Chapter 1. Giles fletcher’s ‘of the russe commonwealth’

1.1. Historical background

When the Elizabethan era came to a close, Muscovy had a secure place in the ordinary Englishman’s view of the world. People craved to see a Russian ambassador when he arrived. In hours of leisure, men read peans of praise of the mariners who braved the Arctic storms to sail to Muscovy and the travelers’ own stories of their adventures at sea.

However, Muscovy remained in English minds was as exotic as the lands of the Far East or the New World. That Englishmen found Muscovy mysterious after half a century of diplomatic and commercial contact is scarcely surprising considering the differences of language, religion, political and social structure, and style of life that separated the two countries; Muscovite diplomats found England just as strange.

England and Muscovy first met in the market place. Impelled by the desire to find new markets for English good and the gnawing awareness that the Spanish and Portuguese were far ahead in the race to exploit the riches of the New World and the Far East, a group of London merchants sponsored a venture that sent three ships out in 1553 to find a sea route along the northern coasts of Europe and Asia to China. The story of the expedition is well-known: unaccustomed to the rigors of the northern climate, Sir Hugh Willoughby, the commander, and the crews of two of his ships perished when autumn storms forced them to winter on the barren Arctic coast. The third vessel, under the command of Richard Chancellor, took refuge in the White Sea and landed in the domains of Ivan IV, the Tsar of Muscovy. Ivan and his unexpected guest quickly recognised that their fortuitous encounter offered advantages to both. Ivan, buoyed up by his recent conquest of the khanate of Kazan’, welcomed the chance to establish ties with a western European power; Chancellor was in search of opportunities for trade and Muscovy. When Richard sailed home after a lavish welcome, he carried the tsar’s charter granting English merchants full freedom to trade in his domains. It was the beginning of almost a century of Anglo-Russian entente.

From the point of view of the English queen, Elizabeth II, Muscovy presented a limited but valuable opportunity for trade. The queen’s principal goals in her dealings with Ivan and his successors were clear and she never lost sight of them: each of her ambassadors had orders to win for English traders as generous trading rights and tax concessions as possible, to make sure that the Russia Company, which had been chartered in 1554 to exploit the opportunities opened up by Chancellor’s voyage, enjoyed a monopoly over English trade with Russia, and, if possible, to secure for her subjects a monopoly over Moscow’s overseas trade that would exclude traders from other maritime powers of western Europe.

Ivan’s goals, however, were more complex and shifted with his changes of mood and the ebb and flow of his fortunes in the war for control of the Baltic littoral. Trade in England was extremely important in his own sake. Besides England’s principal export, cloth, the Russia Company’s merchants brought to Russia metal products and chemicals such as saltpeter and sulphur. Moreover, the English traders were useful because their expeditions across Russia to Persia did business on Ivan’s behalf as well as their own.

After Ivan’s death in 1584, his son Fedor ascended to the throne. Due to Fedor’s dementia, his deputy was Boris Godunov, who regarded England as a valuable trading partner but saw no reason why he should not do business with the Dutch traders who frequented Russia’s northern ports. For a time the queen protested that since her subjects had been first to make extensive use of the northern sea route, they deserved a full monopoly over Muscovy’s northern commerce. Once she had tested the determination of the new regime, she retreated and contented herself with concessions that left the Russia Company with the most advantageous position in the newly-opened competition for control of Russia’s overseas trade.

England’s contacts with Muscovy in the reign of Elizabeth did not extend beyond the limits of a small but strategically important commercial venture. The limited contacts gave a number of English voyagers an opportunity to visit Russia and record their impressions. Such impressions were not infrequently far from the truth; this subject is therefore the point of our research work.