ABSTRACT
Travelling, it seems, was the entire raison d’être of the Shirley (or Sherley) brothers on whom this paper will focus. Sir Anthony Shirley provides a striking example: originally from Sussex, he embarked on the wars in the Low Countries in 1586. In the following years he joined the Earl of Essex on his campaign to Normandy, was part of an expedition to the Azores, conducted a predatory journey along the western coast of Africa and sailed into the Caribbean where he claimed Jamaica for the English crown. After his return to London in 1597 he followed Essex to Ireland before he embarked for Ferrara in order to aid the late duke's illegitimate son in a conflict with the Pope. When he learnt on arrival that the quarrel had already been settled, he decided to journey further east, through the Ottoman Empire all the way to Persia. He gained admission to the Persian Shah Abbas I, who employed the restless Englishman as his ambassador, sending him back to Europe in order to negotiate a Persian-European league directed against the Ottomans. On the Shah's behalf Sir Anthony travelled to Moscow, Prague, Nuremberg, Venice and Rome, before travelling via Morocco and Portugal to his final destination in Spain. There he entered the service of King Philip III and became captain of the Armada, only to navigate east once more in order to attack the Ottomans. 1 To make short a long career of adventuring, if ever an Englishman mapped out the entire early modern world in persona, Anthony Shirley was the man. More to the point of this collection, if ever there was an Englishman who was constantly concerned with building up opposition to the Ottomans, it was Sir Anthony. The fact that he orchestrated this opposition not only as an Englishman but also as the envoy of another Eastern power makes his case even more intriguing. It shows the complicated web of interests and alliances, calling into question all assumptions about clear-cut East–West oppositions. 2
