Stones on the Prairie: Acculturation in Texas

William Parry's Description of Tsar Boris Godunov's Pilgrimage to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in May 1600

Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008, 303–08.       William Parry’s Description of Tsar Boris Godunov’s Pilgrimage to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in May 1600 David B. Miller On  New  Year’s  Day  1588,  William  Parry  set  off  as  a  member  of  an  English   mission  conceived  by  Queen  Elizabeth  I’s  sometime  favorite  the  Earl  of  Essex   and  led  by  Sir  Anthony  Sherley.  Its  objective:  to  stir  up  trouble  in  Italy  against   the   Catholic   cause.   Sherley   (1565–1635?)   was   a   notorious   adventurer   of   the   Elizabethan   and   Jacobean   era.   His   résumé   would   say   he   was   an   English   soldier,  privateer,  diplomat,  and  spy,  that  he  had  served  the  Persian  shah  and   nimbly  crossed  confessional  lines  to  serve  Emperor  Rudolph  II,  the  Pope,  and   Spain.   At   times   he   claimed   simultaneously   to   serve   each   of   the   above   and   probably  did.  In  1607  Sherley’s  story,  by  then  far  from  over,  became  the  sub-­‐‑ ject  of  a  play  on  the  London  stage  entitled  “The  Travels  of  the  Three  English   Brothers.”  Although  once  proposed  as  the  author  of  Shakespeare’s  plays,  he   never  achieved  the  recognition  to  which  he  aspired  and  spent  his  last  decades   “in  retirement”  in  Spain.1   Sherley’s  mission  in  Italy  fizzled  before  it  began.  But  the  intrepid  leader   gained   new   life   and   a   new   mission   by   persuading   Essex   and   English   mer-­‐‑ chants  in  Venice  to  fund  a  trip  through  the  Ottoman  Empire  to  Persia  either   (Sherley  pitched  his  plan  variously  to  each  party)  to  obtain  commercial  bene-­‐‑ fits   heretofore   controlled   by   Portugal,   or   to   persuade   Persia   to   make   peace   with  the  Turks  who  were  English  (and  Venetian)  allies  against  the  Habsburgs.   Sherley  led  the  mission  through  various  mishaps  on  the  islands  of  Zante  and   Cyprus,  across  the  Ottoman  Empire  from  Aleppo  to  Babylon  and  to  the  Per-­‐‑ sian   shah’s   capital   of   Isfahan.   At   the   court   of   Shah   Abbas   I   the   leopard   changed   its   spots.   Sherley   entered   the   shah’s   service   to   command   Persian   forces   in   wars   against   the   Uzbeks   and   Turks   from   January   until   May   1599.   Then  Sherley,  along  with  the  Persian  Hussein  Ali  Beg  and  the  Dominican  friar   Nicolão  de  Melo—another  charlatan  who  described  himself  variously  as  the                                                                                                                             1  D.   W.   Davies,   Elizabethans   Errant:   The   Strange   Fortune   of   Sir   Thomas   Sherley   and   his   Three  Sons,  as  well  in  the  Dutch  Wars  as  in  Muscovy,  Morocco,  Persia,  Spain  and  the  Indies   (Ithaca,   NY:   Cornell   University   Press,   1967),   1;   Boies   Penrose,   The   Sherleian   Odessey   (Taunton:   Wessex   Press,   1938);   D.   W.   Parr,   “Foreign   Relations   in   Jacobean   England:   The  Sherley  Brothers  and  the  ‘Voyage  of  Persia,’”  in  Travel  and  Drama  in  Shakespeare’s   Time,  ed.  Jean-­‐‑Pierre  Maquerlot  and  Michèle  Willems  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  Univer-­‐‑ sity  Press,  1966),  14–31.   304 DAVID B. MILLER brother  of  the  last  king  of  Portugal,  a  great  bishop,  or  the  Inquisitor  General   or  Procurator  General  of  the  East  Indies—led  a  Persian  embassy  to  Moscow   and  Catholic  Europe  to  obtain  allies  against  the  Turks.  The  mission  took  two   months   overland   and   on   the   Caspian   Sea   to   reach   the   Volga,   where   it   was   rowed  to  a  town  Parry  called  “Haster-­‐‑caune,  the  landing  place  of  the  emperor   of  the  Rusciaes.”  The  mission  went  up  the  Volga  by  boat  through  Kazan’  as   far  as  Cheboksarai,  where  the  onset  of  winter  ice  mandated  that  the  rest  of  the   trip  to  Moscow  be  made  by  sled.  From  Astrakhan  the  trip  took  ten  weeks,  one   month   of   which   was   spent   waiting   in   the   town   of   “Neglon,”   possibly   Murom’,   for   the   emissary   of   Tsar   Boris   Godunov   (r.   1598–1605)   to   conduct   them   to   Moscow.   In   May   1600   the   embassy   left   Moscow   on   the   Sukhona-­‐‑ Dvina  river  route  to  Kholmogory  where  the  English  Muscovy  Company  had   established   a   station   in   the   1550s.   After  waiting   a   month   in   the   town   of   St.   Nicholas  at  the  mouth  of  the  Northern  Dvina,  an  English  ship  took  them  to   Stade   at   the   mouth   of   Elbe.   There   Parry   left   to   transmit   Sherley’s   letters   to   England  while  the  mission  made  its  way  to  the  court  of  Emperor  Rudolph  II   in  Prague.   In   London   Parry   prepared   his   narrative   of   the   journey,  A  new  and  large   discourse  of  the  Travels  of  sir  Anthony  Sherley  Knight,  by  Sea,  and  over  Land,  to  the   Persian  Empire,  and  it  appeared  in  print  in  1601.  It  is  short,  41  pages,  and  has   the  earmarks  of...