IN EXPLORATION, THE English had done poorly and were scrambling to catch up. The Spaniards and Portuguese had doubled the southernmost capes of both hemispheres and had met at the Spice Islands on the opposite side of the globe. They were tramping through Canada, Florida, and Brazil; and were already fighting for supremacy in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and parts of Africa, Arabia, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The French were in America and the Dutch were beginning to develop their great merchant marine. The English had discovered Labrador.
English merchants were understandably agitated, and as tactfully as they could suggested their monarchs show more initiative. Other governments were handsomely funding expeditions. England was scarcely spending a crown. In 1527, the merchant Robert Thome wrote to Henry VIII: “There is left but one way to discover, which is into the North: for that of the foure partes of the worlde, it seemeth three parts are discovered by other Princes.”1 Optimistically he supposed God had reserved the fourth unto England as a northern realm.
How difficult this would prove no one could have guessed. Mercator’s great globe of 1541 conjectured the distance as “short and easy,”23 and that once the North Cape had been rounded the coast would slope gently down into the Pacific Ocean. Instead, of course, it thrust impassably upward toward the North Pole, and would not be accurately charted until the twentieth century – and then only with the help of icebreakers and planes.
The English, however, were highly motivated in their quest. Like their continental confrère, they had become addicted to spices (for medicinal purposes as well as cuisine), just when the Turks, ensconced in Asia Minor as well as elsewhere, had intercepted the land spice route, evicted the Genoese and Venetians from their ancient trading stations in the Levant, and with their galleys in the eastern Mediterranean patrolled the outlet from Alexandria. The Turks were thus in a position to impose prohibitively heavy tolls on whatever trade could be had, and had cut deeply into the dwindling supply of “trans-Sahara”* gold, which furnished coin of the realm. Even if one could get past them in Asia Minor (after running a gauntlet of Muslim corsairs in the Mediterranean and surviving travel by caravan across the Syrian desert and down the Euphrates Valley), the only way to India from Basra was by primitive native craft through dangerous, turbulent seas “which involved a degree of ‘roughing it’ discouraging to even the hardiest of men.” Considering the time, cost, and inevitable tribulations of such a journey, to and fro, no fair markup price could be practical. The Spanish and Portuguese had managed to discover independent sources of supply. The English had not.
England was also facing a more general import-export crisis, as the price of foreign commodities rose sharply while the demand for English products (especially woolen cloth) “waxed cold and in decay.” Finally, like Portugal and Spain, England dreamed of empire – “A thousand kingdoms we will seek from far,” the poet Michael Drayton wrote, “And those unchristened countries call our own, / Where scarce the name of England hath been known.” But it was commerce, not religion, which furnished the inspiration, and in reflecting upon this a century later the poet John Milton remarked that the discovery of Russia “might have seemed an enterprise almost heroic if any higher end than excessive love of gain and traffic had animated the design.”4
Perhaps only Dee and a few others had a higher end in view: to find, beyond gold and spices, a “Commoditye farre passing worldly Treasure”5 – occult wisdom.†
HENRY VIII HAD been too busy with his wasteful foreign wars to listen to Thorne, but in 1553, after the accession of young King Edward VI, Sebastian Cabot in London formed the “Mysterie and company of the Merchants Adventurers for the discoverie of Cathay and divers other lands.” He found an immediate and enthusiastic backer in the duke of Northumberland, and before long other dignitaries and great lords of the realm took shares. Three small ships were newly trimmed for the expedition – the Bona Speranza, the Edward Bonaventure, and the Bona Confidentia – and Cabot composed a broad set of ordinances and instructions for the voyage, including a probably futile ban on drunkenness and “filthy tales,”6 and baleful advice to look out for “naked swimmers” who might “covet their bodies for meate.”
