1616

by Christensen, Thomas

  In 1612, according to one observer’s gossipy letter, “Sir Thomas Shirley, the younger, being in the King’s Bench for debt, took the other day, a good quantity of poison, with intent to make himself away.” The suicide attempt was unsuccessful, and 1615 found Thomas petitioning the king for relief from his debt. “Pardon my boldness, and then to vouchsafe to bow down your gracious eye upon this enclosed paper,” his letter began obsequiously, “wherein your Majesty may behold (if you please) the true anatomy of a most ruined poor gentleman.”

  In 1617, while in Fleet Prison, Thomas, still brooding over the downturn in his fortunes that he blamed on his Turkish imprisonment, wrote a tiresome book called Discours of the Turkes, in which he belabored the argument that Turks “are all pagans and infidels, Sodomites, liars, and drunkards, proud, scornful, and cruel.” In the end he sold off his ancestral home to raise funds, retired with his oversized family to a modest home on the Isle of Wight, and disappeared from the pages of history. There he died, the year unknown.

  Anthony Sherley, only one year younger than Thomas, started out along a similar path. He too served in the military in the Low Countries. He was a protégée of the dashing Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, father of the Robert Devereaux who would be divorced by Lady Frances Howard on the grounds of impotence so she could marry the king’s favorite, Robert Carr, an affair that lead ultimately to the Overbury murder and trial. The elder Devereaux had been Elizabeth’s favorite until he was arrested following his command of an ill-fated campaign in Ireland. Imagining that he had the support and sympathy of the people, Devereaux led a farcical coup against the queen. Parading through the streets of London, he counted on swelling crowds to fall in with him and force Elizabeth from her throne. The crowds did not materialize, and he was beheaded for treason on the green of the Tower of London, as Walter Raleigh nonchalantly watched from a window, reportedly enjoying a smoke of tobacco.

  Anthony Sherley was a good student of Devereaux’s style, resembling his mentor in his flamboyance, smooth talk, grand aspirations, and lack of judgment. Devereaux’s words, he once wrote, “were the star that guided me.” In 1591 he had followed Devereaux during a campaign in Normandy in support of Henri IV. Henri rewarded him with a knighthood. This set Elizabeth off. “I will not have my sheep marked with a strange brand,” she raged, “nor suffer them to follow the pipe of a strange shepherd!” It was a suitably inauspicious beginning to Anthony’s checkered career. He was forced to formally renounce the title. Nonetheless, although he would never be offered an English title, he always thereafter styled himself “Sir Anthony.”

  In 1595 Sir Anthony married a cousin of the Earl of Essex. It was reported to be an unhappy union. Within three years he would leave the country, never to see her again. His destination was the Americas, where he led a raid against the Spanish on the island of Jamaica. The overall effect of this expedition was inconsequential. He then became involved in a plan to foment conflict among the Italian states. The pretext was a question of succession in the Duchy of Ferrara on the Adriatic coast south of Venice, but by the time Anthony’s small party of men arrived the matter had already been settled. He sought some kind of service in Venice, but none was forthcoming. “All things appertaining to innovations or tumults in Italy lay dead,” the dejected Anthony wrote home.

  From his vantage point in Venice the only prospect he could see for stirring up the sort of trouble that might benefit a military adventurer (and for making plausible use of the unspent funding he had raised for the Ferrara expedition) lay in Persia. He booked passage from Venice with a band of about twenty-six men, including his seventeen-year-old brother, Robert. The Englishmen, pummeling and quarreling with some of the Italian passengers, made themselves so unpopular aboard ship that after stopping to eat at a port of call en route they discovered the seamen had quietly deposited their luggage and gone on without them. Anthony appealed to the English ambassador to Turkey for assistance, fabricating a story about being on a mission from the queen to the Red Sea. It was just one of many whoppers that would sustain him through his adventures.

