The Sultan and the Queen

by Jerry Brotton

  By the time he left Rome Sherley was a renegade, working (perhaps) for everyone but wanted by nobody. The Persian embassy was over and he needed a new patron and new adventures. His only option was to head for Venice, where he arrived in the late summer. He had been there three years earlier as a Protestant Englishman proposing to break the Spanish control over the Persian trade. Now he was working for at least two Catholic powers and was notoriously trying to build a Euro-Persian alliance against the Ottomans. The Venetians were attempting to negotiate yet another entente with Sultan Mehmed III, so they treated Sherley’s appearance with the utmost suspicion, as did everyone else. Sherley arrived claiming to represent the Scottish king James’s interests as well as those of the Spanish (and probably the papacy), which earned him the attentions of two of Cecil’s agents, who followed his every move.

  As usual, trouble soon found him. A bullet was fired into his house, he dabbled in alchemy, and there were the inevitable accusations of plots, thefts and debts. In June 1602 one of Cecil’s spies wrote with wry skepticism that Sherley “hath been lately assaulted in this city, or at least maketh it to be given out so, and that one of his company was sorely hurt; himself happily escaping the blow, was borne over a bridge into the water.” Sherley’s household muttered darkly that the culprit was probably a Jew in the pay of the Turks, although one of Cecil’s spies reported that it was more likely a creditor seeking settlement of a wine bill. Dozens of merchants cheated by Sherley over the years must have wished they had pushed him off the bridge; the only surprise is that it took so long for someone to try.

  By the spring of 1603, Sherley’s behavior was becoming ever more capricious. He proposed increasingly fantastical schemes to the Spanish, demanded that he be allowed back to England, and even ingratiated himself with a newly arrived Persian merchant. It was all too much for the Venetians, who arrested and imprisoned him that March. His situation was made all the more precarious when news of his feckless elder brother, Sir Thomas, reached Venice that spring. In February, after attacking Venetian shipping in the Cyclades Islands, Thomas had been captured by the Ottomans and was now languishing in prison in Constantinople. With Sir Robert still a hostage in Persia, the three brothers were now all being held in captivity, by three different foreign powers. Sir Thomas’s privateering was seen as yet another example of the Sherleys’ anti-Venetian activities, and can have done Anthony little favor.

  During the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, nobody was better known for his oriental adventures than Sir Anthony Sherley. His exploits were so outlandish that Shakespeare had no need to write a play about them: the passing reference in Twelfth Night was all that his audience needed to imagine a bombastic, swaggering, slightly ridiculous nobleman. His was the tragicomic story of a man who aspired to the international grandeur of advising sultans, shahs and emperors, but who was reduced to exile and obloquy. Ultimately Sherley resembled not the comical, aristocratic rogue Sir Toby Belch but the tragic Malvolio: an avid social climber, humiliated in his schemes of preferment, raging against his enemies—the Persian, Turkish, Russian, even English dogs who conspired against him—still planning to be avenged on the whole pack of them. A recusant Catholic who ended up allying himself with Shi’a Muslims in opposition to a Protestant-Sunni alliance between Elizabethan England and the Ottoman sultans, Sherley exemplified just how complex these relationships had become. But such relationships were also fraught with danger and disenchantment. Like so many Elizabethans before him, he had gone eastward in the hope of riches and preferment, but ended up disillusioned and displaced, a stranger in a strange land, with little sense of where home was anymore.

  In 1888 the Reverend Scott Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees joined in the fashionable debates over the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays with the publication of a short pamphlet called William Shakespeare, of Stratford-on-Avon, His Epitaph Unearthed, and the Author of the Plays run to Ground. Instead of endorsing more obvious candidates like Sir Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford, Surtees was drawn to a more cosmopolitan individual, someone with naval and battlefield experience, a background in law, trade, diplomacy and “the habits and the ways, the customs, dresses, manners, laws of almost every known nation,” including Aleppo, Algiers, Bermuda, Cyprus, Greece, India, Mauretania, Mexico, Persia, Rome, Russia, Tunis, Venice, Verona and Vienna, and someone obsessed with naming his characters “Antonio.” So, Surtees asked triumphantly, “What is Antonio everywhere but Anthony ‘writ new’?” As far as Surtees was concerned, the answer to the authorship controversy was obvious: “Anthony Sherley and no other was he who wrote these plays.”64

