to that famous "leash of brethren"
and drove them out upon their adventures. The least remarkable and the
most unfortunate of these sons of his was the eldest, Thomas, whose
life, however, as a soldier and freebooter, both on shore in the Low
Countries and at sea, is sufficiently full of adventure to satisfy
anyone. He came, however, to utter grief at last, and had to sell
Wiston, retiring to the Isle of Wight, where he died in 1630.

It was his brother Anthony who really made the Shirleys famous. He had
graduated at Oxford in 1581, and having, as he said, "acquired those
learnings which were fit for a gentleman's ornament," he went to the
Low Countries with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and was present at
the battle of Zutphen, where Sir Philip Sidney fell. In 1591 he was in
Normandy with the Earl of Essex, whom he devotedly followed, in support
of Henry of Navarre, who made him a knight of St Michael. For accepting
a foreign knighthood without her leave, Elizabeth locked him up in the
Fleet, and only let him out when he promised to retire from the
Order. This he actually did, but his title stuck to him, and he was
always known as Sir Anthony. He then married Elizabeth Devereux, a
first cousin of his patron, the Earl of Essex; but the marriage was
unfortunate; he could not abide his wife, and in order to "occupy his
mind from thinking of her vainest words," in 1595 he fitted out with
Essex's aid and his father's a buccaneering expedition to the Gulf of
Guinea. But in something less than two years after the most amazing
adventures he came home to Wiston under the Downs, "alive but poor,"
and with his passion for adventure in nowise abated. In 1597 he
accompanied Essex on the "Islands voyage," but, seeking more paying
adventure, in the winter of 1598 he consented at Essex's suggestion to
lead a little company of English adventurers to assist Cesare D'Este to
regain his Duchy of Ferrara, then in the hands of the Pope. He set
forth, but upon reaching Venice found that Cesare had submitted. Again
he was out of employment; but it was upon the quays of Venice that he
conceived the most astonishing enterprise that even an Englishman has
ever undertaken. He proposed to set out for Persia with the object of
persuading the Shah to ally himself with Christendom against the Turk,
and hoped also to establish commercial relations between England and
Persia. Upon this astonishing Crusade he left Venice with his brother
Robert and