MOSCOW still bears witness to the thoroughness of English handicraft just as it shows the unmistakable impress of the French heel. When the discovery of the new world by Columbus had awakened England to enterprise and adventure, among the expeditions fitted out to find new markets for English manufactures was one of three ships sent on the advice of Sebastian Cabot, to the Arctic seas in 1553. Sir Hugh Willoughby was in command; Richard Chancellor, a young protÉgÉ of Sir Henry Sydney, his able lieutenant, and King Edward VI. himself the patron. The merchant venturers each found £25 for the undertaking; £6000 in all was subscribed; two Tartars in the King’s stable were interrogated as to that land on “the East of the Globe,” but they answered nothing at all that was in point. Three ships sailed from Rudcliff Harbour on the 20th May, but a few days later a storm separated them. Chancellor sailed on, and notwithstanding “the counsel of three friendly Scotchmen” to proceed no further, he reached the White Sea where he awaited the coming of his chief. Sighting a smack he got the men on board; they at once fell prostrate to kiss his feet but he himself raised them, “an act of humanity that won for him much goodwill.” The natives dared not trade without leave of their prince, and in some six weeks an invitation was given Chancellor to proceed from Kholmogori (Archangel) to Moscow. There he was sumptuously entertained. Furnished with a reply to King Edward’s letter and permission to trade, he returned to London. In April 1555, Chancellor was again sent to Moscow; the Tsar in the meanwhile had found the remains of Sir Hugh Willoughby’s other two ships, the crews of which had been starved to death. The result of this second voyage was the establishment of the Russia Company at Kholmogori and Moscow, and the visit of a Russian envoy to the Court of St James’s. Ill-luck attended the return voyage; Chancellor, his son and seven Russians, were drowned when their ship was wrecked, near Kinnaird Head.

The English were not deterred by untoward events, and pressed trade briskly. They had to deal with a sovereign whose methods were detestable and whose aim was a political and matrimonial alliance with the Tudors, not commercial intercourse with the English people; the Tsar was foiled, and the English traders succeeded. No doubt the venturers were misled by the too glowing reports of their servants, who represented Russia as a new Indies. Wondrous were the stories they gave of the country and its inhabitants; of the immense wealth of the Tsar; of the strange animals that roamed in the forests. Of these last one was the “Rossmachia,” which devoured food so ravenously that it had to pass between great growing trees in order to reduce its distended stomach—an animal not identified; another was the Ass-camel, having the attributes of both these beasts, which was so far believed in as to figure in the arms of the Eastland Company and is thought to be the yak. To these early voyagers, earnest and austere in their new-found protestantism, the religion of the Muscovites seemed idolatrous, and to their prejudiced writings, reproduced by generation after generation, many of the still current misconceptions concerning the Eastern Church are due.

The Governors of the Russia Company were hard-headed, bargain-driving tradesmen, with no soul for empire or an attempt had been made by them to conquer and annex Russia for their sovereign and their country. Profitable trade was their one aim and the extravagances of their servants and apprentices their increasing lament. Many were the complaints, piteous the explanations; anger on the part of the employer, indignation and desertion on the part of the unlucky apprentices.

Ivan did not pay for the goods he had, or his chancellor would not; none dared trade but by his leave; his subjects feared to buy the merchants’ goods lest their sovereign might still require them for himself. The governors paid no heed to the customs of the country or the needs of their apprentices—foundlings and charity—reared orphans—no furs were to be worn; the ells of cloth allowed annually were in no case to be exceeded, and the use of horses forbidden; “if it be against the manner of that countrie we will make it the manner rather than forbear our money with losse to clothe them otherwise, or maintain them to ride when we go afoot. Let the horses and mares be sold.”

