Sir Robert Shirley (orSherley; c. 1581 – 13 July 1628) was anEnglish traveller and adventurer, younger brother ofSir Anthony Shirley andSir Thomas Shirley. He is notable for his help modernising and improving the PersianSafavid army according to the British model, by the request of ShahAbbas the Great. This proved to be highly successful, as from then on the Safavids proved to be an equal force to their archrival, theOttoman Empire.[1]
Robert Shirley was the third son ofSir Thomas Shirley ofWiston, Sussex, and Anne Kempe, the daughter ofSir Thomas Kempe (d. 7 March 1591) ofOlantigh inWye, Kent. He had two elder brothers,Sir Thomas Shirley andSir Anthony Shirley, and six sisters who survived infancy.[2][3][4][5]
Shirley travelled to Persia in 1598, accompanying his brother, Anthony, who had been sent toSafavid Persia from 1 December 1599 to May 1600, with 5000 horses to train the Persian army according to the rules and customs of the Englishmilitia and to reform and retrain the Persian artillery.[clarification needed] When Anthony Shirley left Persia, Robert remained in Persia with fourteen other Englishmen. There, in February 1607, he marriedSampsonia, a ChristianCircassian lady of the Circassian nobility of Safavid Persia.[6] After being baptized by theCarmelites, she adopted the Teresia in addition to her own name.[7] She became known in the west by the nameLady Teresia Sampsonia Shirley.
In 1608Shah Abbas sent Robert on adiplomatic mission toJames I of England and to other European princes for the purpose of uniting them in a confederacy against theOttoman Empire. From his very first mission in Persia, the modernisation of the army by Robert and his men proved to be highly successful; the Safavids scored their first crushing victory over the Ottomans in theOttoman–Safavid War, ending the war on highly favourable terms.
Shirley travelled first to thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where he was received bySigismund III Vasa. In June of that year, he arrived in Germany, where he received the title ofCount Palatine and was appointed to Knight of theHoly Roman Empire byEmperor Rudolph II.Pope Paul V also conferred upon him the title ofCount. From Germany, Sir Robert travelled toFlorence and then Rome, where he entered the city on Sunday, 27 September 1609, attended by a suite of eighteen persons. He next visitedMilan, and then proceeded toGenoa, from whence he embarked to Spain, arriving inBarcelona in December 1609. He sent for his Persian wife, and they remained in Spain, principally atMadrid, until the summer of 1611.
In 1613 Shirley returned to Persia. In 1615 he returned to Europe, and resided at Madrid. In a pleasingly serendipitous meeting Shirley's caravan metThomas Coryate, the eccentric traveller and travel writer (and attendant ofPrince Henry's court in London), in the Persian desert in 1615.
Shirley's third journey to Persia was undertaken in 1627 when he accompanied SirDodmore Cotton the first British ambassador to the Kingdom of Persia,[8] but soon after reaching the country he died atQazvin, in what is today northwestIran.[9] After being initially buried there, his remains were later moved from Qazvin toRome in 1658 by his wife Teresia following her retirement to aconvent in the same city attached toSanta Maria della Scala. She died there in 1668.[10][11][12]
There are several double portraits of Shirley and his wife in English collections, including the private collection of R. J. Berkeley and ofPetworth House (byvan Dyck).[13]
The exploits of the Shirley brothers were dramatised in the 1607 playThe Travels of the Three English Brothers byJohn Day,William Rowley andGeorge Wilkins.
In 1609, Andreas Loeaechius (Andrew Leech), a Scot living inKraków,Poland, wrote aLatinpanegyric to Shirley entitledEncomia Nominis & Neoocij D. Roberti Sherlaeii. This text was translated in the same year by the English writerThomas Middleton asSir Robert Sherley his Entertainment in Cracovia.[14]
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