  Arriving at the Persian court by way of Aleppo and Baghdad, he followed up that fabrication with another, leading Shah Abbas to believe that he was an official representative of the queen — indeed, that he was her cousin, according to one Persian observer, who converted to Christianity and ended his life in Spain, where he wrote an account of Anthony and Robert Sherley in Persia. In fact, the plan Anthony Sherley advocated of a massive joint crusade against Turkey contradicted actual English policy, which sought to maintain détente with the Ottomans for the benefit of the Levant trade. The English consul at Aleppo wrote regarding “the matters … concerning Sir Anthony Sherley and his proceadinges” that little good would come of them, ironically wishing Sherley “better successe then wee by anie probabylyty can hitherto conjecture.”

  The timing of Sherley’s arrival was fortuitous, as Shah Abbas was just then returning victorious from battle against the Uzbeks. Faced with wars on both the eastern and western sides of Persia, the shah had decided to concentrate all his initial energies on pacifying the east. This was possible because the Ottomans were engaged in war in the Balkans with Rudolf II, and skirmishing with Spain in the Mediterranean; even so, Persia did lose territory to the Ottomans in the early years of the shah’s reign. Arriving triumphantly at the head of an army brandishing thousands of Uzbek heads on poles, Shah Abbas read in Sherley’s appearance an affirmation of his growing international prestige.

  Anthony Sherley, 1601, by Aegidius Sadeler II. Prague. Engraving.

  The Sadelers were a large and successful family of Flemish engravers — at least ten members of the family worked as engravers in the Netherlands, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, and elsewhere. Aegidius Sadeleer II moved to Prague in 1597 and was employed under Rudolf II until his death in 1629. Rudolf apparently commissioned him to document the Persian embassy of Anthony Sherley.

  After a few months the shah sent Anthony and a Persian named Husain Ali Beg as his agents to Europe. Robert Sherley was left behind, because, Anthony said, the shah had told him that “the company of my brother should give him great satisfaction in my absence.” In fact Robert was being held as a hostage to ensure that Anthony performed his duties as expected.

  From the beginning there was uncertainty about the status of the two emissaries. According to Anthony, he and Husain Ali Beg were designated by the shah as c0-ambassadors. Translations of the embassy’s diplomatic documents in the Vatican archives, however, appear to confirm Husain Ali Beg’s contention that he was the sole ambassador and Anthony his traveling companion. But because Husain Ali Beg did not speak Latin or European languages he was dependent on Anthony’s translation.

  Together with Husain, Anthony returned to Europe by way of Moscow. The Muscovites, familiar with Persian diplomatic protocol, received Husain Ali Beg warmly but were cold to Anthony. The two travelers were provided with sixty-three presents for European heads of states. In a port on the White Sea north of Moscow, Anthony said he was putting these on an English ship headed for Rome on the grounds that this would safeguard them. The presents never reached Rome. Accused by Hussain of having sold them, Anthony replied that they had turned out to be unworthy as diplomatic gifts, and he had sent them back to Persia. They never arrived there either.

  The embassy had hoped to visit eight European nations but in the end they were received only by the three that were already at war with Turkey: the Empire, the papal state, and Spain. From Muscovy the travelers took passage through the Norwegian Sea and North Sea into Germany and south to Prague, where they received a warm welcome but few firm commitments from Rudolf II. Some observers saw reason for caution in dealing with the Persian delegation: the Venetian ambassador at Rudolf’s court, for example, immediately saw the contradiction in Anthony’s performance, writing that “The English queen has friendly relations with Turkey and is not kindly disposed to the Habsburgs; what then does she intend with this embassy?”


  Anthony and Husain continued to Rome, where they met with Pope Clement VIII, who also was encouraging but promised little beyond sincere prayers. In Italy tensions between the ambassadors reached the boiling point, and they came to blows. It was not an auspicious sign for Sherley’s grand plan for a new crusade to defeat the Ottomans, who were still the greatest power in the regions of Europe and West Asia. One cardinal commented that “Since they, who are only two and are sent by the same prince on the same errand, cannot themselves agree, they will find it even more difficult to create unity among so many Christian princes and others with regard to overthrowing the Turkish Empire.” Anthony sulked off, and Husain continued to Spain and Portugal on his own, eventually returning to Persia by way of Goa.