So ordered the governors their full-powered servant Anthony Jenkinson, who was further commanded to “reduce our stipendiaries to a better order in apparel; forbid them riding, for such excessiveness corrupteth all good natures, bringeth obloquy to our nation and also loss to ourselves.” “Item 34” of this long command is “no dogs, bears, or superfluous burdens to be kept; no bond-men or women to wait upon them.” “Item 39, they shall pay for their apparel not at cost price but at the selling price in Russia.” Among other things the unfortunate ill-clad apprentice bore in the frozen north during arctic winter was punishment for the company’s misdoings, but the governors, “doubt that Alcock’s death proceeded from asking for payment of our debts, as Edwardes writes, but that he either quareled inadvisedly or else constrained the people touching their religion, laws, or manners, being given wisdom wolde to mislike and mock other strangers.” No wonder the English left the factory and tried to make a living for themselves, but withal there were many of the right grit among them, to wit, Anthony Jenkinson who passed through Moscow in 1558 determined upon finding a way to the Indies by the Caspian. This intrepid adventurer reached Ispahan with the goods of the Russia company and returned burdened with rich barter and precious gifts. Later he fitted out a fleet on the Caspian and made war on the Turcomans with some success, an undertaking the difficulties of which can scarcely be estimated seeing that he could communicate with England only by way of Archangel,—a port closed by ice for one half of the year. Jenkinson had not only to contend with pirates on the Volga, but was warned that the Danes might attempt to seize his ships,—Primrose, 240 tons; John Evangelist, 170; Anne, 160; Trinitie, 140;—as they passed the wardhouse (Vardso) “where be enemies that do mislike the newe found trade by seas to Russia.” Sigismund II., King of Poland, tried his utmost to stop the traffic, “sending messengers with pretended letters of thanks to English merchants in order to make the Tsar, Ivan, suspicious of them.

He fitted out ships in Dantzig to capture English ships bound for the Narva, and threatened Elizabeth that loss of liberty, life, wives and children awaited those who should carry wares and weapons to the Muscovite who was not only the enemy of the King of Poland but the hereditary foe of all free nations.” Among other of the company’s servants who distinguished themselves were Southam and Spark who discovered the water-way from the White Sea to Novgorod, and so got goods thither without such risk as was run from Russia’s enemies on the Baltic when sent by Narva. The Flemings and Germans were jealous of the new traders and made many misrepresentations concerning both persons and goods. They themselves furnished an inferior staple, but the simple people were made to prefer it to English cloth which, as it would not shrink as theirs did, could not be new.

Jerom Horsey was an apprentice or underling of the Russia company at Moscow; he attracted the Tsar’s attention by his expert horsemanship and his wit when the Tsar questioned him respecting the Russian ships building at Vologda for the Caspian. Horsey answered that with others he had admired their “strange fashion.” Ivan would know what he meant by this description. “I mean that the figure heads of lions, dragons, eagles, elephants and unicorns were so skilfully, so richly adorned with gold and silver, and painted in bright colours.” “A crafty youth to commend the work of his own countrymen,” remarked Ivan, and then asked about the English Fleet, but was displeased when Horsey described the Queen’s flag as “one before which all nations bow.” These traders were not the only British in Moscow, others were brought as prisoners by Ivan on his return from the devastation of Novgorod.

Unhappily their good treatment was not long continued. Soon Ivan set a thousand of his opritchniks “to rob and spoil them,” and their sufferings were terrible. Some escaped into the English House, and were clad and relieved there, “but,” says Horsey, “we were in danger of great displeasure in so doing.” But Horsey, a man of wide sympathies, did not confine his aid to men of his own country; he was instrumental in saving many other of the captives of Ivan’s wars in the west, who were quartered in a special suburb, the nemetski sloboda, “by my mediation and means, being then familiar and conversant in the Court, well known and respected of the best favourites and officers at that time, I procured liberty to build them a church, and contributed well thereunto; got unto them a learned preaching minister, and divine service and meeting of the congregation every Sabath day, but after their Lutheran profession.” These people “soon grew in good liking” of the Muscovite citizens, “living civilly, but in doleful mourning manner for their evil loss of goods, friends, and country.” Horsey was the man chosen by Ivan to take a private message to Queen Elizabeth in answer to the important communication she had sent him by Anthony Jenkinson. The Tsar provided him with horses, and a guard as far as the confines of his territory, but “forbear to tell you all the secrets entrusted to you, lest you should fall into my enemy’s power and be forced to betray them, but you will give to the Queen, my loving sister, the contents of this bottle,” and the Tsar himself secreted a small wooden spirit-flask among the trappings of the young rider’s horse.

Horsey had engaged upon a daring undertaking, and had an adventurous journey. It was winter; Russia was beset by Ivan’s enemies, who hated the English for the help given the Muscovite ruler. As soon as he crossed the border he feigned to be a refugee, but was taken as a spy and cast into prison. The governor of the castle, hearing that he came from Moscow, would learn some news of his daughter, who had been carried away a captive by Ivan’s troops. She was among those whom Horsey had helped to settle in the Sloboda, and he gave so good an account of her, that the grateful jailer liberated him and helped him forward on his long journey. When he passed through the Netherlands the merchants gave a banquet in his honour and, for favours he had rendered the foreigners in Moscow, presented him with a silver bowl full of ducats. Horsey returned the ducats, as he says, “not without afterwards repenting of this,” but kept the bowl to remind him of their good will. He reached England, and was received by the Queen and indicted by the sordid governors of the Russia company, who made a number of trivial and baseless charges. He returned to Russia more than once, got the extravagant demands of the company conceded, some thousands of roubles were “preened from the shins of Shalkan, the Chancellor,” and after living through the “troublous times” he finally settled in England; was married, knighted, and lived far into the seventeenth century.

