Transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition byDavid Price,
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY
THE
Discovery of Muscovy.
FROM THECOLLECTIONS OF
RICHARD HAKLUYT.
WITH
The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan from King
Alfred’s Orosius.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS &MELBOURNE.
1893.
INTRODUCTION.
The first relations between Englandand Russia were established in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, inthe manner here set forth, by the expedition undertaken by SirHugh Willoughby and completed by Richard Chanceler or Chancellor,captain of the Edward Bonaventure. Chanceler went onafter Willoughby and the crew of his ship, The Admiral,with the crew of another vessel in the expedition, had beenparted from Chanceler in a storm in the North Sea, andWilloughby’s men were all frozen to death. A few menbelonging to the other ship were believed to have found their wayback to England. The story of Chanceler’s voyage andthe following endeavours to open Muscovy to English trade is heregiven, as it was told in Hakluyt’s collection of “ThePrincipal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries made by theEnglish Nation,” the folio published in 1589.
The story of our first contact with Russia belongs to the daysof 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 tohave got their name through the Finnish Ruotsi, acorruption, it is said, of the Swedishrothsmenn—rowers. Legends point also to aScandinavian settlement in the ninth century in NorthernRussia. A chief Igor, whose name is supposed to representthe Scandinavian Ingvar, was trained by a warrior chief Oleg(Scandinavian Helgi?), who attacked Byzantium and wrung tributefrom the Greeks. After the death of Oleg, Igor reigned, andafter the death of Igor his wife Olga was regent, and wasbaptised at Byzantium in the year 955. Her son Sviotoslaffthe first chief with a Slavonic name, was a conquering chief, whodid not become Christian. He was killed in battle, and hisskull was made into a drinking-cup. His son Vladimir was acruel warrior, who took to Christianity, was baptised in the year988, 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 hisdominions, leaving Novgorod to his son Yaroslaff, who establishedthe first code of laws. After the death of Yaroslaff, inthe year 1054, Russia was broken into petty principalities, untilthe year 1238, when there was a great invasion of the Mongols,who became a great disturbing power, and remained so until theyear 1462, when Ivan III. began the consolidation of a Russianempire. He reigned forty-three years, suppressed theliberties of many independent regions, annexed states, checkedthe Mongols, married a Byzantine princess, and so broug