  11

  More Than a Moor

  In June 1599, just weeks after Sir Anthony Sherley had left Isfahan for Moscow, the English merchant and spy Jasper Thomson wrote a letter from Marrakesh to his relative Richard Thomson in London. Jasper’s letter described a recent meeting with al-Mansur’s principal secretary, al-Caid Azouz, at which he recounted that Azouz had discovered that “I had been employed some years in Turkey and that, in this last journey into Hungary which the Grand Signor [Mehmed III] made in person, I was present.” Al-Mansur ordered Azouz to spend “the whole night” questioning Thomson “upon the many particularities concerning the Grand Signor and his proceedings (for I see nothing is more pleasing to the king than to hear that the Turks’ affairs succeeded not well).” As Thomson related news of recent Austrian victories over the Turks in Hungary, Azouz turned the conversation to England’s relations with the Ottomans. He “was desirous to know what reason or wherefore the queen had required aid of the Turk against the Spaniard.” Thomson protested rather weakly that “never any such thing was demanded,” but after “much talk” about Elizabeth’s policy toward Spain and the Ottomans, as well as about the size of her army in France, Azouz asked the Englishman

  whether I thought the queen would be content to make such another army to land in some port in Spain with twenty thousand footmen, and with vessels to transport twenty thousand horses and men from Barbary, and so to join together in conquest of the country; whereof, said he, there is no doubt but it may be performed, if her majesty and his king should join together in the action.1

  He wanted to know if Thomson had “friends that could procure by word of mouth to move the queen therein.” The Englishman responded with understandable caution. The Thomson clan were servants of Sir Robert Cecil’s and always on the lookout for intelligence they could relay to their London paymaster. Nevertheless, Jasper could not afford to be presumptuous. He told the Moroccan that he was unaware of the queen’s latest policy toward Spain, especially in the wake of Philip II’s recent death in September 1598, but advised him that, if al-Mansur was serious, “it were good he sent an ambassador to her majesty, about the negotiation of whom I was assured he should have a princely answer.” He concluded his letter with news of the return of al-Mansur’s military commander responsible for the conquest of Songhai, the vast west Afrian empire that included parts of Nigeria, back in 1591. “He brought with him thirty camels laden with tyber, which is unrefined gold,” he wrote, estimating the gold’s value at over £600,000, equivalent to Elizabeth’s entire annual revenue, and twice the national debt. He also noted the arrival of a “great store of pepper, unicorns’ horns and a certain kind of wood for dyers . . . all which he presented unto the king, with fifty horse, and great quantity of eunuchs, dwarfs and women and men slaves, besides fifteen virgins, the king’s daughters of Gago [Songhai], which he sendeth to be the king’s concubines. You must note all these be of the coal black hair, for that country yieldeth no other.”2 Like many of his contemporaries working in the Muslim world, Thomson switched effortlessly between cool political calculation and lurid exoticism.

  Judging by the flurry of correspondence between the English and Moroccan rulers over the next few months, Azouz’s proposal was clearly taken seriously in London. In March 1600, Elizabeth wrote to request the release of nine Dutch captives held by the Moroccans, and
by June al-Mansur told her he was sending a diplomatic embassy disguised as a trade delegation traveling via Aleppo, a somewhat unlikely route to London. The delegation was led by Abd al-Wahid bin Masoud bin Muhammad al-Annuri, al-Mansur’s adviser, who was given powers to discuss a proposed Anglo-Moroccan attack on Spain “verbally and in secret.”3 News of the plan leaked, and speculation soon mounted among the English merchants in Marrakesh. One of them, John Waring, wrote to Robert Cecil about the imminent departure of al-Annuri’s embassy, along with the “nine Dutchmen taken long since captives by the barbarians and became slaves to Mully Hamett, King of Barbary.” He observed that “it is thought most meet that the said captives do accompany the Moors, until they come one with the other unto her majesty or your honor’s presence, to acknowledge her majesty’s great bounty and liberality.”4 The real motives behind the embassy could be hidden under the pretense of trade and the routine repatriation of Christian captives, which made Elizabeth look good in the eyes of the Dutch Calvinists.