The captain general of the expedition was Sir Hugh Willoughby, a valiant soldier who in 1550 had beaten back a French assault on Scotland’s Fort Lawder after casting all the pewter in the fort into shot. His pilot general was the “incomparable” Richard Chancellor, Dee’s protégé, who had designed for himself “the best quadrant in England.”7 King Edward gave them his blessing and furnished a letter of introduction to all rulers “in all places under the universal heaven” which elegantly linked commerce between nations to a Divine Plan for universal accord: “The God of heaven and earth greatly providing for mankinde, would not that all things should be found in one region, to the ende that one should have neede of another, that by this meanes friendship might be established among all men, and every one seeke to gratifie all.”8
The three ships weighed anchor on May 11 and having come to Greenwich (where the king and his court then were), “courtiers came running out, the privy council at the windows, the rest on the battlements and towers.”9 The common people “flockt together, very thicke upon the shoare” as soldiers, dressed in watchet or sky-colored cloth, fired a salute, which came ringing back in echoes from the hills.
After an anxious month at Harwich waiting for the weather to clear, the ships crossed the North Sea to Norway, but off the Lofotan Islands met “such flawes of winde and terrible whirlewinds… that we were not able to beare any saile.”10 Night brought no abatement. A thick fog rolled in and the ships were dispersed. Though Willoughby’s Speranza managed to link up again with the Confidentia at dawn, Chancellor’s Bonaventure was nowhere to be seen.
But it was Willoughby and his eighty-three companions who were doomed. He made his way along the Lapland coast toward the White Sea, where near a tongue of land called Svatoy Nos, he was driven back by a whirlpool. Forced in line with breakers treading northwest, on September 18 he spotted the rocky black edge of Nokujeff Island and sailed into the bay. There he waited patiently for the wind to change. He waited until the days roared in with frost; and then the moon began to wane. He sent out scouting parties in every direction, but the island was found to be desolate. Daylight steadily diminished; their rations soon dwindled; after November 25, the sun disappeared. One year later Russian fisherman would discover them (so it was said) “platter in hand and spoon in mouth”11 frozen to death in their ships.
Meanwhile, in August Chancellor had returned to the Norway coast and put in at Wardhouse, their appointed rendezvous in case of emergency. Beset with premonitions of their fate, “If the rage and furie of the Sea have devoured those good men,” he wrote sadly in his journal, “I must needs say they were men worthy of better fortune, or if the crueltie of death hath [otherwise] taken holde of them, God send them a Christian grave and a Sepulchre.”12 But after a week (as it was still midsummer), he resumed his perilous voyage, and holding a steady course, “sailed so farre, that hee came at last to where hee found no night at all, but a continuall light and brightness of the Sunne shining clearely upon the huge and mightie sea.”13 On August 24, 1553, he came to the mouth of the Northern Dvina and disembarked on Russian soil.
Chancellor had no idea where he was; but the local fishermen “prostrated themselves before him, offering to kisse his feete,”14 and later officials arrived who were perfectly polite. Messengers were dispatched from Kholmogory, the nearest substantial town, to Moscow 1000 miles away, and on the 23rd of November Chancellor and a few members of his crew set off in sleds for the capital. After traveling by way of Vologda and Yaroslavl (a journey of 1500 miles), they were enthusiastically greeted in the Kremlin by Ivan, whom they found so imposingly enthroned that “our men beganne to wonder at the Majestie of the Emperour: his seate was aloft, very royall, having on his head a Diademe, or Crowne of Golde, his robe all Goldsmiths worke, and in his hand a Scepter garnished, a
nd beset with precious stones: and there was a Majestie in his countenance proportionable with the excellencie of his estate.”15 At a ceremonial dinner in their honor Ivan brought out “rich and very massie”16 gold plate and ostentatiously changed his crown twice – so that they saw him wear three crowns in one day. By the cupboards stood two men “with napkins on their shoulders”17 (like modern maître d’s), each holding a gem-encrusted cup which they filled repeatedly with wine. From time to time Ivan “drank them off at a draught.”18
The tsar sat apart, crossed himself with every bite of food, and sent bread from his own table as a gift to various guests. Whenever he did so, all stood up as his long title was loudly proclaimed. At the end of the banquet, in a ritual demonstration of his prodigious memory, he addressed every one of his two hundred guests by name “in such sort that it seemed miraculous for a Prince otherwise occupied in great matters of estate.”19
This is the first objective glimpse of Ivan that we have. He was twenty-three at the time, and his majesty and poise may be judged the more remarkable since his government was then in the throes of the heresy trials.
