THE first relations between England and Russia were established in Queen
Elizabeth’s reign, in the manner here set forth, by the expedition
undertaken by Sir Hugh Willoughby and completed by Richard Chanceler or
Chancellor, captain of the _Edward Bonaventure_. Chanceler went on after
Willoughby and the crew of his ship, _The Admiral_, with the crew of
another vessel in the expedition, had been parted from Chanceler in a
storm in the North Sea, and Willoughby’s men were all frozen to death. A
few men belonging to the other ship were believed to have found their way
back to England. The story of Chanceler’s voyage and the following
endeavours to open Muscovy to English trade is here given, as it was told
in Hakluyt’s collection of “The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and
Discoveries made by the English Nation,” the folio published in 1589.
The story of our first contact with Russia belongs to the days of Ivan
the Terrible. The Russians are a Slavonic people, with Finnish elements
to the North and Mongolian to the South, and old contact with the Swedes,
from whom they are supposed to have got their name through the Finnish
_Ruotsi_, a corruption, it is said, of the Swedish _rothsmenn_—rowers.
Legends point also to a Scandinavian settlement in the ninth century in
Northern Russia. A chief Igor, whose name is supposed to represent the
Scandinavian Ingvar, was trained by a warrior chief Oleg (Scandinavian
Helgi?), who attacked Byzantium and wrung tribute from the Greeks. After
the death of Oleg, Igor reigned, and after the death of Igor his wife
Olga was regent, and was baptised at Byzantium in the year 955. Her son
Sviotoslaff the first chief with a Slavonic name, was a conquering chief,
who did not become Christian. He was killed in battle, and his skull was
made into a drinking-cup. His son Vladimir was a cruel warrior, who took
to Christianity, was baptised in the year 988, and caused the image of
the Slavonic god of Thunder, Perun, to be first cudgelled and then thrown
into a river. Vladimir, who first introduced Christianity, divided his
dominions, leaving Novgorod to his son Yaroslaff, who established the
first code of laws. After the death of Yaroslaff, in the year 1054,
Russia was broken into petty principalities, until the year 1238, when
there was a great invasion of the Mongols, who became a great disturbing
power, and remained so until the year 1462, when Ivan III. began the
consolidation of a Russian empire. He reigned forty-three years,
suppressed the liberties of many independent regions, annexed states,
checked the Mongols, married a Byzantine princess, and so brought Greek
culture into Moscow. Ivan III. bequeathed his throne to a son Basil, who
made further addition to the dominions of Muscovy, and treated with
foreign princes. Herberstein, an ambassador to him from Germany, has
left a description of his court. Then followed the reign of Basil’s son
Ivan IV., Ivan the Terrible, who was, when his father died, a child of
three years old. He was at first, from 1533 to 1538, under the care of
his mother, Helen Glinska, a Pole. In 1543, when a boy of thirteen, he
broke loose from the tutelage of chiefs, and caused one of them who had
most worried him to be torn to pieces by dogs. In 1547, at the age of
seventeen, he was crowned, and took the title of Czar (Cæsar). He
married a good wife, submitted to the guidance of a good priest,
Silvester, revised his grandfather’s code of laws, issued a code for the
Church, conquered enemies upon his borders, had desires towards the
civilisation of the West, and did nothing to earn his name of “the
Terrible” before the year 1558, five years after the setting out of
Willoughby and Chancellor. His cruelties continued from 1558 until his
death, in 1584.