1616

by Christensen, Thomas

  Little as Spain wanted to negotiate with Sherley, they wanted him to negotiate with England even less. A warrant was put out for his arrest, but he slipped away to the Netherlands. Finding no enthusiasm for his propositions there, he continued to England, which he had left more than thirteen years before. He found his father in ill health and deep in dept and his brother Thomas in debtor’s prison.

  His proposals received a mixed reception. His plan to divert the silk trade to maritime routes was opposed by the Levant Company, but the royal family seemed well disposed to him. Teresia gave birth to the couple’s first son, whom they named Henry after Prince Henry, who agreed to be godfather; Queen Anne was godmother. On the political front, however, nothing was achieved, and the Sherleys took passage to Persia, leaving Henry behind in the melancholy Thomas’s squalid household crowded with children.

  The voyage around the Cape set a speed record. The captain of the vessel was Christopher Newport, the most celebrated merchant captain of his day. He would travel as far as Java after delivering Sherley and his wife and still arrive back in England within a year and a half. Newport, a protégée of Francis Drake, spent two decades as a privateer attacking Spanish and Portuguese ships, mainly in Caribbean and Brazilian waters. Sometime around 1590 he lost one of his hands and is thought to have worn a hook in its place. The loss did not much hold him back. One of his subsequent prizes was a Portuguese carrack called the Madre de Deus, which he took off the Azores in 1592; its haul was the most valuable captured by any Englishman of his time. In 1609 Newport had captained the Sea Venture, the ship bound for Virginia carrying John Rolfe and his first wife, which wrecked on a Bermuda reef during a hurricane.

  Newport had been in the employ of the English East India Company since 1612. On his next voyage he would carry Thomas Roe as the first official ambassador from James’s court to the Mughals. That voyage, lasting from 1615 to 1617, is remarkable because no fewer than four journals survive from it: that of William Keeling, who was in overall command of the fleet of four ships; those of Walter Peyton and Thomas Bonner, captain and master of one of the vessels; and that of Roe himself (as far as Surat, where he disembarked). Besides the passengers, the fleet carried cargo consisting of iron bars, quicksilver, vermilion, ivory, glasses, mirrors, weapons, and fifty cases of “hote waters” (alcoholic spirits), among other goods. Newport would die in Java in 1617, at the age of fifty-seven.

  Sherley, set ashore at the mouth of the Indus, near the city of Karachi in present-day Pakistan, discovered that the Portuguese, determined not to allow him to carry any secret agreement forged in England back to the shah, had put a contract on his head. “If this [English trade] is put into practice,” the Spanish Council of State had written, “it will be the destruction of Hormuz.” The house where Robert and Teresia were staying was blown up, and several companions were killed in a harrowing series of incidents. Nonetheless, they managed to reach Jahangir’s court in Agra, where the Mughal emperor graciously reimbursed Sherley for his losses so that he would have gifts to present to the shah on his return.

  Between Lahore and Isfahan Robert and Teresia encountered the English travel writer Thomas Coryate, who was making the same journey in reverse. Coryate was pleased to discover that Robert was packing his books among his traveling luggage — it was the first time he had seen some in print. He was also grateful for the gift of forty shillings from Teresia.

  They arrived at the Persian court in the summer of 1615, at a time when Shah Abbas was again putting out peace feelers to the Portuguese. The previous fall, when the Grand Vizier Nasuf Pasha was executed, the faction of the Ottoman government that favored peace with Persia, a position associated with Pasha, had lost out to the hawks. Faced with a resumption of hostilities with Turkey, the shah saw the need to calm down the situation in the south, so he was interested in reaffirming his friendship with Spain.

  After such a long journey it is remarkable that the shah should immediately send Sherley away on another trip, but that is what happened. According to a Carmelite missionary present in Persia at the time, Sherley tried to talk the shah out of sending him away again, to no avail. Before his first ambassadorial journey to Europe Sherley had been forced to spend nearly a decade in Persia and was desperate to leave; now he was only to remain a few months, though he was desperate to stay.

  Sherley had to retrace his steps to Hormuz in Portuguese territory, where he had recently only narrowly avoided being assassinated. But now the Portuguese received him sunnily. All was forgotten. Unfortunately, he missed the spring 1615 fleet to Lisbon and consequently had to spend nearly a year in Goa waiting for the next voyage. It was probably an uncomfortable year, as he was regarded with suspicion by all parties — the Spanish ambassador, Figueroa, was convinced he was conspiring with the English, while the English ambassador Roe (who called Sherley a “charlatan”) was certain that he was in league with the Portuguese.

  Robert Sherley and Teresia Sherley, before 1628. Oil on canvas, 105 × 195 cm (Robert), 124 × 214 cm (Teresia). Trustees of the Berkeley Will Trust.

  Robert Sherley arrived in Persia in 1598, when he was eighteen years old. Left behind there by his brother Anthony, he married Teresia Sanpsonia, a Circasian Christian woman.

  In 1608 Shah Abbas sent Robert on an embassy to Europe. Teresia traveled with him through parts of his journey to Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and England. They returned to Persia in 1615 but were soon sent back to Europe. In 1628 they returned to Persia a final time.

  The anonymous painter depicts Robert in an elaborate outfit topped by a stylish cloak that had been presented to him by the shah. He wears a turban and a silk sash in a Persian style. Sherley’s Persian dress made a big impression on European observers.

  Teresia, by contrast, is shown in an English-style silk dress, though her veil and crown are Persian. Her silk garments advertise products Persia was offering for trade.

  She holds a pistol in her right hand and a pocket watch in her left, symbols of modern technology. The pistol may allude to Robert’s supposed role in introducing firearms to Persia, as well as to Teresia’s courage: she is said to have saved her husband’s life against attackers on two occasions.

  Sherley arrived back in Lisbon in the fall of 1617. He would not leave the Spanish court until 1622. His mission there was not helped by the backbiting of his brother Anthony. Probably in the hopes of bettering his own prospects of obtaining employment from Spain, Anthony sent a letter to the court recommending that Robert not be received there (where he could contact the English ambassador) but instead be detained in Lisbon. Robert intercepted a reply to this, with predictable results. According to the English ambassador, “The two brothers are much fallen out and both by word and writing do all the harm they can in defaming each other, but I must needs confess that the Ambassador is the discreeter of the two.”

  It took a long time for Sherley to get an audience, and a longer time to hash out an understanding, but by spring 1619 Sherley had managed to achieve a draft agreement between Persia and Spain. How confident was he that Shah Abbas would ratify the agreement? It is suggestive that he put off returning to Persia for several years. Leaving the court in March 1622, he headed for Rome. There he disappears from the historical record until he shows up again in London in December 1623.

  In London, ignoring the treaty he had drafted with Spain, he pitched an Anglo-Persian alliance. He met with King James in January. He assured the monarch that Shah Abbas would provide England with some 25,000 men to assist English efforts in Asia and would also redirect the silk trade to England in exchange for a delivery of English ships. Both the Levant Company and the East India Company doubted the validity of the offer, but James himself favored it. The argument went on for three years. In the end James determined to back the endeavor himself, with funding from various aristocrats. It was a scheme that would set him in direct competition with the East India Company.

  The king’s plan was scuttled by the arrival of letters in
dicating that favorable terms for Persian silk had already been obtained by Company representatives in Asia. Furthermore, just at this point Sherley’s mission was again undercut by the arrival, in 1626, of another purported Persian ambassador, a peculiar character named Naqd Ali Beg.

  Sherley called on Ali Beg together with a group of interested parties. An absurd altercation followed. One observer described it in these terms:

  Entring the Hall (where he [Ali Beg] was then sitting in a chair on his legs double under him, after the Persian Posture), and affording no motion of respect to any of us, Sir Robert Sherley gave him a salutation, and sate downe on a stoole neare him…. Sir Robert Sherley, unfoulding his Letters [his ambassadorial credentials], and (as the Persian use is in reverence to their King) first touching his eyes with them, next holding them over his head, and after kissing them, he presented them to the Ambassador, that he receiving them, might performe the like observance, when he suddenly rising out of his chaire, stept to Sir Robert Sherley, snatcht his Letters from him, toare them, and gave him a blow on the face with his Fist, and while my Lord of Cleaveland stepping between kept off the offer of a further violence; the Persians Son next at hand flew upon Sire Robert Shereley, and with two or three blows more, overthrew him….

  When things settled down Beg explained that he was outraged that Sherley had forged the Shah’s signature. What he meant is unclear since the shah was illiterate, but he may have been referring to his official seal. Sherley, who “was in the meane time retyred behind the company” lost face from this encounter “for his default in his resolution, not to returne with blows (or words at least) the affront done him.”

  Foreign Ambassadors, 1616–1617, by Carlo Saraceni and workshop. Sala dei Corazzieri, Quirinale Palace, Rome.

  Robert Sherley appears among several foreign ambasadors in these frescos in the Italian presidential palace in Rome.

  It was decided to send both ambassadors back to Persia, together with an English ambassador, to clear up the confusion about their status. Through Teresia, Sherley petitioned to keep the “barbarous heathen” Ali Beg separate from him during the journey. Meanwhile, the heathen himself had shacked up with a “lewd strumpet” whom he wanted to take aboard with him; this request was denied.

  Landing at Surat in India, Robert and Teresia traveled by caravan to meet the shah. Among their party was a young man who later wrote an account of the journey. He reported that the caravanserai were excellent — the caravan was often welcomed with feasts and dances. At one stop along the way, in the town of Lar in the Punjab, he described a poet welcoming them with a lyrical oration, followed by a cacaphony of “barbarous jangling unmisical instruments.” The fanfare was succeeded by an even more riotous display:

  A homely Venus, attired like a Bacchanal, attended by as many morris-dancers, began to caper and frisk their best lavoltas, so as every limb strove to exceed each other; the bells, cymbals, kettle-music and whistles storming such a Phrygic discord that, had it been night, it would have resembled an orgy to Bacchus, for glass-bottles emptied of wine clashing one against another, the loud braying of above two hundred asses, and mules … and the continual shouting and whooping of above two thousand plebians all the way so amazed us that … we thought never any strangers were bombasted with such a triumph.

  Even more astonishing was a the performance of a yogi:

  He trod upon two sharp-edged scimitars with his bare feet; then laid his naked back upon them, suffering a heavy anvil to be set on his belly and two men to hammer out four horse shoes upon it as forcibly as they could beat; that trick ended, he thrust his arms and thighs through with many arrows and lances, then by mere strength of his head and agility of body lifted up (not less than a yard from the ground) a great stone weighing six hundred pounds; and then (as if he had done nothing) knitted his hair to an old goat’s head, and with a scornful pull tore it asunder, crying Allough Whoddow (i.e. God be thanked), the standers by with a loud yell applauding him.

  But the mood in the shah’s court was more somber. Abbas was ill, and racked with remorse. Having grown suspicious of his sons, he had the crown prince, Mohammed Baqir Mirza, killed and his two other sons blinded and imprisoned. He is said to have particularly regretted the murder, and he was tortured by the unhappy turn his family life had taken. He did not, however, release his surviving sons from prison.

  Sherley’s draft agreement with Spain had reached Abbas in 1619 in advance of Sherley’s return. The shah was in no hurry to have its proposals read to him, allowing it to age for several weeks before considering it. When the terms — including the return of conquered territories and the barring of English from Persia — were finally recited to him he laughed derisively and tore up the agreement.

  Ali Beg had died the day the ship had landed in India. It was said that he took an overdose of opium rather than face the shah. Supporters of Sherley suggested, plausibly, that Ali Beg had been in cahoots with the English trade companies to discredit him. In Isfahan, according to an observer sympathetic to Sherley, Shah Abbas received him warmly, praising his many years of service. He said that if Ali Beg had not commited suicide he would have had him cut into pieces, mixed the pieces with dog shit, and burnt the lot in the market square. But an English Company agent reported that Sherley’s credentials were not confirmed, that the Persians had no interest in English galleys since they had no sailors to man them, and that the shah commanded Sherley to leave his kingdom. In any case, after welcoming Sherley graciously the moping shah thereafter ignored him.

  Spirits sagged. Everyone was sick. They declined rapidly, and within a few weeks both Sherley and the English ambassador died: the party had now lost all three of its ambassadors. Shah Abbas followed a few months later.

  The shah’s successors were unable to sustain his success and international prestige. His first successor was his grandson, who did not share Abbas’s relative tolerance of other religions. Teresia was forced to flee Persia. She crossed Turkey, passed through Istanbul, and arrived in Rome. There she spent the years devoting herself to religion and charitable works. In 1658 she had Robert’s remains delivered to Rome and buried in the Church of Santa Maria della Scala in the Trastevere district, where she lived until 1668, when she died at the age of seventy-nine.

  The young travel writer who had accompanied Sherley composed an epitaph for him. “He had a heart as free as any man,” he wrote. “His patience was more Philisophicall than his Intellect, having small acquaintance with the Muses: many Cities he saw, many hills climb’d over, and tasted severall waters…. Ranck mee with those that honour him.”

  After land-sweats, and many a storme by Sea,

  This hillock aged Sherleys rest must be.

  He well had view’d Armes, men, and fashions strange

  In divers Lands. Desire so makes us range.

  A quality of desperation underlies all of the Sherley brothers’ machinations. With their family in decline and in debt in their native England, they sought their fortunes abroad, but brazen bluster could only sustain them for so long. Their agonizingly slow, endless journeying shows the difficulty of international diplomacy in the emerging global world of the early seventeenth century. Faced with changing situations and unable to communicate quickly from distant places with the governments they represented, they were forced to improvise. The closest either came to an international agreement was Robert’s 1619 draft of a treaty between Spain and Persia, but by the time this agreement got back to Isfahan, changed relations with the representatives of England and Portugal in the Indian Ocean region had made it irrelevant. But it is not quite true to say the Sherleys accomplished nothing. As Niels Steensgaard has written of the embassies of Garcia de Silva y Figueroa and Anthony and Robert Shirley, ultimately they “chased away every illusion concerning common interests” between Spain and Persia.

  The Sherleys had been frustrated by their inability to find sufficient conflict from which to profit. Warriors needed battles to be ensured of employment, because in pea
cetime standing armies were often modest in size or nonexistent. Johannes Kepler’s father, Heinrich, traveled far from home seeking employment as a mercenary. Some English privateers became pirates or corsairs after King James made peace with Spain. And in Japan many samurai (particularly those who had served defeated masters) were forced to look for new occupations, since their fighting skills were less in demand after the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate.

  Yamada Nagamasa was one of the samurai who was searching for a new opportunity. He was born in Sunpu (present Shizuoka) in 1590. His father, it is said, was a kitchenware dealer. He was sent to a temple to study Zen Buddhism but instead chose to pursue the life of a warrior. He seems to have served as a palanquin bearer for his local daimyo. According to a Japanese biography written in the early twentieth century, he honed his fighting skills by vanquishing ghosts, witches, and monsters that were haunting temples.

  Maybe they were the only opponents he could find. With the unification of the country and the end of its devastating civil wars, opportunities for the samurai class had become more limited. For this reason, many Japanese fighting men looked to maritime adventurism for new opportunities. In 1612 Yamada Nagamasa shipped out to Taiwan, and continued from there to Ayutthaya (Siam; present Thailand), where there was a community of Japanese expatriates.

  By 1620 or 1621 he had become head of the Japanese enclave in Ayutthaya. At that time it was the second-largest Japanese community in Southeast Asia. Hard data is scarce and estimates vary, but the community of Japanese in Siam may have totaled about a thousand to fifteen hundred persons. (The Japanese population in Manila, around twice that size, was the largest expatriate community.)

  Siam had sent its first official embassy to Japan in 1616. Similar recent histories helped to bring the two nations together. Just as Japan had stabilized and entered an era of relative peace with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, so Siam had recently emerged from a period of disorder. The kingdom had been reconsolidated during the late sixteenth century, threats from Burma had been repulsed, and dominance over much of Cambodia and the Malaysian peninsula established. Ekathrosrot, who reigned in Ayutthaya during part of the first decade of the seventeenth century, sought to build on his predecessor’s successes by improving the country’s trade relations. In addition, both nations had existed in the shadow of China and had been forced to operate around the margins of that superpower. The two governments exchanged weapons, which hints at the possibility of a military alliance.