Probably his “good friends” at court were Nikita Romanof, grandfather of the first elected Tsar, and Boris Godunov with whom Horsey was always on excellent terms. Ivan sent a couple of hundred of his opritchniks to pillage the house of his father-in-law Nikita Romanof, and the English then sheltered the family in their house close by, and supplied them with food and stuffs “for they had been stripped of all they possessed.” In its turn the English House suffered; it was burned by the Tartars in 1591, and the inmates huddled in the cellar for days, lost Spark, the explorer, Carver, the first apothecary in Moscow, and others, but the survivors rushed out during a lull in the conflagration and made their way through the smoke and flames to the Kremlin, where they were helped over the wall. In 1611 it was again destroyed by fire, in the struggle between Pojarski and the Poles, and finally destroyed during the French invasion. Its site is now occupied by the Siberian Podvor, in the Varvarka. It was not rebuilt, but a plot of land between the Broosovski and Chernichefski Pereuloks—the streets that connect the Tverskaya and Nikitskaya behind the Governor-General’s residence—was granted the colony by Alexander I., and there a new English church, parsonage and library have been erected.

The early settlers were chiefly traders, but they also coined silver money and made weapons; it was usual for the Tsar to honour the house by a ceremonial call early in the new year, and towards the autumn, the Tsar and Court accompanied the merchants the first stage of their homeward journey towards Archangel, and gave them a parting feast and toast at a picnic in the forest—a custom observed by Peter I. until he founded St Petersburgh. Their status was, and is, that of foreign guests, and they were subject to the common law and custom. William Barnsley of Worcester appears to have been the first Englishman exiled to Siberia. Ivan the Terrible thought him too familiar in his behaviour towards the Tsaritsa, so banished him, but he returned after twenty-six years, hale and very wealthy. Giles Fletcher, father of Phineas Fletcher, the poet, obtained an undertaking that Englishmen should not be put to the torture or put on the put-key—whipping block—before condemnation. His own book on Muscovy was promptly suppressed on the petition of the Russia Company, whose members so far from supporting the rights of their countrymen, were not altogether displeased that an escaped apprentice—or other roving Englishman—if not roasted, “yet were scorched.” Peter the Great put to death the beautiful Miss Hamilton, a lady of honour to his wife Eudoxia and nearly related to his own mother’s foster-parents, but he is said to have accompanied her to the scaffold and picked up the head as it dropped from the block and pressed his lips to hers.

There were Englishwomen in Moscow in the sixteenth century, for, apart from the anecdote respecting Ivan’s treatment of them, Jane Richard, the widow of his physician, the notorious Dr Bomel, was sent back to England in 1583, and in 1602 John Frenchman founded the Apteka in Moscow in 1586, and returned

TOWER OVER THE REDEEMER GATE (SPASSKI VOROT)
TOWER OVER THE REDEEMER GATE (SPASSKI VOROT)

to Moscow with his wife and family in 1602. From the complaints of the Russia Company of their young employees, it would appear that married men were sent out, “as also a Divine to exhort the single to righteous conduct,” quite early in its history. From these people who lived apart from the citizens and enjoyed certain privileges, the Russians derived new ideas as to woman’s place in the household, and many families adopted the foreign customs long before Peter “commanded” that the terems should be thrown open and the example of the Court followed by all.

The visible memorials of the early English settlers in Moscow may be found about the Kremlin in such works as the great central tower, Ivan Veliki, built by John Villiers, the beautiful Church of St Catherine—that behind the Golden Gate (v. p. 161) accredited to John Taylor; and, still more characteristic, those Gothic towers which rise so majestically above the Troitski and Spasski Gates. In them the influence of the east is scarcely to be discovered, even such use as is made of the ogival arch being quite as native to the Gothic of the later period as to the Russian architecture, whilst those forms of decoration common to Moscow prior to, and during, the seventeenth century are as completely ignored as the designs of the Italian builders of the wall these Gothic towers crown. In the view illustrated the belfry tower of the Church of St Catherine also figures, in not unpleasing contrast with the more severe, and beautiful, but commoner architecture adopted by Galloway.

