Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth: The Muscovy Company and Giles Fletcher, the elder (1546–1611) 9781784996871

Citation preview

Blank page

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth

Politics, culture and society in early modern Britain General Editors D R ALEX AND RA  GAJ DA PRO FES S O R ANTH O NY   MI LTON PRO FES S O R PETER  L A KE D R J AS O N  PEACEY

This important series publishes monographs that take a fresh and challenging look at the interactions between politics, culture and society in Britain between 1500 and the mid-eighteenth century. It counteracts the fragmentation of current historiography through encouraging a variety of approaches which attempt to redefine the political, social and cultural worlds, and to explore their interconnection in a flexible and creative fashion. All the volumes in the series question and transcend traditional interdisciplinary boundaries, such as those between political history and literary studies, social history and divinity, urban history and anthropology. They thus contribute to a broader understanding of crucial developments in early modern Britain. Recently published in the series Chaplains in early modern England: Patronage, literature and religion HUGH AD LI NGTO N, TO M LO CK W O O D AND GI LLI A N WRI GHT (eds) The Cooke sisters: Education, piety and patronage in early modern England GEM M A ALLEN

Black Bartholomew’s Day  Insular Christianity 

D AVI D J.  A PPLE B Y

RO BERT ARM S TRO NG AND TA DHG Ó HA N N RA C HA I N

Reading and politics in early modern England  ‘No historie so meete’  Republican learning 

(eds)

GE OF F B A KE R

J AN BROA DWAY

J U S TI N C HA MPI ON

News and rumour in Jacobean England: Information, court politics and diplomacy, 1618–25  D AV I D C OA ST This England 

PATRI CK COLLI N SON

Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653) and the patriotic monarch 

C E SA RE C U T TI C A

Doubtful and dangerous: The question of succession in late Elizabethan England  S U S AN D O RAN and PAU LI N A KE WE S (eds) Brave community  ‘Black Tom’ 

J O H N GU RN E Y

AND REW H OPPE R

Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum J AS O N M CELLI GO T T AND D AVI D L.  SMI TH

Laudian and Royalist polemic in Stuart England 

A N THON Y MI LTON

The crisis of British Protestantism: Church power in the Puritan Revolution, 1638–44  H U NTE R POWE LL

Full details of the series are available at www.manchesteruniversitypress.com.

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth The Muscovy Company and Giles Fletcher, the elder (1546–1611)

FELICITY JANE STOUT

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Felicity Jane Stout 2015 The right of Felicity Jane Stout to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9700 3 hardback First published 2015 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

For my mother and father and my grandparents

Blank page

Contents

L I S T OF F I GU RE S — viii A CK NOWL E D GEMENT S — ix L I S T OF A BBREVI ATI ONS— xi N O TE ON S TYL E, D ATES A ND T ERM I NO LO G Y — xiii

Introduction

1

1 An adventuring commonwealth: English mercantile and diplomatic encounters with Russia, 1553–88

15

2 A commonwealths-man in Russia: Giles Fletcher’s early career and embassies

59

3 Creating a feigned commonwealth: Fletcher’s response to Russia

93

4 A corrupted commonwealth: Fletcher’s representation of Russia

117

5 A commonwealth counselled: Russia’s resonances in late Elizabethan England

147

6 A controversial commonwealth: censorship, poetry and Fletcher’s later career

189

Conclusion. Thinking with Russia, writing English commonwealth

227

S E L E CT BI BL I OGRA PH Y— 232 I ND E X— 244

vii

Figures

1 Table of contents from Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Common Wealth (London, 1591). Reproduced by permission of the Chapter of York. 2 ‘A double care requisite in a traveller’, summary table from Robert Dallington, A Method for travel (London, 1605), sig. A3. Reproduced by permission of the University of Sheffield Library.

