Anthony Shirley

Sir Anthony Shirley (1565 – 1635) was an English military officer, diplomat, writer and nobleman whose imprisonment in 1603 by James VI and I caused the House of Commons of England to assert one of its privileges, the freedom of its members from arrest, in The Form of Apology and Satisfaction.

[1][2][3][4] Educated at the University of Oxford, Shirley gained military experience with the English troops in the Netherlands and during an expedition to Northern France in 1591 where he distinguished himself at the Battle of Château-Laudran.

He obtained money at Constantinople and at Aleppo, and was very well received by the Shah, Abbas the Great, who made him a Mirza, or prince, and granted certain trading and other rights to all Christian merchants.

[7] For some time he was in prison in Venice, and in 1605, he went to Prague and was sent by Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor on a mission to Morocco; afterwards he went to Lisbon and to Madrid, where he was welcomed very warmly.

Shirley wrote an account of his adventures, Sir Anthony Sherley: his Relation of his Travels into Persia (1613), the original manuscript of which is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.