Anthony Shirley

Sir Anthony Shirley (or Sherley) (1565–1635) was an English traveller, whose imprisonment in 1603 by King James I caused the English House of Commons to assert one of its privileges—freedom of its members from arrest—in a document known as The Form of Apology and Satisfaction. Family Anthony Shirley was the second son of Sir Thomas Shirley of Wiston, Sussex, and Anne Kempe, the daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe (d. 7 March 1591) of Olantigh in Wye, Kent. He had an elder brother, Sir Thomas Shirley, and a younger brother, Sir Robert Shirley, and six sisters who survived infancy. Career 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. Later in the year he fought under The 2nd Earl of Essex, who was related to his wife, Frances Vernon; about this time he was knighted by Henry of Navarre (Henry IV of France), and fought alongside English and Swiss troops in support of Henry, who at the time was Protestant (fighting the Catholic League) at the Siege of Rouen. As a result of his fighting prowess, Shirley and fellow knight combatant Sir Nicolas Clifford (also related to the Earl of Essex), were awarded French honorifics, an event which brought upon both men the displeasure of their own sovereign, and as a result, a short imprisonment. In 1596, Shirley conducted a predatory expedition along the western coast of Africa and then across to Central America, including a raid on Spanish Jamaica a year later. According to Anthony Standen he had sailed from Plymouth on 21 May 1596 with five ships, with the financial support of the Earl of Essex but had hoped to command a larger fleet. Owing to a mutiny he returned to London with a single ship in 1597.