Читать книгу The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures & Painefull Peregrinations. The Long Nineteene Yeares Travayles from Scotland to the most famous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia and Affrica онлайн

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From Paris, on March 7th, 1609, Lithgow set out on the first of the three journeys of which he gives an account in his ‘Totall Discourse,’ where he claims that his ‘paynefull feet traced over (beside my passages of Seas and Rivers) thirty-six thousand and odde miles, which draweth neare to twice the circumference of the whole Earth.’

It was on the third of these journeys, when passing through Spain with the intention of seeing ‘Great Prester Jehan and his Empire,’ that he was thrown into prison in Malaga as a spy and severely tortured. He was released by the intervention of the English Consul there and the English Ambassador at Madrid, backed by a division of King James’ Navy which, under the command of Sir Robert Maunsell, happened opportunely to be lying in Malaga Roads, on its return from the expedition against Algiers.

On his arrival at Dartford, fifty days after leaving Malaga, Lithgow was carried to the Court at Theobalds, and exhibited his ‘martyrd anatomy’ to the whole Court, ‘even from the King to the Kitchin.’ At the King’s expense he was sent twice to Bath, where he recovered his health, although his left arm and crushed bones were incurable. Early in 1622 he was sent to the Marshalsea prison for a long periodssss1 for assaulting, in the presence chamber, the Spanish Ambassador Gondomar, whose empty promises of redress for his sufferings at Malaga had exasperated Lithgow beyond endurance.