Sir Anthony Sherley and his Persian Adventure

E. Denison Ross

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134284726
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

As well as including Sherley's own account of his journey into Persia in 1600, this valuable edition includes the main works dealing with Anthony Sherley and his life. Original inaccessible texts are reprinted in full and the critical bibliographical introduction provides excellent guidance for the understanding of the various sources (and their merits and limitations), and the context in which Sherley's own account was composed. When first published in 1933, Sherley's narrative (1613) had never before been reprinted.

PART I
THE LIFE OF SIR
ANTHONY SHERLEY

WISTON HOUSE

From a drawing taken in 1780, in the e Burrell Collection, British Museum

I
EARLY ADVENTURES. 1586–1598¹

AS already mentioned, Anthony Sherley was the second son of Sir Thomas Sherley of Wiston, Sussex. The first member of the Sherley family to reside at Wiston was Ralph Sherley, who was Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1504. He died in 1510, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard Sherley, who was Sheriff of the two counties in 1515 and 1525, and died in 1540. His monument is still to be seen in the southern side of the church at Wiston. His eldest son William, who died in 1551, had two sons, Thomas Sherley of Wiston and Anthony Sherley of Preston.

Thomas Sherley, who was born in 1542, was a man of some distinction. In 1573 he was knighted at Rye, Sussex, and in 1578 was in his turn Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex. In 1587 he was appointed Treasurer of War in the Low Countries, in which capacity he incurred the displeasure of the Queen. He had married in the year 1559 Anne, the daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe, of Ollantighe, Kent, by whom he had three sons, Thomas, Anthony, and Robert. Anthony was born in 1565. The two elder brothers matriculated into the University of Oxford in the beginning of 1579 and were sent to Hart Hall.

It appears that Anthony took his Bachelor’s Degree at the end of 1581, and in the following year was elected Probationary Fellow of All Souls College. We have no positive record of his movements between that date and his appearance in 1586 as a soldier in the Low Countries, whither, according to the Harleian MS. 4023, he was summoned by his father who was already serving there. Anthony landed at Flushing where Sir Robert Sydney was the Commander of the Garrison. In the skirmish before Zutphen, in which Sir Philip Sydney was fatally injured, Anthony apparently displayed great courage.

Some light is thrown on his activities between 1586 and 1588 by Anthony himself in his Spanish treatise Pesso polytico, to which I have referred in my Introduction, though the narrative is so carelessly written and some of its statements are so astonishing that I have not felt justified in discussing them without more study than I have up to the present been able to devote to this document, The most interesting of these statements occurs in the chapter on the Flemings (Los Reveldes), fos. 67b–77a. He here refers to his employment by the Earl of Leicester on a twofold secret mission to the Netherlands. In the first instance he carried letters apparently from Mary Queen of Scots and from Leicester to the Duke of Parma in Bruges. These letters, Anthony tells us, contained much abuse of Queen Elizabeth and the proposal that the Duke should strengthen his claim to the throne of England (“a qual reyno tenia un çierto derecho”) by marrying Mary Queen of Scots. Anthony obtained private access to the Duke by means of a letter from a Milanese merchant resident in London named Julio to his son who was in the service of the Duke. Having delivered these letters without his presence being discovered by Queen Elizabeth’s commissioners, who were at the time in Bruges, Anthony returned to Ostend whence he embarked for Middelburg in order to carry out the second part of his mission, for which he carried sealed orders only to be opened by himself on arrival there. These orders were to the effect that he should by means of bribes and presents stir up a mutiny among the garrisons of Middelburg and of other towns, which were mainly composed of English troops. Anthony was obviously romancing; but we must remember that he was writing in 1622, when his memory was no longer fresh, and that his main object was to impress the Spaniards with his own importance.

In August, 1591, Queen Elizabeth dispatched an army to Brittany under the command of the Earl of Essex to aid Henry IV of France against the League, and in this army Anthony Sherley held a colonel’s commission. The force originally composed of 4,000 men ultimately dwindled through death and desertion to 1,000. Anthony, after two years’ campaigning—during which we hear that he distinguished himself, notably at the siege of Rouen in 1592—received in return for his services the Order of Saint Michael at the hands of the King of France, thereby committing treason against his own sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, who is reported to have said: “I will not have my sheep marked with a strange brand, nor suffer them to follow the pipe of a strange shepherd.” He was therefore recalled to be tried on this charge, and on his first examination on March 12th, 1594, was found guilty and made a prisoner of the Fleet but was released on a second examination which took place shortly afterwards, when he gave a satisfactory reply as to the manner of the oath he took when receiving the Order. His declaration, dated March 14th, is here reproduced as the earliest example of his style:

Being demanded by Mr Cary from my Lord Keeper and my lord of Buckhurst, what solemn oath I took at the receiving the order of St Michael, as I answered their Lord-ships the other day, so I say still; that oath I took none, except the answer I made to the King’s demand were an oath, for book I had none presented me, to swear by, the effect of the king’s demand was, that I should promise in his hands never to bear arms against him for the service of any Prince Christian, but my Sovereign, or by her Commandment, and I did freely assure him: and then that I should never spot myself with any Infamy unworthy so high an order, as he termed it, which I did as liberally promise, as I mean to perform. This is all upon my life and reputation, so short a matter to be remembered, that I do assure the truth of the report of it.

A.SHERLEY.¹

This matter having been satisfactorily disposed of, Anthony seems to have rejoined the English contingent in France.