The English of course were meant to be impressed, especially by Muscovy’s wealth and might. The nobility paraded about in such costly armor that, Chancellor wrote, “I could scarce beleeve it,”20 but the tsar “above all measure: his pavilion is covered with cloth of gold and so set with stones that it is wonderfull to see. I have seene the Kings Majesties of England and the French Kings pavilions, which are fayre, yet not like unto his.” Among other things, he was told that the tsar could bring into the field two or three hundred thousand men, and that at any given time he had 40,000 stationed along the Livonian border, 60,000 facing Lithuania, and 60,000 more against the Tatars on the southern frontier. Though Chancellor considered Muscovy deficient in the art of war, he believed her individual soldiers second to none. “Now what might be made of these men,” he wrote, “if they were trained and broken to order and knowledge of [modern] war? If this Prince had within his countrey such men as could make them to understand such things, I do believe that 2 of the best or greatest princes in Christendome were not able to match with him, considering the greatnes of his power.”21
Nevertheless, Chancellor was repelled by many aspects of Russian life: the adoration of icons, ignorance of the clergy, abject servility of the people, and “as for whoredome and drunkenesse there be none such living: and for extortion, they be the most abominable under the sunne.”22 On balance, he concluded, they were “ignorant Barbarians.”
Chancellor’s large and relatively impartial intelligence lend his observations weight, but he could also be wide of the mark. Though he accurately described the pomestie system, for example, various customs and the geography of the Russian North, his precis of Russian law was comically askew: The plaintiff, he writes, initiates a suit, and then an officer “fetcheth the defendant, and beateth him on the legges.” If the man cannot furnish surety “his hands are tied to his necke, and he is beaten all the way, till he come before the Judge.” The judge asks him (in the matter of debt) “whether he oweth any thing to the plaintife. If he denies it, ‘How canst thou deny it?’ saith the Judge, the defendant answereth, ‘By an othe.’” If the matter cannot be resolved “they fight it out.”23
Shakespeare’s portrait of the Muscovite ambassadors in Love’s Labour’s Lost (“In shapeless gear,… / their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn’d, / And their rough carriage so ridiculous”) indicates the general reputation Russians were destined to enjoy in England. Yet in the context of the continental Renaissance, at least, the English were also still comparatively rude. They had military engineering but little architecture, except for the palace building begun by Henry VIII; and in medicine evinced an amazing faith in laxatives, comparable to the Russian faith in baths. Like the Russians they went in for bear-baiting as an organized sport, and sodomy was also a vice of official concern. In 1533, Parliament had passed “An Act for The punishment of the detestable and abominable vice of buggery, committed with mankind or beast,” and made it a capital crime. Bloody Mary repealed the statute‡ (along with much of Henry’s Reformation legislation), but under Elizabeth I Parliament would revive it. Russia was not an absolutely alien world.
Yet whatever resemblances might be drawn, differences eclipsed them. England was a constitutional monarchy; and the public conscience expressed itself in a general concern for “social betterment.” The nobility subsidized almshouses; the gentry involved itself in poor relief; the great merchants of London, Norwich, Bristol, and other towns engaged in schemes to assist the unemployed, and lent money at marginal interest to young apprentices starting a trade. A great national effort in education led to the founding and endowment of schools. And to the free and fantastic efflorescence of the arts in England nothing in Russia could compare.
Chancellor’s preliminary trade discussions with Ivan were gratifying: need met need. Russia sought manufactured goods, England a large, new, diversified market. Both appreciated that commerce past the northern coast of Europe would be subject neither to the Sound dues levied by Denmark nor the tariffs imposed by the Livonian and Hanseatic middlemen who dominated Baltic trade. And so with a kind of zest otherwise unthinkable in dealing with a still strange and virtually unknown foreign power, Ivan in his missive to King Edward written in February 1554 welcomed English ships to his White Sea port and hoped that an agreement could be struck to extend “ffree markett with all free lyberties through my whole dominion with all kinde of wares.”24 He dated his letter Anno Mundi 7062, appended a translation into Dutch, and to the astonishment of Chancellor sealed it upon wax with what looked like “the broad seale of England, having on one side the image of a man on horseback in complete harnesse fighting with a dragon,”25 in the manner of St. George.