  Anthony’s subsequent career was something of an anticlimax to his first grand gesture in opening relations with Persia. He apparently spent a few years in Venice doing alchemical researches, or at least trying to find a way to profit from them. (One might wonder whether he had contact with Mordecai Modena at this time.) He was probably hard up for funds; while in Venice he was arrested for forcing his way into the house of a Persian merchant and attempting to seize his goods, claiming his status as a Persian ambassador gave him to right to do so.

  From Italy he traveled to Spain, where he made the audacious proposal of creating a Mediterranean fleet at little expense to Spain by enlisting privateers — peace between England and Spain had put a damper on English privateers who, like his older brother, had formerly attacked Spanish vessels. He also intended, he said, to enlist the Barbary corsairs Ward and Danziker to help capture Turkish and Dutch prizes with which to finance the naval operations, and he initiated correspondence with them. Despite a complete lack of naval experience, the fast-talking Sherley managed to be appointed a Spanish admiral on the basis of this rather nutty proposal.

  The project was not a success. Sherley returned to Spain “extreme poor in both purse and reputation,” according to the English envoy there. He was pensioned off to Granada, where he would be far from the administrative centers of Madrid and Lisbon, and his ability to muck things up would be limited. There, like his older brother, he wrote a rather dull account of his adventures. In his later years he continued to put forth projects that failed to reach fruition, such as the proposal of a Spanish attack against Jamestown — which amounted to treason against England. He also advocated redirecting the Persian silk trade through maritime routes around Africa rather than overland through Ottoman lands, though again to no effect.

  Although there was little to show from the first Persian embassy to Europe, it was well publicized, and it served to put Persia on the map for many Europeans. Together with the next Persian embassy, featuring the third of the Sherley brothers, it may have influenced the next wave of travelers to Persia, including Thomas Coryate, George Strachan, and Pietro della Valle.

  Robert Sherley, left behind in Persia when his brother returned to Europe, remained there for eight years. According to a persistent legend — it is perpetuated to this day on several Wikipedia pages — he reformed and retrained the Persian army and introduced firearms to the Persians. Certainly Shah Abbas extracted what military expertise he could from his European visitors. But the Persians were familiar with firearms before the Sherleys’ arrival, and moreover the shah never made heavy use of them. It is doubtful that the Persian leader, fresh from his victory over the Uzbeks, required a great deal of schooling from a young pup like Robert.

  But distance is a friend of legend, and Robert’s reputation grew during his time abroad. In England it was reported that he had personally captured ninety Turkish generals. “The mighty Ottoman,” Samuel Purchas said, “quaketh of a Sherly-Fever.” He assured his readers that Sherley and his men once faced a hundred and sixty thousand Turks, of which only two thousand survived to flee the battle. Poems and plays were written about him and his brothers. No less a figure than Thomas Middleton would craft an account of him (though this was probably a work for hire commissioned by Thomas Sherley).

  The tone of the letters, written in a childish hand, that Robert sent to Anthony tell a different story. In one he describes himself as “besids myself with the travailes and wants I am in, and the little hope I have of your retorne or of anie helpe from my delivry out of this Countrie.” In another he upbraids his brother for failure to deliver on such promises as the sending of presents to the shah: this, Robert says, “hathe made me estimed a common lyar; brother for Gods sake, either performe, or not promis any thinge, because in this fasion you make me discreditt my-selfe, by reportinge things wch you care not to effecte.”

  Letters from Robert Sherley to Anthony Sherley, 1606, National Archives, London, ref. CO77/26 pp. 43–43V.

  Robert Sherley was in his early twenties went he sent these letters from Persia to his older brother Anthony. Robert had been left behind as a hostage when Anthony was sent to the courts of Europe to help represent Persian interests.

  Anthony failed to return to Persia, and Robert upbraids his brother for his failure to honor his promises.

