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.
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