  A few weeks later Jasper Thomson’s cousin George sent Cecil a detailed report of what to expect from al-Annuri and his entourage. Although he confessed that the mission was “so secret that none knoweth the ground of their going,” his personal contacts with most of the Moroccans meant he could provide his master with a fulsome report concerning the whole crew. The delegation included two prominent merchants, “Side al-Hage Messa [Hajj Musa],” who lost the opportunity to lead it when allegations surfaced that he had withheld precious stones from al-Mansur, and “Al-Hage Bahanet,” both delegated to represent commercial interests. They were accompanied by a friend of Thomson’s called “Side Abdala Dodar [Abdullah Dudar], an Andalusian who goeth for trudgman or interpreter, who telleth me he will speak Italian to her majesty; but I take it he will use the Spanish tongue, being his natural language.” Thomson also provided a detailed description of al-Annuri, who he believed was “a natural Moor born, but of the race of Fessians, which the natural Moor holdeth baseness,” as Fez was incorporated into the Sa’adian dynasty only in 1548. Thomson warned Cecil that, although al-Annuri possessed a “sharpness of wit and gift of pen,” he was a proud and boastful man, with a “baseness of mind” who lacked “gentility.” This condemnation should be treated with some caution, as Thomson also told Cecil that al-Annuri “much relieth on Waring’s friends and no doubt but the merchants which trade to this place will be liberal unto him.”5 As he wrote, three of his cousins were embroiled in an interminable legal dispute with John Waring over goods and money, which became so intractable that Elizabeth wrote to al-Mansur asking him to intervene.6 Whether he did so or not is unclear, but if al-Annuri should be treated with suspicion, then so should George Thomson.

  The Moroccan ambassador’s arrival was anticipated throughout the spring of 1600, as diplomats from both sides negotiated the terms of his mission. In late June a sixteen-man delegation left Morocco on board the Eagle. As they sailed north, English spies were writing to Robert Cecil, telling him that a Spanish warship had tried to intercept the Eagle and adding, “the Spaniards here reported that our queen (whom the Lord long preserve!) was dead.”7

  On August 8, the Eagle docked in Dover, where representatives of the Barbary Company trading in Morocco met al-Annuri and brought his party to London. Cecil entrusted their care to Thomas Gerard, a prominent Staffordshire landowner and member of Parliament. It was a shrewd move. Gerard had been a close friend and supporter of Essex, but following the earl’s return from Ireland he had seen that Essex’s star was on the wane and had switched his political allegiance. Cecil was eager to secure Gerard’s loyalty going forward.

  On August 11, Gerard wrote Cecil to confirm that he had met al-Annuri and had arranged for the ambassador and his entourage to stay in Anthony Radcliffe’s house on the Strand, near the Royal Exchange. A former London sheriff and master of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, Radcliffe was a good choice to host the Moroccan delegation, as he could put them in touch with London’s merchant community. On August 15 the Moroccans landed at Tower Wharf and were taken in four coaches to Radcliffe’s home. Gerard reported that not everyone in the neighborhood seemed pleased with the embassy’s arrival. Some observers worried that “they are very strangely attired and behavioured.”8 Gerard had approached London’s Barbary merchants to pay “for the ambassador’s diet, but they all plead poverty, and except her majesty discharge it, it will rest upon himself.” The delegation was to be accommodated “without scandal, and for that purpose they are lodged in a house apart, where they feed alone.”9 Five days later they rode through Cheapside to Westminster, crossed over to Lambeth by boat and then took the ten-mile coach ride to Nonsuch Palace in Surrey for an audience with the queen.

  One eyewitness described at some length the elaborate royal preparations for the Moroccan ambassador’s visit: “Rich hangings and furniture sent for from Hampton Court; the guard very strong, in their rich coats; the pensioners [royal bodyguards] with their axes; the lords of the Order [of the Garter] with their collars; a full court of lords and ladies.” Al-Annuri “passed through a guard of halberds to the council chamber, where he rested; he was brought to the presence, so to the privy chamber, and so to the gallery; where her Majesty sat at the further end in very great state, and gave them audience.”10 The formalities dispensed with, the Moroccan and English delegations began discussing the business at hand.