Foreign craftsmen flocked to Moscow during the glorious reign of Alexis, and the Russia Company prospered, but the English settlers received a temporary check when the quarrel rose between King and Parliament. Alexis, in gratitude for favours shown his ancestors by the English, sent Charles grain and furs, and banished those who declared for the Commonwealth. He annulled the charter of the Russia Company when Cromwell succeeded, and would have no intercourse with the Protector. In this, as in most matters, Cromwell ultimately obtained his own way. The difficulty was smoothed away by Cromwell’s roaming ambassador, the able Bradshaw, who did not even need to visit Russia to accomplish so little. Trade was re-opened, and later Alexis corresponded with the great Englishman. During the reign of Peter all foreign residents, not military leaders, were oppressed—their wages were withheld that they might not escape the country and agreements and contracts disregarded, but there was no open enmity between the races save for a short time subsequent to the seizure of Malta, which act greatly embittered the Emperor Paul against the English. The Marquess of Carmarthen obtained a tobacco monopoly from Peter the Great, who on his return to Moscow now punished as severely those of his subjects who would not acquire the habit as he had previously done those who indulged it. But he disregarded the provisions of the contract and the result was that Queen Anne’s representative at Moscow was instructed to send home the workmen and secretly destroy all the material and machines in the factory at Moscow. The envoy and his secretary “spent long hours and nights” in accomplishing this service with their own hands—probably the last actual direct interference of the British Crown with matters commercial and industrial, for it failed of its ultimate purpose, and brought disaster.

Scotch soldiers of fortune found their opportunities in Russia, and made the most of them. One of the best known among them is the sturdy Patrick Gordon, who entered the Swedish service under the grandfather of Charles XII.; was captured by the Poles and served them until taken prisoner by Alexis. The Tsar had heard that Gordon had taken pity upon Russian captives in Warsaw, and at his own cost fed them, so sent for him that he might thank him personally for the “favours shown to the poor captives in Warsaw,” whereupon Gordon offered his sword to Moscow, and served faithfully. One Alexander Gordon, who claimed cousinship, found his way to Moscow, and was made an officer by Peter “for that he, single handed, thrashed seven Russian officers who had insulted him.” He also married a daughter of Patrick Gordon, and wrote the best contemporary biography of Peter I. Crawford helped the Gordons to form a regiment of regular soldiers, and Field-Marshal Bruce with Gordon rendered such valuable services, that Peter instituted the Order of St Andrew, for distinguished military services, and these Scotchmen were the first to be decorated.

After the peace of Tilsit Napoleon wished Alexander to banish or imprison the English in Russia, but the Tsar answered, “Their ancestors have been here during past centuries and I shall not treat my old friends so ill as to consider them enemies; if they choose to remain in Russia none shall molest them.” They suffered during the French occupation of Moscow; their Church was burned, and the residence of their pastor as well as their own warehouses and dwellings. It is said that one Englishman, more astute than most, buried his treasure and a little less deep interred the body of a French soldier. The marauders seeing the newly-turned earth dug until they reached the body of their comrade, but sought no further, and the next year the Englishman removed his treasure intact. During the Crimean war, the only inconvenience the English residents suffered was the loss of trade. The police doubted whether it was lawful for the community to offer up prayers for the defeat of the Russians—the Queen’s enemies—and the matter was referred to the Emperor Nicholas, who answered that the English were “to be allowed to pray for whomsoever and whatsoever they pleased.” From the English settlers have descended men who have distinguished themselves, as amongst poets, Lermontof (Lear-month); amongst diplomats, Count Balmaine (Ramsay of Balmaine) and Prince Menzikov (Menzies); among soldiers, Barclay de Tolly (from a Scotch Protestant refugee) and Skobelev (Scobie); amongst architects, Sherwood, designer of the Historical Museum, and Parland, architect of the Memorial Cathedral, St Petersburg, and in other walks of life, others the equals of these. The colonists have but one policy—to support the Government—and do not fuse freely with the Slavs. Some still cling tenaciously to the nationality of their ancestors, whilst in dress, language, manners and aspirations indistinguishable from those Russians of the class with whom they associate. Pathetic figures some; reluctant to relinquish the passport that alone links them with the land of their fathers, looked at askant by the Britons newly out, a nuisance to diplomatists, and a puzzle to the “orthodox.”