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.
“At which time, among other nations, there were four score and five poor Scotch soldiers left of 700 sent from Stockholm, and three Englishmen in their company brought many other captives, in most miserable manner, piteous to behold. I laboured and employed my best endeavours and credit—not only to succour them but with my purse, and pains, and means got them to be well placed at Bulvan near the Moskva. And although the Tsar was much inflamed with fury and wrath against them, torturing and putting many of these Swede soldiers to death—most lamentable to behold—I procured the Tsar to be told of the difference between these Scots, now his captives, and the Swedes, Poles and Lithuanins his enemies. That they were of a nation of strangers; remote; a venturous and warlike people, ready to serve any Christian prince for maintenance and pay, as they would appear and prove, if it pleased His Majesty to employ and spare them such maintenance. They were out of heart; no clothes; no arms; but would show themselves of valour even against his mortal enemy the Tartar. It seems some use was made of this advice for shortly the best soldiers were put apart and captains of each nation appointed to govern the rest. Jeamy Lingett for the Scottish men, a valiant, honest man. Money, clothes, and daily allowance for meat and drink was given them; horses, hay and oats; swords, piece and pistols were they armed with—poor snakes before, looke now cheerfully. Twelve hundred of them did better service against the Tartar than twelve thousand Russians with their short bows and arrows. The Krim-Tartars, not knowing then the use of muskets and pistols, struck dead on their horses with shot they saw not, cried:—‘Awaye with those new devils that come with their thundering puffs,’ whereat the Tsar made good sport. Then had they pensions and lands allowed them to live upon; matched and married with the fair women of Livonia; increased into families, and live in favour of the prince and people.”—Horsey.
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.