with gunpowder. When the ‘great mogul’ (the Emperor Jehangir) learned of the cowardly attempt on his life, he summoned him to Surat, where a hospitable reception was accorded him during a sojourn extending over more than a year. At length in June 1615 he arrived at Ispahan. There he and all his companions were the victims of a conspiracy to poison them. He and his wife alone recovered. At the end of the year he was fortunately ordered to Europe to negotiate anew on the shah's behalf. After a ten months' stay at Goa, he landed at Lisbon in the summer of 1617, when the king of Spain invited him to Madrid. There the Spanish government made him the liberal allowance of fifteen hundred ducats a month, in addition to provision for house-rent and a coach. Although his diplomatic labours progressed slowly, he stayed on till the spring of 1622, in the full enjoyment of court favour. Subsequently he paid a visit to Gregory XV at Rome, and Vandyck painted his own and his wife's portrait. In January 1624 he arrived again in England. While staying with his sister, Lady Crofts, at Saxham, Suffolk, he visited James I at Newmarket (27 Jan.) and presented his letters of credence (in Persian). Contrary to Persian etiquette, he removed his turban in the king's presence. During the rest of the year he resided at a house provided for him by the government on Tower Hill, and persistently urged on the English ministers his project for opening up trade between Persia and England. In 1625 another envoy from the shah arrived in London in the person of a Persian nobleman, named Najdi Beg. With the newcomer Shirley engaged in a furious quarrel, and the English government, unable to reconcile the two envoys, recommended that they should both return to Persia, in the company of an English agent, Sir Dodmore Cotton (cf. Finet, Philoxenis, 1656). They set forth in separate ships, at the earnest petition of Robert Shirley's wife, in March 1627. The Persian Gulf was reached on 29 Nov. 1627, and soon afterwards Shirley's rival, Najdi Beg, acknowledged himself in the wrong by committing suicide. Shirley was well received on his way to the shah's court at Kazveen, which he reached early in June 1628. There the king's favourite, Mahomet Ali Beg, complained that his diplomatic performances ‘were frivolous and counterfeit,’ and announced that the shah had no further use for his services. Shirley took this rebuff to heart, and died on 13 July 1628, within six weeks of his arrival in Kazveen. He was buried by his friends, under the threshold of his own house in that city (Sir Thomas Herbert, Travels, pp. 170, 202–4). According to Sir Thomas Herbert, who was at Kazveen during Shirley's last days, the shah lamented his death, saying that ‘he had done more for him than any of his native subjects.’
Shirley's widow retired to Rome, where she was held in esteem on account of her devotion to the catholic faith. In 1658 she caused her husband's remains to be reinterred there in the church of Santa Maria della Scala. She seems to have resided in the convent attached to the church, and dying in 1668 to have been buried in the tomb which she prepared for her husband. To her and Sir Robert's only son, Henry, Lady Shirley (his grandmother) left 40l. a year in 1623, making at the same time a bequest to a young Persian companion, William Nazerbeg. Henry Shirley was alive in England in 1626, but died there soon afterwards.
Vandyck's portraits of Robert and his wife, painted at Rome in 1622, are at Petworth, and that of Sir Robert is engraved in Nichols's ‘Leicestershire.’ Hollar engraved a different portrait of Lady Teresia assigned to Vandyck. A portrait (apparently by a Dutch painter) of Robert in his characteristic turban and eastern costume, with a Persian inscription to the right of the head, is, with another of his wife, at Ettington. A rare print of a third portrait of Robert is embellished by a miniature representation of Shirley's reception at Rome in 1609. A fourth painting belongs to Earl Ferrers. Others are said to be at the convent of Santa Maria della Scala at Rome. A miniature by Oliver of Sir Robert was at Strawberry Hill, and one of Lady Teresia is at Windsor Castle.
[Shirley's Stemmata Shirleiana, 1873, pp. 279–287; authorities cited in text and under art. Shirley, Sir Anthony. A gossiping and eulogistic account of Robert Shirley's Circassian wife—‘Teresa Comitissa ex Persia’—is given in Nicius Erythræus' Pinacotheca Tertia (new edit. 1712, pp. 797–807).]
SHIRLEY, Sir ROBERT (1629–1656), fourth baronet, royalist, born in 1629, was the second son of Sir Henry Shirley, second baronet, of Eatington in Warwickshire, and of Staunton Harrold in Leicestershire. His grandfather, Sir George Shirley, was created a baronet in 1611 on the institution of the order. His mother Dorothy was the second daughter of Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex [q. v.] Although the Shirley family had remained catholic, Robert was educated by his mother in the protestant faith. On 12 Aug. 1645 he was admitted a
