“These banished men that I have kept withal, Are men endued with worthy qualities, Forgive them what they have committed here, And let them be recalled from their exile: They are reformed, civil, full of good, And fit for great employment.”
Sherley Brothers, p. 27, to Sir Cecill, “his whole object being if possible to conciliate the Queen, and to obtain leave to return to England. Elizabeth however remained inexorable.”—A.D. 1600.
P. 34. Venice, “which city remained his head quarters for some years.”—1601.
P. 50. A.D. 1605.—“Four months abode in Saphia, kept open house . . .; to supply his own turn for money he got credit of Jews to take up money, and pay them in moriscos, but at an excessive rate, almost fifty for an hundred.”
All foreign courts, even the Czar of Muscovy, the great Sophi, King of Morocco, of Persia; well, he had had missions to them, and been of them and amongst them. A thorough knowledge of a sailor’s life, their own peculiar phrases and ship-shape ways are his to speak of as a sailor would; perils by sea and land, he had gone through them all. Languages, most of them on his mouth-tips dwell (Alls Well that Ends Well, “If there be here German or Dane, low Dutch, Italian, or French, let him speak to me”). The habits and the ways, the customs, dresses, manners, laws of almost every known nation then, he had witnessed, thought on, and had both an eye-sight and head knowledge of them. Horses, he knew their points; nightingales (passim), he had listened to their song.
Among the papers relating to the Low Countries in the S.P.O. is the following in illustration of Shakespeare’s well-known line, “Saddle white Surrey to the field,” etc. “A note of all the horses of old store, which Thomas Underwood acknowledgeth himself to have received since his coming to your honor’s (Sir H. Sidney) service, June 2, 1589, _e.g._:
Charge. Discharge. Graie Stanhope given to Sir Roger Williams. Baie SHURLIE ,, Mr. Ralph Love. Baie Skipworth ,, The Grooms. Graie Essex ,, Mr. St. Barbe. Graie Bingham ,, Sir Philip Sidney. Pied Markham ,, The French Ambassador. Dun Sidney ,, Bonham. Sorrel Bingham ,, Sir Richard Bingham. Black Stanhope ,, To the cart at Fulham.”
“Anthony Sherley had a command in the Low Countries among the English when Sir Philip Sidney was killed” (Wood). “This was before Zutphen in 1586.”—From Sherley Brothers (p. 4).