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This pamphlet recounts the fictional misfortunes of a certain Richard Hasleton of Braintree in Essex, who supposedly left London in 1582 on a merchant ship bound for the coast of Turkey.

The author’s tale of woe includes being attacked by Turkish warships on the return leg of his journey and enslaved in Algiers. He was then forced to toil as an oarsman on a North African ship before he was shipwrecked off the coast of Spain and fell into the hands of the Inquisition. He miraculously managed to escape back to North Africa, from which he was finally able to return to London, a full decade after he originally set sail.

A Discourse of the Miserable Captivitie is an example of a popular genre of fiction which used travel narratives as a vehicle for the crudest of patriotic sentiments.

Citation:
A Discourse of the Miserable Captivitie of an Englishman, named Richard Hasleton (London, 1595).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits,
accessed December 6, 2025,
https://www.marshlibrary.ie/digi/items/show/462