viii

120

122

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the support, encouragement and assistance of many people and institutions. I am very grateful to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC for their generous short-term fellowship and to the Society for Renaissance Studies, UK, who granted me a fellowship to spend time transforming my PhD thesis into a broader, more nuanced study of Giles Fletcher and the Muscovy Company. My PhD supervisor, Professor Mike Braddick, has been unswervingly encouraging and supportive, as well as very human in his perspective and advice. His constructive criticism, both during my PhD and afterwards, has helped me to develop as a historian and his continuing interest and enthusiasm in the project has encouraged me to persevere. Anthony Milton, my second PhD supervisor, has also been unfailingly supportive and has provided much assistance in the practicalities of getting the work published. I am also very grateful to the whole team at Manchester University Press for all of their efforts and to the readers who have provided extensive and insightful comments on earlier versions of this work. Special thanks go to Gary Rivett, who has always been willing to talk through thorny historical issues. My work bears the marks of his intellectual insight, and our many discussions of early modern history have greatly enhanced my understanding of the subject. He also bravely volunteered to read parts of the work, at various stages along the way, for which I am thankful. The Early Modern Discussion Group at the University of Sheffield has been a great forum, over the years, for trying out new ideas and talking them through, as have the early modern postgraduate conferences at Keele University and the Folger Shakespeare Library seminars. I am grateful to all participants for comments made on ideas presented. The staff in the Manuscripts Room at the British Library have been very helpful, as have my doctoral advisers there, Chris Thomas and Katya Rogatchevskaia. Thanks go to Mary Robertson at the Huntington Library, who helped me find my way around the collection and provided many useful introductions. I would also like to thank Karen Begg at Queens’ College, Cambridge, Marguerite Ragnow at the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota, Greg Colley at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Suzan Griffiths at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, Bruce Whiteman at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and the staff in the Special Collections at Sheffield University Library for their assistance in accessing Fletcher’s manuscripts and other rare printed works.

ix

Acknowledgements Intellectual thanks go to Cathy Shrank and Alan Bryson for their reading of my work, their discussion and pointers in the right directions. I have gained much insight and inspiration from discussions with Daniel Vitkus, Jennifer Richards, Peter Lake, Peter Mancall, Alison Sandman, Rupali Mishra, David Scott Gehring, Eric Platt and Alexandra Gajda. Pastoral thanks go to Linda Kirk for her advice and empathy. Earlier versions of parts of this work have appeared in ‘ “The strange and wonderfull discoverie of Russia”: Hakluyt and censorship’, in Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt (eds), Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 153–63, and ‘ “The country is too colde, the people beastlie be”: Elizabethan representations of Russia’, Literature Compass, 10:6 (2013), 483–95. I am grateful to Ashgate and Wiley-Blackwell, respectively, for permission to use this material. The friendship, support and intellectual inspiration of Mary Davies has been invaluable over the last few years. Lars Huening and Frauke Dransfeld have been a brilliant inspiration, full of laughter and fantastic yoga and climbing mates. Stef Rhodes has always let me kip on her couch during many research trips to London, and Rachel Flemming, Sonya Bangle and Karen Cameron have helped to disentangle me from the sixteenth century and bring me back to the twenty-first on various occasions. Many thanks go to Kate Hamilton and Daniela Croll, for being courageous compañeras along the way, and to Dan Balla, for always offering a place of retreat. My gratitude to my family cannot be expressed fully in words. My sisters, Rachel and Beth, have been warriors of kindness and patience. My brother and siblings-in-law have made me laugh and fed me often, along with my niece and nephews, Anna, Josh, Luke and Finn, who have generally been mischievous. My parents have been ever-caring and encouraging and have helped me to take breaks along the way. Most importantly, they have kept me from throwing in the towel on numerous occasions. For this I am truly grateful. Finally, I would like to thank my brilliant partner and husband, David Cunningham. He has been a bounteous fountain of hilarity, wisdom and support. He has provided perspective and relaxation during the final stages, with good food, cups of tea, much affection, humour, tree climbing and lots of hugs.

x

List of abbreviations

The following abbreviations apply to the primary manuscript and printed sources that have been used in this study, as well as institutions that are regularly referred to. All references have been cited in full in the first instance and abbreviated thereafter. BL CSPD

CSPF

Fletcher, ‘MD’

Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam. Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min. Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Oxf. Fletcher, RCW Fletcher, ‘SN’ Hakluyt, PN (1589)

Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600)

Hatf. LMA ODNB

The British Library, London Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I, ed. R. Lemon and M. A. E. Green, 12 vols (London: HMSO, 1865–72) Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, ed. J. Stevenson, A. J. Crosby et al., 23 vols (London: HMSO, 1863–1950) G. Fletcher, ‘Means of Decay & remedies for the Russe trade’, 1589, BL Lansdowne MS 52, no. 37 (b), fos 104v–105r G. Fletcher, ‘Of the Russe Common Wealth’, Queens’ College, Cambridge, MS 25 G. Fletcher, ‘Of the Russe Common Wealth’, James Ford Bell collection, University of Minnesota, MS G. Fletcher, ‘Of the Russe Common Wealth’, University College, Oxford, MS 144 G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Common Wealth (London, 1591) G. Fletcher, ‘The summe of my negotiation’, 21 September 1589, BL Lansdowne MS 60, no. 59, fos 157r–160v R. Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation made by sea or over land, to the most remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1500 yeeres (London, 1589) R. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation made by sea or over-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1600 yeres (London, 1598–1600) Hatfield House, Hertfordshire London Metropolitan Archives Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, 2008)

xi

List of abbreviations SIRIO

TNA

xii

Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoricheskago Obshchestva (Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society), 149 vols (St Petersburg: Imperatorskoy akademii nauk, 1867–1916) The National Archives, London

newgenprepdf

Note on style, dates and terminology

Spelling and punctuation has been kept as it appears in original documents, except that abbreviations are expanded and u/v, i/j and vv have been modernised. Short titles of early printed works have been given throughout. Dates are given according to the old-style calendar, but the start of the year is taken as 1 January, rather than 25 March. In this study I have attempted, where appropriate and where possible, to use terms that people in the Elizabethan period may have been familiar with. For example, the words ‘forward’, often used to describe advanced or zealous reforming opinions, and ‘froward’, meaning refractory, ungovernable or even rebellious, can be found regularly in sixteenth-century texts. In this vein, I have used the term ‘forward Protestant’, as coined by Blair Worden in The Sound of Virtue, as ‘a term contemporaries would have understood’ to mean those who were zealous in the quest for further reformation of the church and who ‘sought the vigorous advancement of Protestantism at home and abroad’.1 To refer to the sixteenth-century Muscovite state, I have used the words ‘Russia’ and ‘Muscovy’ interchangeably, as did the sixteenth-century Englishmen exploring and trading there. I have also regularly used the word ‘emperor’ to refer to the ruler of Muscovy, or Russia, in imitation of the title attributed to the Russian monarch (tsar) by Englishmen trading and negotiating with Ivan IV and Feodor I. The Muscovy Company accounts and royal correspondence invariably referred to the Russian ruler as ‘emperor’, as did those who were involved in direct diplomatic audiences with Ivan and Feodor. At times, I have also used the term ‘tsar’, which is a word more commonly used by scholars of Russian history to describe the rulers of Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. NOTES 1 B. Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), p. xxii.

xiii

Blank page

Introduction

Of the Russe Common Wealth or Maner of Governement by the Russe Emperour was published in London in 1591. This was a work concerned with describing the unfamiliar land of Russia to a late sixteenth-century English audience. It was written by Giles Fletcher, the elder, who had been commissioned as Elizabeth I’s ambassador to Russia in 1588 to represent the interests of her government and of the Muscovy Company in the Muscovite court of Feodor I. This study examines the early history of the Muscovy Company, Giles Fletcher’s experiences and responses to Russia, both his diplomatic reports to Elizabeth and the privy council and his published account of Russia, as well as his later poetry. By analysing the pervasive languages of commonwealth, corruption and tyranny found in the Muscovy Company accounts of Russia and in the works of Giles Fletcher, this monograph explores how Russia was a useful tool for Elizabethans to think with when they reflected on unfamiliar lands, types of government and the changing face of kingship in the late sixteenth century. It seeks to draw together and analyse the narratives of travel, the practicalities of trade and the discourses of commonwealth and corruption that defined English encounters with unfamiliar lands to the north-east of Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century. The title of Fletcher’s work, Of the Russe Common Wealth, invites us to explore two significant aspects of the Elizabethan polity, which were inextricably mixed: overseas exploration and the concept of commonwealth. On the one hand, Fletcher aimed to educate his audience on the strange land of Russia on the peripheries of Christendom. On the other, his detailed exegesis of the Russian state provided an opportunity for his readers to explore conceptions of government, embodied in the idiom of ‘commonwealth’, and its renaissance antithesis – tyranny. In this sense, the study of Fletcher’s works connects us directly to two historiographies that are often separated, to the

