Thomas Shelton (translator)

However, evidence emerged that he was hostile to the English crown: a letter was intercepted in which he offered his services to Florence MacCarthy, who was seeking to arrange a military intervention by the king of Spain[2]—the Spanish sent an expedition to Kinsale, Ireland in 1601.

[1][4] Shelton's dedication of his major literary work to Theophilus Howard has led to speculation as to the connection between them.

Shelton at one time hoped to obtain a pardon from the English authorities, but so far as is known spent his final years on the continent where he became a Franciscan.

[1] The life of Thomas Shelton inspired the biographical novel Behind the Tapestry by Lenny McGee, now translated and published in Italian as Dietro l'arazzo by Coazinzola Press.

[6] Shelton's first publication was a poem in Cynthia (London 1604), a book of lyric verse mentioned above in which the author, Nugent, included several pieces by his friends.

[2] In the dedication of The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant Don-Quixote of the Mancha (1612) he explains to his patron, Lord Howard de Walden, afterwards 2nd Earl of Suffolk,[7]: xxxiii–xxxiv  that he "Translated some five or six yeares agoe, The Historie of Don-Quixote, out of the Spanish tongue, into the English ... in the space of forty daies: being therunto more than half enforced, through the importunitie of a very deere friend, that was desirous to understand the subject.

From the subtleties of syntax, as from the bonds of prosody he sallies free; and the owls of pedantry have bitterly resented his arrogant disdain for them and theirs.