  Eventually Robert adjusted to his situation. He married a young Circassian Christian woman named Teresia Sampsonia (the Circassians, or Adyghe, are a people originally from the Caucasus region of the Black Sea in what is now southern Russia). Shah Abbas’s reputation of tolerance toward Christians had reached Europe, and in 1608 a Carmelite mission arrived in Persia. Among the news the Carmelites delivered was the appointment of Anthony Sherley as head of a Spanish armada in the Mediterranean. This news rekindled the shah’s fading hopes for a European alliance against Turkey. Robert was appointed ambassador for another embassy to Europe, and this time there would be no doubt about credentials.

  Accompanied by his wife, Robert traveled to Moscow (where, unlike his brother, he was well received) and then struck out overland to Poland, making much better time than Anthony had by taking the arctic sea route around Scandinavia. He spent six months in Poland. Then, leaving Teresia behind, he continued on to Prague, where Rudolf II received him warmly and made him a Count Palatine. He continued to Italy and met with the pope — who made him a Count of the Sacred Palace of the Lateran — and other political leaders. The pope is supposed to have granted Robert the right to legitimize bastards. Sherley assured the pontiff that if the Ottomans fell Abbas would become a Christian.

  Surviving documents indicate that two of Shah Abbas’s prime objectives from this embassy were a cessation of European trade with Turkey and a sea attack to coordinate with a land offensive from Persia. Robert, perhaps influenced by his brother Anthony, recommended an attack on Cyprus in order to make the island a base for an incursion inland to Aleppo.

  Throughout his travels Robert dressed in Persian garments, which capitivated his European audiences. His portrait and Teresia’s were painted several times, including by a young Anthony Van Dyke.

  Like his brother’s embassy, Robert’s was received with expressions of friendship and vague promises of cooperation but few specifics or firm commitments. He continued to Spain. There he met a frosty reception. It might be that the Spaniards were simply wearying of Sherleys: the Council of Portugal declared Robert to be tan inbencionero — as much a teller of tales — as his brother; but they also had real limitations in their ability to engage in the eastern Mediterranean because of their ongoing involvement at that time in the Netherlands. At first they avoided meeting Robert at all, but eventually, concerned that he would carry his proposals to England with potentially negative consequences for Spain, they decided to pretend to negotiate in order to draw out the process as long as possible. Robert ended up spending a year in Spain, with nothing to show for his time in the end.

  In Spain Robert found Anthony, disgraced following the failure of his naval ambitions, in a pathetic state. According to the English envoy, he was “so extreme poor, as if his brother did not relieve him he would doubtless suffer much misery”:

  The poor man comes sometimes to my house, and is as full of vanity as ever
he was, making himself believe that he shall one day be a great Prince, when for the present he wants shoes to wear.

  Robert Sherley, 1622, by Anthony Van Dyke. Oil on canvas, 133 × 200 cm. Petworth Castle, National Trust, UK acc. no. 38.

  Like many Europeans, Van Dyke, who painted this portrait during the six years he spent in Italy (1621–1627), was fascinated by the Persian ambassador’s costume.

  Anthony continued to dream and scheme, but the grandiose proposals that he put foward daily now made him appear ridiculous. Robert gradually overcame the Sherley stigma and made a better impression, the English envoy judging that “those vices which in Sir Anthony do so abound, in this man may be found the contraries.”

  In September 1610 Sherley’s position in Spain was undercut by the arrival of another Persian ambassador, a man named Janghiz Beg, who had left Persia a year after Sherley. Cooperation between the ambassadors proved nearly as difficult as had been the case with Anthony and Husain Ali Beg, and by June the following year, joined by Teresia after a separation of two years, he left the Spanish court for England.

  Whatever Janghiz Beg’s mission was, his performance of it evidently did not satisfy the shah: when he returned to Persia and bent to kiss the shah’s foot he received a kick in the face. A few days later he was executed and his possessions seized. The reasons for this reception are disputed, but it is probably significant that an Ottoman peace envoy was present in the shah’s court at the time. Peace with Turkey would enable Persia to address the problem of the Portuguese garrison in Hormuz, which was still harrassing Persian merchants.