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 (who was drowned), on Lord Sheffield, and poems on ‘Gunpowder Treason,’ and on Robert Wilson (a noted musician), and a prose essay entitled ‘Cupid made to see and Love made lovely.’ His poems are full of extravagant and complex metaphors, and his prose is even more fantastic.

[Corser's Collectanea, v. 237; Lowndes's Bibl. Manual, iv. 2384; Hunter's Chorus Vatum (Add. MS. 24488), ii. 366; Grad. Cant. 1659–1823, p. 419.]

 SHIRBURN, ROBERT (1440?–1536), bishop of Chichester. [See ]

 SHIRLEY or SHERLEY, ANTHONY (1565–1635?), ambassador to Persia, born in 1565, was second son of Sir Thomas Shirley the elder (1542–1612) of Wiston in Sussex, and was brother of Sir Thomas Shirley [q. v.] and of Robert Shirley [q. v.] Matriculating from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1579, Anthony graduated B.A. in 1581, and in November of the same year was elected probationer-fellow of All Souls' College; he was a kinsman, through his mother, of Archbishop Chichele, the founder. ‘Having acquired,’ he wrote, ‘those learnings which were fit for a gentleman's ornament,’ he soon left the university in order to engage in military service. The college granted him leave of absence. He took part in the wars in the Low Countries, under Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, in 1586, and was present at the skirmish near Zutphen in which Sir Philip Sidney was fatally wounded. In August 1591 he joined the Earl of Essex in his expedition to Normandy in support of Henry of Navarre, and became an enthusiastic disciple of his commander, the Earl of Essex. He ‘desired’ (he wrote) to make the earl ‘the pattern of his civil life, and from him to draw a worthy model of all his actions.’ Essex readily accepted his homage. Henry IV was likewise so well satisfied with his services that he conferred upon him the knighthood of the order of St. Michael. On returning to England early in 1593 the news of his acceptance of this honour, without the queen's permission, excited her wrath. He was imprisoned in the Fleet and rigorously examined by Chief-justice Puckering and Lord Buckhurst, but was released on retiring from the order. He was, however, commonly known thenceforth by the title of Sir Anthony. Soon afterwards he married Frances, daughter of Sir John Vernon of Hodnet, Shropshire, by Elizabeth, sister of Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex. She was thus first cousin of the Earl of Essex, Sir Anthony's patron. The union proved unhappy. ‘Led by the strange fortune of his marriage to undertake any course that might occupy his mind from thinking on her vainest words,’ he organised, during 1595, with the aid of Essex and his father, a buccaneering expedition. He intended to attack the Portuguese settlement on the island of São Thomé, in the Gulf of Guinea, about three hundred miles south of the mouth of the Niger. After much delay, chiefly occasioned by Essex's unwillingness or inability to procure for Shirley as wide powers as he desired, the expedition, consisting of six ships, left Plymouth on 21 May 1596. After watering at the Canary Isles, Shirley passed south to the Cape Verde Isles, where he seized the town of Santiago and held it for ‘two days and nights with two hundred and eighty men, whereof eighty were wounded in the service against three thousand Portugals.’ A few days were spent in the neighbouring volcanic island of Fogo, but Shirley thereupon abandoned the journey to São Thomé, and, crossing the Atlantic, made for the island of Dominica, where ‘excellent hot baths refreshed his men.’ Thence he moved south to the island of Margarita, off Venezuela, and, passing along the coast, reached the little island of Santa Marta, near the mouth of the Magdalena in Columbia. There one of his ships forsook him. Turning north, he landed in Jamaica on 29 Jan. 1596–7, marched six miles inland without resistance, and was much impressed by the fertility of the island. Sailing north again, he intended to put in at Newfoundland and thence to make for the Straits of Magellan and return by way of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. But at Havana, on 13 May 1597, his companions mutinied, and one ship alone remained to him. After suffering many hardships he reached Newfoundland on 15 June, and arrived in London next month. Hakluyt published in his ‘Voyages and Discoveries’ (1598) ‘A True Relation of the Voyage undertaken by Sir Anthony Sherley, Knt., in anno 1596, intended for the Isle of San Tomé, but performed to St. Jago, Dominica, Marguerita, along the coast of Tierra firma, to the Isle of Jamaica, the Bay of the Honduras, 30 Leagues up Rio Dolce, and homewarde by Newfoundland, with the memorable exploytes atchieved in all this voyage.’

Shirley came ‘home alive but poor,’ wrote Sir Robert Cecil. His passion for adventure was unexhausted, and he eagerly accepted the invitation of the Earl of Essex to accompany him on the ‘Islands voyage’ during the summer of 1597. He returned with the fleet at the end of October 1597, after much fruitless cruising. Craving more remunerative occupation, he accepted in the winter of 1598–9 Essex's invitation to conduct a small