1

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth detriment of both: that of Elizabethan travel and trade literature, linked to Fletcher’s term ‘Russe’, and that of late Elizabethan political culture, epitomised by his use of the term ‘commonwealth’. These historiographies, like their subject of study, should be intimately intertwined, but have often been held and examined quite apart from each other. It is one of the aims of this work to hold both historiographies and subject matter together, in examining the works of Fletcher and the workings of the Muscovy Company. In the scholarship concerned with Elizabethan political culture, significant attention has been paid to the importance of plays, poetry and histories, as ‘mirrors for magistrates’ or points of departure for authors and audiences to discuss the domestic stresses and strains, as well as the continental-wide religious strife, so present in Elizabethan politics.1 Although less often examined in the study of Elizabethan political culture, trade and travel accounts, diplomatic reports and treatises on the governments of foreign lands are equally important to our understanding of the workings of the Elizabethan regime, and no less revelatory of Elizabethan readers’ conceptions of government and perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of monarch and civil subject in the late sixteenth-century commonwealth. The manuscript and printed literature of sixteenth-century Western Europe proliferates with travel accounts, mercantile advice, captivity narratives, navigational information, diplomatic reports and maps of imperfectly known and far-distant lands. In the early sixteenth-century the Spanish and Portuguese had already ‘discovered’ new lands to the far east and west of the globe. In the case of England, her new ‘discoveries’ were initially to be found in the north, with attempts to explore and navigate north-eastern and north-western passages to the fabled lands of Cathay. In fact, before the English had much contact with the East Indies, the South Seas or the Americas, they had ‘discovered’ and opened trade and diplomatic relations with Russia in the hope of gaining access to lands further east. Thus England’s ventures to find a north-eastern passage, the subsequent ‘discoverie of Russia’ and the later exploration of a route to Persia, via Muscovy and the Caspian Sea, were all significant success stories in the emerging stages of English exploration beyond familiar ports and destinations.2 In the 1550s the Italian collector and editor Giovanni Battista Ramusio included in his Delle navigationi et viaggi (1555–9) a tract, later translated and included in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principall navigations (1589),3 on the great importance and potential of discovering a northern passage to East Asia, ‘which navigation to Cathay, although it be not as yet throughly knowen, yet if with often frequenting the same, and by long use and knowledge of those seas it bee continued, it is like to make a wonderfull change and revolution in the state of this our part of the world’.4 As a result of the initial successes of pioneering voyages to explore the northern coast and interior of Russia in the 1550s and the literature that

2

Introduction emerged from those voyages, Russia came to hold a prominent place in Tudor travel and trade information, compilations and cosmographies, as a celebration of English adventuring spirit.5 References to Russia appeared in Tudor theatre, poetry, works on husbandry, religious texts and political theory. In the 1580s, Hakluyt celebrated the English exploration of Russia by collecting and publishing over seventy accounts and documents relating to Anglo-Russian interactions.6 In Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591), it was ‘cold Muscovie’ that provided the metaphor for the captivating, enslaving and tyrannous love that Stella ignited in Astrophil, ‘Now even that foot-steppe of lost libertie / Is gone, and now like slave borne Muscovite: / I call it praise to suffer tyrannie’.7 By 1597 William Warner, in his epic verse account of England’s history, Albion’s England, was celebrating how the Muscovy Company had taken on the harsh conditions of the Arctic Ocean and had succeeded in developing a lucrative trade with a far-off and barbaric land beyond Europe’s ‘old world’ peripheries, through the Seas of ysie Rocks, the Muscovites disclose We shal our English Voyages, the cheefe at least, digest Of which in this her Highnes Raigne have been perform’d the best … Yeat him to say for most the Meane, it weare not us to shame Of English new Discoveries, that yeeld us Wealth and Fame.8

