The New Navigation and Discovery of the Kingdom of Muscovy | Page 4

the Russians The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan
King Alfred's Orosius The Geography of Europe. Elegiac verses by
William Wordsworth

INTRODUCTION

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
(Caesar). 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.
H. M.

THE NEW NAVIGATION AND DISCOVERY OF THE KINGDOM
OF MUSCOVY By the North-East in the year 1553: Enterprised by
SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBIE, KNIGHT, performed by RICHARD
CHANCELER, Pilot-major of the voyage. Translated out of the Latin
into English.

At what time our merchants perceived the commodities and wares of
England to be in small request with the countries and people about us,
and near unto us, and that those merchandises which strangers in the
time and memory of our ancestors did earnestly seek and desire were
now neglected, and the price thereof abated, although by us carried to
their own ports, and all foreign merchandises in great account, and their
prices wonderfully raised; certain grave citizens of London, and men of

great wisdom, and careful of the good of their country, began to