  Their conversation, held in Spanish, translated for the queen by the diplomat and courtier Sir Lewis Lewkenor, touched primarily on the commercial relations between the two crowns, but one of the English courtiers reported, “Ere they departed, the interpreter of the embassy spoke Italian, and desired to deliver some thing in private, which her majesty granted.”11 No reliable record remains of what they discussed, but one of the English diplomats wrote that at the end of al-Annuri’s reception Elizabeth called in the Dutch ambassador and made a great show of handing over the nine Dutch prisoners whose release she had secured as a condition for al-Annuri’s visit.12 By this account she appeared to be using the captives’ release to show off to the watching Dutch her power over Morocco. Another observer, a merchant named Rowland Whyte, offered a different interpretation of why the Dutch were called in. Whyte noted, “It is given out that they come for her majesty’s letters to the Turk, to whom a brother of this king of Barbary is fled, to complain against him.”13 One perspective stressed England’s anti-Catholic alliance with the Dutch and the Moors; the other, Elizabeth’s alliance with the Ottoman sultan. Whatever was actually said, many present would have understood this as a meeting of three of Catholic Spain’s greatest political and theological enemies whose real agenda went far beyond trade agreements.

  Following the audience with the queen, the Moroccan delegation returned to its central London lodgings. Over the next few months many of Elizabeth’s courtiers believed that what at first appeared to be just another trade delegation—admittedly from an exotic part of the world—was actually a secret attempt to initiate a new military alliance with plans to invade Spain, and possibly to launch a concerted attack on al-Mansur’s other great enemy, the Ottomans, notwithstanding Elizabeth’s continued friendship with them. If concluded, such an alliance would set Christian against Christian, and Muslim against Muslim, in an unprecedented and unholy alliance.

  A second audience was arranged three weeks later, this time at Oatlands Palace in Surrey. Rowland Whyte wrote that what al-Annuri “delivered was in private to the queen; his business hath been very secretly handled, which is not yet come to light; it is supposed that he makes good offers to her majesty, if she will be pleased to aid him with shipping, fit for his ports, to conduct in safety some treasure he hath by mines in part of the Indies conquered by him.”14 There is no truth whatsoever to Whyte’s claims that the Moroccans were trying to enlist Elizabeth’s help in smuggling New World treasure across the Atlantic, but his garbled report did bear some relationship to what transpired.

  The proposal al-Annuri had been instr
ucted to submit to Elizabeth at Oatlands was in fact one of the most audacious in the history of Anglo-Islamic relations. In a memorandum dated September 13, 1600, al-Annuri explained that he was offering a formal military alliance that would result in the English and Moroccan fleets combining to attack Spain. Having come to London “to speak in secret to her serene majesty” about “the King of Spain’s perfidious ways and dealings, and his incessant treachery,” al-Annuri argued that it would “be an act of compassion and humanity for the benefit of all mankind if her serene majesty should embrace the perpetual friendship between her and the serene emperor his master and join forces against the King of Spain, their common foe and enemy.” England and Morocco would invade Spain together to realize the long-standing Moroccan dream of a Muslim reconquest of Al-Andalus (the Arab name for the Spanish mainland). “He will take the war to Spain,” wrote al-Annuri,

  since our land is closer. Moreover, we have a large cavalry and infantry and all manner of munitions, as well as gunpowder and everything else needed to wage war, and plenty of wheat and other provisions. We also have forests with trees for shipbuilding, and iron to fit them, pursuant to the art of war. And should Her Serene Majesty capture any strongholds or cities in Spain that are close to us and which she wishes to supply with soldiers, munitions or money, the Emperor his master shall see to all this, because the Emperor will accede with great love to whatever Her Serene Majesty should ask of him, bound by the ancient friendship between them.15

  An attack on Spain was not all that the Moroccan king proposed. Al-Annuri was instructed to suggest an even more audacious joint campaign against Spain’s colonies in the Americas and the Far East: