Coryat’s Encounter with Sir Robert

Sir Thomas I

Sir Thomas II

Sir Anthony

Sir Robert

Coryat’s encounter with Sir Robert Sherley: Thomas Coriate Traveller for the English Wits (London: W. Jaggard and Henry Featherstone, 1616) pages 14-17

I had almost forgotten one memorable matter to impart vnto you: About the middle of the way, betwixt Spahan [Isfahan] and Lahore, just about the Frontiers of Persia & India, I met Sir Robert Sherley, and his Lady, trauailing from the court of the Mogul, (where they had beene verie graciously receiued, and enriched with [page 15] presents of great value) to the King of Persias Court; so gallantly furnished with all necessaries for their trauiles [travels], that it was a great comfort vnto me to see them in such a florishing estate. There did he shew mee to my singular contentment, both my Bookes neatly kept ; and hath promised me to shew them, especialy min Itineraries to the Persian King; and to interpret vnto him some of the principall Matters in the Turkish tongue, to the end, I may haue the more gracious accesse vnto him after my returne thither. For through Persia I have determined (by Gods helpe) to returne to Aleppo. Besdes, other rarities that they carried with them out of India, they had two Elephants, and eight Antlops, which were the first that euer I saw : but afterwards, when I came to the Moguls Court, J sawe great store of them. These they [page 16] meant to present to the Persian King. Both he and his Lady vsed me with singular respect, especially his Lady, who bestowed forty shillings vpon me in Persian mony; and they seemed to exult for ioy to see mee, hauing promised me to bring mee in good grace with the Persian king, and [page 17] and that they will induce him to bestow some Princely benefit vpon me : this I hope will be partly occasioned by my booke, for he is such a jocond Prince, that he will not be meanlie delighted with diuers of my facetious hieroglyphicks, if they are trulie and genuinely expounded vnto him.

Robert Sherley was the youngest of the three Sherley brothers, Thomas, Anthony, and Robert. Their adventures as travellers, ambassadors, and occasionally pirates, and their flamboyant lifestyle (at least as far as Anthony and Robert were concerned) made them the equivalent of tabloid heroes in their home country. In 1607, they were even the subject of a play The Travailes of the Three English Brothers by John Day, William Rowley, and John Wilkins and performed by Queen Anna’s Men, probably at the Red Bull in Clerkenwell. It was popular enough for the script to be rushed into print very soon after.
      Their individual biographies make them sound unreliable adventurers, but they have to be seen in the context of of the Ottoman Empire’s threat to Europe. Persia was seen as its natural corrective, if not by conquering the Turks, at least by distracting them and giving Europe a breathing space. Anthony’s account of his interviews with the Shah stress the policy of getting Persia to attack Turkey, and both embassies were aimed at urging the European Powers to assist the Shah in this. Current opinion was that the brothers had succeeded in their aim:

those distressed parts of Christendome which are subject to the Turkish fury,[128] cannot but be much beholding, both to Sir Anthony Shirley, as also his brother M. Robert Shirley for this twenty years peace which is concluded betweene the Emperour & the great Turke. They being (I dare be bold to say vnder God) the onely meanes that stirred vp the Persian king to take vp armes against the great Turke, and to draw by degrees the whole warre vpon his owne necke, therby to free and giue a time of breathing to the champions of Iesus Christ to refresh themselues, and increase their forces ¹

Their father, Sir Thomas (c.1542-1612), got into serious financial difficulties through speculating with government funds during the English expedition in support of the Dutch Revolt. He was MP for Sussex and then for his pocket borough of Steyning. His arrest for debt (he ended up in the Fleet prison) before he had taken his seat, and subsequent release on the grounds of parliamentary privilege, had complicated ramifications, described in the History of Parliament. His debts landed his family in a situation which partly explains his sons’ rackety subsequent careers. The two eldest were adventurers, constantly out of pocket and attempting to make their fortunes, but brilliant self publicists. Robert appears to have been more serious-minded, but made a point of wearing his Persian robes (van Dyck notes ‘cloth of gold’) on ceremonial occasions.

Sir Thomas II (1564-1633/4), the eldest, after a disastrous start to his military career in the Low Countries, and a secret marriage in 1591 with one of the Queen’s ladies which landed him in the Tower, became a privateer, first off Portugal and then in the Mediterranean, where he ended up in jail in Constantinople for 33 months. On his return to England he published his distinctly uncomplimentary Discours of the Turkes (1606), which circulated in manuscript, but was not published until 1936.² He was then sued by the Levant Company for meddling in its trade, and ended up in the Tower again, where he tried to commit suicide. In 1611 he was legally declared insolvent, in 1612 his father died, and as his eldest son he became responsible for sorting out his estates. In 1617 he married for a second time, a widow of dubious reputation who then gave him 11 children, at least of 8 of whom survived childhood, to add to the ?6 from his first marriage, which did not help his financial circumstances. He managed to be returned twice to Parliament for the family seat in succession to his father, thus presumably avoiding further arrests, but was rejected in 1624. He then sold the family seat, and went to live in the Isle of Wight, where he survived largely by ‘borrowing’ money from a relative. He died in 1633/4. His second surviving son, the playwright Henry Sherley, was killed in 1627 by the current MP for Steyning, who drunkenly took exception to being asked to pay Sherley an annuity he was committed to, and ran him through with a sword. His eldest son Thomas however survived to be a Royalist in the Civil War.

Sir Anthony (1565–1636?), after an education in Oxford and the Inns of Court, was in the Low Countries at the same time as his eldest brother, where after a shaky start he returned in 1591 with a command under the Earl of Leicester, and covered himself with glory for his personal bravery against the Spaniards. He then got into trouble in 1593 where on a diplomatic mission to the French court, he was made a member of the Order of St Michael. Since this involved an oath of loyalty to a foreign power, the Queen had him thrown into the Fleet prison, and he was only released on condition he gave up the knighthood: he was however still known as ‘Sir Anthony’ thereafter.
      His early career mirrored that of his elder brother’s. In 1594 he also made a secret marriage which displeased Elizabeth, with a cousin of the Earl of Essex, and he was banished from court. He then decided to become a privateer, and in 1596 fitted out an expedition against the Portuguese in São Tomé, the island off the west coast of Equatorial Africa. The expedition, after a not-very-successful raid and another on the Cap Verde Islands, ended up in Jamaica, where his crew mutinied and he returned to England in 1597 with only one ship. The following year he was in Italy, with his younger brother Robert, and proposed to Essex that he should go to Persia to negotiate with the Shah. (He is said to have been converted to Catholicism while in Italy.) Shiʾite Persia was seen as the obvious antagonist to the Turkey of the Ottoman Empire, and portrayed accordingly. The reports published by members of the forty-man expedition such as William Parry emphasise the differences: ‘we then happily entred the king of Persiaes country, where vpon our first entrance we thought we had bin imparadized, finding our entertainement to be so good, and the maner of the people to be so kinde and curteous (farre differing from the Turkes) especially when they heard we came of purpose to their king’.³
      The (unofficial) expedition seems to have impressed Shah ʾAbbas, who then sent Sherley back as Persian ambassador to the crowned heads of Europe urging them to join with him in a universal war against the Turk. Leaving Robert behind as hostage, he proceeded to Moscow and Prague, quarrelling violently on the way with his Persian co-ambassador and somehow managing to get through large amounts of money. When they arrived in Rome, the Pope clearly trusted his Persian colleague more than Sherley. According to Antonio de Gouveia, the Austin friar and Portuguese ambassador to the Shah in 1602,4 Sherley did not dare to go to the Spanish court, but left the Persian ambassador and went to Venice. There he became a spy for Scotland and Spain simultaneously. In December 1604 he was thrown out of Venice, and went back to Prague. The Emperor sent him to Morocco, where he proceeded again to antagonise the locals and run up huge debts. Eventually he ended up in Spain, where he was given a sea commission to harass ships supplying the Turks. Once he put an end to this by overstepping his remit, he returned to Spain, where he existed (barely) on a pension from Philip III, still planning great things but hardly able to afford a pair of shoes. He died probably in 1636. He seems to have acquired a Spanish family, as he refers to a son, Don Diego.
      However, his reputation in England as a romantic but high-principled swashbuckler was boosted by his appearance in 1607 as a character on the London stage in The Travailes of the Three English Brothers. This represents him as the virtuous Christian (his Catholicism is not mentioned) whose intransigent behaviour towards the Persians (and everyone else) is due to his natural suspicion of their scheming and murderous natures. His brother Robert appears as the juvenile lead with whom the Shah’s cousin falls in love. In 1613 this was reinforced by the publication of his Relation of his Travels into Persia,5 which also insisted on the purity of his motives and ascribes his ill fortune to the modern lack of consideration for natural merit. It also draws a very positive and possibly too benevolent picture of Shah ʾAbbas. Interestingly, Gouveia also gives a sympathetic account of Anthony’s motivation, probably as seen through the eyes of his younger brother Robert.6

Sir Robert (c.1581-1628) was the youngest son of Sir Thomas I. Very much at first the little brother, and probably not as formally well-educated due to the family’s reduced circumstances, ‘he was not much acquainted with the Muses, but what he wanted in Phylosophy, hee supplyed in Languages’.7 Left as a hostage in Persia in 1599 for his brother’s return, despite his youth he seems to have taken over the job of introducing the Shah’s army to modern artillery, to be used against the Turkish threat. When Gouveia met him in the city of Mached (Mashhad), he was ‘about twenty’, and had been in Persia for four years. He was in high favour with the Shah, and at the head of the welcoming party, because he desperately wished to have news of his brother, ‘en quoi’ says Gouveia, ‘nous estions pour lors bien peu capables de luy donner contentement’. Gouveia clearly provided a sympathetic European ear, with the result that Robert and seven or eight of his companions, were converted to Roman Catholicism.⁸
      Anthony was never to return to Persia, though Robert eventually met him again in the Spanish Court. Robert continued to carve out his own career. By now thorougly Persianised, in 1608 he married a Circassian noblewoman called Sampsonia, a relative of one of the Shah’s wives. She was Christian, but baptised into the Catholic faith, and given the additional name of Teresia. She turned out to be an indomitable companion in his travels, and accompanied him when Shah ʾAbbas decided to send him on an embassy in the footsteps of, but hopefully more successfully than, his brother. They went to Cracow, Prague, Florence, Rome and Madrid, failing to cement an alliance against the Turks, but keeping the respect of those with whom he negotiated.
     As with the previous embassy, the Shah’s habit of sending supplementary envoys who tried to undermine the previous embassy led to fights between the rival ambassadors, and confusion in those to whom they had been sent. (The Persian ambassador in Robert’s first expedition was executed when he returned home.) Robert and his wife arrived in England from Spain in August 1611. Teresia gave birth to their son Henry in November, and he had the distinction of having Queen Anna as his godmother and Henry Prince of Wales as his sponsor. Leaving the baby behind with relatives, the couple returned to Persia in an East India merchantman round the Cape to India, returning to Isfahan via the Mughal court. It was on this return that Thomas Coryat met them, journeying with antelopes and elephants as a present for the Shah.
      Almost as soon as Robert arrived, he was sent back to Spain by the Shah, where he stayed until 1622. (In March that year, the Persians assisted by the East India Company had captured Hormuz, securing the Persian Gulf for English and Dutch traders.) He then proceeded in embassy through Florence, Rome (where his and Teresia’s portraits were painted by Van Dyck), and the Netherlands to England, where he was welcomed by James I and VI, but found his trading propositions sidelined by the East India Company. There history repeated itself with the arrival of another Persian Ambassador, Naqd ʾAli Beg. (by this time Robert had been away from Persia for ten years, and the Shah may have been worried, given the example of his elder brother.) He called on this new Ambassador with his own documents for a showdown, upon which Naqd ʾAli Beg ‘snatcht his Letters from him, toare them, and gave him a blow on the face with his Fist’, accusing Sherley of having forged them.⁹ The resulting state of confusion eventually led to an English Ambassador being sent to to Shah to determine, among other things, the exact status of both men.
      In the event, after a long delay, all three travelled back together (with Lady Sherley), starting on Good Friday (7 April) 1626. Again they went round the Cape of Good Hope, and eventually made landfall on 30 November in India at Suvali, arriving at Surat. On that same day the Persian ambassador died, having committed suicide by steadily consuming nothing but opium for four days. It was assumed that he dare not face the Shah, who indeed said that ‘it was well he poysoned himselfe, for had he come to Court, his bodie should haue beene cut in thre hundred sixtie fiue pieces, and burnt in the open Mydan or market place with Dogges turds’.[28]¹⁰
      They then appear to have travelled on by boat to Hormuz, arriving at Bandar ʾAbbas on 10 January 1627, and then proceeding in caravan in search of the Shah. They ran him to earth in Cazbeen [Qazvin] by the Caspian, but despite his words about Naqd ʾAli Beg, he was not about to reinstate Sherley. He seems to have hidden behind his ‘favourite’, Muhammad ʾAli Beg, who insisted that ‘for Sir Robert Sherley ... he knew and had heard the King himselfe say, he cared not for him, and that his Ambassies and Messages to the Princes of Christendome, were friuolous and forged’, and moreover, when he showed Sir Robert’s letters of credence to the Shah, he burned them, ‘wishing Sir Robert Sherley to depart his kingdome, as old and troublesome’. Herbert comments, ‘The truth is Sir Robert Sherley had deserued well from the Persian, but being old and vnable for further seruice, got this recompence, to be slighted in his honour, euen then when he hoped for most thanks and other acknoledgments’, and

These and the like discontents (casuall to mortall men) so much afflicted him, that immediatly a Feuer and Apoplexie ouer-charged him, so that on the thirteenth of Iune, he gaue an vltimum vale [‘a last farewell’] to this World. And wanting a fitter place of Buriall, was put into the earth at the doore of his owne House in Cazbeen where he died.¹¹

His intrepid wife Teresia survived, though she was also seriously ill with dysentry, and after considerable harassment in Persia, managed to leave for Constantinople and then Rome, where she bought a house next to the Carmelite convent, and lived till her death in 1668, at the age of 79. She was buried in the same grave as her husband, having had his bones brought there from Persia in 1658. On her tomb she is described as Amazonites, native of the land of the .¹²

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives very full accounts of all three brothers. The History of Parliament online gives biographies of the father and son Sir Thomas.

1.     John Cartwright The preachers trauels Wherein is set downe a true iournall to the confines of the East Indies, through the great countreyes of Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Media, Hircania and Parthia. With the authors returne ... Containing a full suruew of the knigdom [sic] of Persia: and in what termes the Persian stands with the Great Turke at this day: also a true relation of Sir Anthonie Sherleys entertainment there: and the estate that his brother, M. Robert Sherley liued in after his departure for Christendome ... (London: William Stansby for Thomas Thorppe, 1611) page 78.     Return

2.     Sir Thomas Shirley Discours of the Turkes edited E. Denison Ross (London: Camden Society, 1936).     Return

3.     William Parry A new and large discourse of the trauels of sir Anthony Sherley Knight, by sea, and ouer land, to the Persian Empire ... Written by William Parry gentleman, who accompanied Sir Anthony in his trauells (London: Valentine Simmes for Felix Norton, 1601) page 18. The Turks are lambasted for being ‘damned Infidells, and Zodomiticall Mahomets’ (page 10); moreover, they drink ‘a certaine liquor which they do call Coffe, which is made of a sede much like mustard seede, which wil soone intoxicate the braine, like our Metheglin’.
The Persians were Shi‘ites, and European diplomats including Sir Anthony, alive to the divisive possibilities of sectarian differences, did their best to point this out. Return

4.     Antonio de Gouvea [sic] Relations des grandes guerres et victoires obtenues par le roy de Perse Cha Abbas contre les empereurs de Turkvie Mahomet et Achmet Son Fils ... Traduit de l’original Portugais (Rouen: Nicholas Loyselet, 1646) pages 105-6.     Return

5.         Sir Anthony Sherley Sir Antony Sherley his relation of his trauels into Persia The dangers, and distresses, which befell him in his passage, both by sea and land, and his strange and vnexpected deliuerances. His magnificent entertainement in Persia, his honourable imployment there-hence, as embassadour to the princes of Christendome, the cause of his disapointment therein, with his aduice to his brother, Sir Robert Sherley ... (London: [Nicholas Okes] for Nathaniell Butter and Ioseph Bagset, 1613). Return

6.     de Gouveia Relations pages 102-106.     Return

7.     Thomas Herbert A relation of some yeares trauaile begunne anno 1626. Into Afrique and the greater Asia, especially the territories of the Persian monarchie: and some parts of the orientall Indies, and iles adiacent ... Together with the proceedings and death of the three late ambassadours: Sir D.C. Sir R.S. and the Persian Nogdi-Beg: as also the two great monarchs, the King of Persia, and the Great Mogol (London: William Stansby and Jacob Bloome, 1634) page 125.     Return

8.     de Gouveia Relations page 107.     Return

9.     R.W. Ferrier ‘The European Diplomacy of Shāh ʾAbbās I and the First Persian Embassy to England’ Iran 11 (1973) pages 75-92, gives a detailed account of all the Shah’s embassies. This episode on page 85.     Return

10.     Herbert Relation> was on the return journey with Sherley and gives a full itinerary. This incident, and the Shah’s comment, on pages 27-8.     Return

11.     Herbert Relation> pages 123-4. He concludes ‘He was brother to two worthy Gentlemen Sir Anthonie and Sir Thomas Sherley, his age exceeded not the great Clymacterick [63 — he was in fact 47], his condition was free, noble, but inconstant. He was the greatest Traueller in his time, and had tasted liberally of many great Princes fauours: of the Pope he had power to legitimate the Indians, and from the Emperour receiued the Honour and Title of a Palatine of the Empire. His patience was better then his intellect, he was not much acquainted with the Muses, but what he wanted in Phylosophy, hee supplyed in Languages. He had beene seruant to the Persian neere thirty yeares, and merited much better then [than] you see he then obtained when he most expected it’; pages 124-5.     Return

12.     Photograph of their monument at Wikipedia     Return