About this time Anthony married Frances, the daughter of Sir John Vernon of Hodnet in Shropshire and Elizabeth Devereux, sister of Walter, Earl of Essex.² The union was an unhappy one, and shortly after his return to England we find Anthony fitting out, in conjunction with his father and under the patronage of Essex, an expedition against the Portuguese settlement on the Isle of St. Thomé off the coast of Africa. Roland White in a letter to Sir Robert Sydney dated London, November 7th, 1595, says: “Sir Anthony Sherley goes forward on his voyage very well furnished, led by the strange fortune of his marriage to undertake any course that may occupy his mind from thinking on her vainest words.”¹

Having completed his preparations, Anthony set out from Southampton on April 23rd, 1596, with nine ships and a galley. On reaching Plymouth, finding the Earl of Essex about to set out on his “Cadiz Action”² he left with him three of his ships and 500 soldiers, and, with his fleet reduced to six ships, a galley and a pinnace, finally set sail from Plymouth on May 21st. On reaching Cape Verde in July, instead of going to St. Thomé he diverted his course to the West Indies. A full account of this voyage, which lasted fifteen months, was written by one of Anthony’s companions and printed by Hakluyt.³ A brief summary of this account made by Sir Thomas Sherley of Bottlebridge, is among the rare fragments of the English version of the chapters on the Sherleys of Wiston which have been preserved.⁴ It runs as follows:

“This noble warrior, whose restless spirit was never satisfied with the acquisition of honour and renown, in the year of our Lord 1596 undertakes a voyage by sea for the Isle of San Tomé in the Indies; departed from Southampton the 23rd of April with nine ships, and a galley, all sufficiently victualled and furnished for ten months, and well-manned with sailors, soldiers, and military forces under the dominance of this valorous knight their General. But after he had passed by the coast of Spain and arrived at Cape Verde, he fell extreme sick and therefore diverted his course from San Tomé to the West Indies, and arriving at the Isle of St Iagó and having recovered his strength, he landed his men and took the town of Praya with a little effort with eight brass pieces, and from thence marched to the city of St Iagó which after divers brave and fierce squirmishes was by the excellent spirit, valour, and admirable military science of the General taken with the courageous enterprise after he had besieged the town two days; he departed from thence, and marched to his ships and shaped his course to Domenica an island in the West Indies.

“And from thence he sailed to Margarita, and coasting from Capo de la Vela being bound for St Martha, he took a frigate laden with Guinea corn, linen-cloth, and had in her 500 pounds in money, all of which this brave liberal general bountifully bestowed on his soldiers and company, and arriving at St Martha he marched to the town, having had many brave and stout encounters and recovered his two brass pieces, put the enemy to flight and took the town St Martha. He sailed to Jamaica and made himself master both of the town and the whole island, the people submitting themselves to the mercy of this brave general. After all these exploits and enterprises at sea this brave Chevalier shaped his course for Newfoundland and from thence returned for England….”

According to the writer of the Hakluyt narrative the expedition reached Jamaica on January 29th: “Here we landed and marched six miles into the country, where the town standeth; the people all on horseback made show of great matters, but did nothing. Now being masters of the town and the whole Isle, the people submitted themselves to our General’s mercy.”

According to the Spanish archives¹ the landing took place on February 4th at a point about two leagues from La Villa de la Vega (now Spanish Town), and, the inhabitants having fled in terror to the neighbouring woods, Anthony entered and sacked the town. Captain William Parker of Plymouth, the description of whose voyage follows immediately after Anthony’s in Hakluyt, says: “The second of March we met with Sir Anthony Sherley, who before our coming had taken the chief town in the Island and was now almost in readiness to depart.”¹ On March 6th the two captains sailed away together, and after a number of adventures parted company at the end of April at Truxillo in Honduras. The remainder of Anthony’s voyage is thus described in the Hakluyt narrative:

“Being athwart Havana, by what chance I know not, but all his ships forsook him the 13 of May, and here in a desperate place he was left desperately alone. The George departed by consent with his letters, the Galeon I know not how: but our misery in the Admiral [The Bevice] was very great, for there was not one in the ship that was ever before in the Indies, besides our miserable want of victuals, the danger of the place, and the furious current of the channel. Notwithstanding we were enforced without stay to disemboque (sic) which happily being performed, we shaped our course for Newfoundland. And by God’s mercy we arrived there the fifteenth of June, not having one hour’s victuals to spare, and there by our countrymen we were well refreshed; where we stayed till the 24 of June, still expecting the Galeon, for the execution of this his last purpose: but she not coming, and that plan overthrown, we returned for England, where we found the right honourable the Earl of Essex bound to the seas, with whom we presently departed in his lordship’s ship, to do him our humble service.”

The last lines refer to the so-called “Islands Voyage” expedition made by Essex, one object of which was to destroy—before it could put to sea—the third Armada which Philip II of Spain had got ready under the command of Martini de Padilla, Adelantado of Castille. The other object was to waylay the Portuguese merchantmen returning from the West Indies with their precious cargoes.

That Anthony was able to take part in this expedition was only due to the misfortunes which beset Essex at the outset They had first set out on June 3rd, but had to put back again for repairs. They again set out on July 9th, but were turned back by a terrific storm which caused so much damage that they were obliged to delay their start another three weeks while the ships were repaired and refitted in Plymouth. They eventually left at the end of July and Anthony was thus able to join them. Contrary winds prevented their entering Ferrol where the Armada lay, and they reached the Azores too late to catch the treasure ships which had time to find safe refuge in Terceira, the central citadel of the Islands. Essex and his fleet returned to England at the end of October. In the course of this expedition it wou...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• PREFATORY NOTE
• BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• PART I: THE LIFE OF SIR ANTHONY SHERLEY
• PART II: NARRATIVES RELATING TO SIR ANTHONY SHERLEY’S JOURNEY INTO PERSIA
• APPENDICES