Good King Edward, however, was not to enjoy these salutations. On July 6, 1553, he had died of consumption after a reign of just six years, and England plunged toward turmoil. In a coup engineered by the duke of Northumberland on the 10th, Lady Jane Grey (daughter of the duke of Norfolk and coincidentally Hugh Willoughby’s grand-niece) was proclaimed queen. Nine days later “Bloody” Mary entered London, toppled Jane Grey from the throne, and imprisoned her in the Tower. Northumberland’s head rolled from the block. Civil war ensued, fiercely fueled by religious strife and by Mary’s resolve to marry the Catholic King, Philip of Spain. England’s very existence as an independent nation seemed at stake. Crosscurrents of rebellion swept the land. The prisons “were filled with persons of rank,”26 and even as the blood of Sir Hugh was freezing on the Lapland coast, Lady Jane’s was shed on the scaffold. In July 1554, Mary went through with her marriage to Philip and attempted to enforce the wholesale reconversion of England to Catholicism. Persecution produced heroic martyrdom, with many beleaguered Protestants imminently expecting the Second Coming of Christ.
In the midst of such disorders, it is not surprising that Chancellor’s startling announcement of the discovery of Russia aroused little public interest, and perhaps seemed a comedown from the expectations for Cathay. However, Russia was better than Labrador, and the commercial prospects he unfolded were certainly not lost on the Catholic queen. She issued a charter to the Muscovy, or Russia, Company on February 26, 1555, drafted a letter to Ivan expressing her hopes for a mutual trade agreement, and sent Chancellor back in May with two ships, the Edward Bonaventure and the Philip and Mary. He was accompanied by two very capable company agents, Richard Grey and George Killingworth, the latter a London draper whose spectacularly long, thick yellow beard amazed the Muscovites.
At the Kremlin they had found Ivan preoccupied with “preparations to warre” with Sweden, but negotiated an agreement with Viskovaty and a delegation of Muscovite merchants that was all they could have wished. Principally, it allowed the English to trade tax-free (“without any customs, duties, tolls and impositions”) wholesale and retail in Moscow itself, and selectively throughout the realm; to hire local labor (shippers, packer
s, etc.), with legal jurisdiction over their own personnel (to adjudicate all “causes, plaints, quarrels and disorders betweene them moved” by fine and imprisonment); and promised prompt and equitable justice from the tsar himself in all cases involving disputes between Englishmen and Russians. Finally, it stipulated that no merchant’s goods were to be held hostage for an underling’s offense, no matter how grave; and no Englishman was to be imprisoned for debt if he could find “sufficient suretie and pawne.”27
Ivan, enamored of the English, soon became rather familiar. At one festive dinner in their honor in October, he doted on Kilhngworth’s long, flowing beard (which extended over the table and onto the floor), and at one point “tooke it into his hand & presently delivered it to the Metropolitane, who seeming to blesse it, sayd in Russe, this is Gods gift.”28
Chancellor equipped four ships for his return – the Edward Bonaventure, the Philip and Mary, and the newly refurbished Bona Speranza and Bona Confidentia, which the Russians had graciously retrieved from their Lapland cove. These were loaded with a fair sampling of what Russia had to offer – wax, train oil, tallow, furs, felt, and yarn – and (as royal gifts for the king and queen) twenty sable pelts with teeth and claws, four live sables with collar and chain, and a white gerfalcon with a gilded lure.
What Ivan really wanted in exchange, aside from assorted manufactured goods, neither Chancellor, Killingworth, nor Grey were empowered to discuss. Grave political issues were involved which required negotiation at a higher level.
Ivan understood this, and in March 1556 appointed Osip Nepea, governor of Vologda, Russia’s first ambassador to England. With sixteen compatriots, he set sail with Chancellor in mid-July.
* * *
* I.e., from the northern shore of the Gulf of Guinea, then Europe’s principal source of supply.
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