreme wickedness of taking bribes to injure their country. On the contrary, they meant to serve her: but it is impossible to deny that they were mean and indelicate enough to let a foreign prince pay them for serving her. Among those who cannot be acquitted of this degrading charge was one man who is popularly considered as the personification of public spirit, and who, in spite of some great moral and intellectual faults, has a just claim to be called a hero, a philosopher, and a patriot. It is impossible to see without pain such a name in the list of the pensioners of France. Yet it is some consolation to reflect that, in our time, who should not spurn from him a temptation which conquered the virtue and the pride of Algernon Sidney.

• Literature from and about Algernon Sidney published
• Sidney, Algernon: Discourses concerning government, London 1698 u. öfter; deutsch, Leipzig 1794;
• Sidney, Algernon: Discourses, hrsg. John Toland, 1698;
• Sidney, Algernon: Discourses Concerning Government;
• Sidney, Algernon: Apology in the Day of His Death;
• Sidney, Algernon: The Administration and the Opposition. Addressed to the Citizens of New-Hampshire, Concord, Jacob B. Moore, 1826, ASIN B000IUQ14Q
• Sidney, Algernon: Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West, Indianapolis, 1996, ISBN 0865971420
• Sidney, Algernon: Court Maxims (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought), Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 9780521461757
• Sidney, Algernon: Discourses on Government. To Which is Added, An Account of the..., Reprint, The Lawbook Exchange, New York, 2002 ISBN 1584772093

• Blackburne, Algernon Sidney (London, 1885).
• J. P. Carswell The Porcupine: The Life of Algernon Sidney (London: John Murray, 1989). ISBN 0719546842;
• James Conniff, 'Reason and History in Early Whig Thought: The Case of Algernon Sidney', Journal of the History of Ideas, No. 43 (1982), pp. 397—416.
• A.C. Ewald, Life and times of Algernon Sidney (London, 1872).
• Alan Craig Houston, Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and America (Princeton University Press, 1991). ISBN 0691078602
• J. J. Jones, The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis 1678-1683 (Oxford University Press, 1961). ISBN 9780197131244
• George W. Meadley, Memoirs of Algernon Sidney (London: Cradock and Joy, 1813).
• Scott A. Nelson, The Discourses of Algernon Sidney (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993). ISBN 9780838634387
• J. G. A. Pocock, 'England's Cato: The virtues and fortunes of Algernon Sidney', The Historical Journal, Vol. 37, No. 4, 1994, S. 915-935.
• George van Santvord, Life Of Algernon Sidney: With Sketches Of Some Of His Contemporaries And Extracts From His Correspondence And Political Writings (Kessinger Publishing, 2007). ISBN 9781430444497
• Blair Worden, 'The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney', The Journal of British Studies/The Historical Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1985, S. 1-40.