The widespread appearance of literature on overseas travel, exploration and trade in the sixteenth century has resulted in an abundant and extensive scholarship on many of these subjects, which has broadened to include analysis of cultural relations, first encounters with unfamiliar peoples and how Western Europeans conceptualised and articulated the cultural differences they encountered in their explorations of the wider world. The focus, understandably, has often been turned towards the ‘New World’ of the Americas. Elena Shvarts, in her illuminating study of English representations of Russia from the early modern period onwards, draws attention to what Daniel Vitkus has called ‘a “new globalism” in early modern studies’ describing ‘the obsession with New World colonial histories that has gripped early modernists, especially since the 500th anniversary of Columbus’.9 Much of the historiography, particularly of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century exploration, adventure and trade, seems to have overlooked the less familiar, but still equally important, sites of northern ‘discovery’, revealing an anachronistic fascination with the new world of America, perhaps dictated by the present global context.10 The scholarship of overseas travel and trade has, of course, been profoundly influenced by Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism.11 Both the argument of Orientalism and its subsequent critique, although focused primarily in scholarly writings on the colonial period, has had a significant impact on the

3

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth discussion of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century exploration, experience and appropriation of unfamiliar lands and new worlds.12 In fact, the subject of Said’s original argument, the eastern ‘other’, has been put to use to explore and explain fifteenth- and sixteenth-century encounters with the new world to the west of ‘Europe’. Problematically, much of this scholarship has often heralded amalgamations of European accounts of the unfamiliar ‘other’ at the expense of individual responses to these unfamiliar lands. Scholars have frequently presented only one way of writing an unfamiliar land – an essentialised view that expresses a homogenous ‘orientalising discourse’ to be found in all Western European accounts of ‘the other’, as opposed to seeing the multiple ways in which unexplored, unfamiliar lands were represented and how these representations were utilised for differing mercantile, political, religious and cultural purposes. More recently, however, scholarship of the early twenty-first century has demonstrated an increasing awareness of the essentialising tendencies in the study of early modern travel and trade, recognising that the Americas have often been prioritised over other narratives of exploration. Exhibitions and works, such as Russia Engages the World, 1453–1825 (2003), Daryl Palmer’s Writing Russia in the Age of Shakespeare (2004), John Archer’s Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India, and Russia in Early Modern English Writing (2002) and the edited collection Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (2012), have all contributed to broader discussions on the nature of travel writing in the early modern period, engaging with and scrutinising a historiography dominated by ‘new world’ subjects and all too often focused towards identifying Western Europe’s exotic ‘other’. An examination of the accounts of the Muscovy Company and of Fletcher’s interactions and responses to Russia builds on and contributes to this more recent, less insular trend in the scholarship of renaissance travel and trade, widening the horizons beyond perceptions and interactions with a defined ‘other’ in a ‘new world’ context. This work also contributes to the historiography of Elizabethan political culture, and its fascinations with the changing face of Elizabeth’s government over the course of her reign. It investigates how explorers, merchants and diplomats thought about structures of Elizabethan government, be it within the microcosm of the Muscovy Company or the macrocosm of the Elizabethan commonwealth. The study of the Muscovy Company records and Fletcher’s works together sheds more light on the ways in which politically active and educated Elizabethans conceptualised and experienced their commonwealth and how they perceived the old and new worlds emerging and evolving around them. Examining trade, travel and diplomatic accounts in this way provides an alternative approach to the study of Elizabethan political thought and culture, in contrast to the pervasive emphasis on classical republican and/or

4

Introduction neo-Roman influences in much of the recent historiography, profoundly influenced by the work of J. G. A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner and Patrick Collinson.13 The political culture of the Elizabethan period has attracted much attention in recent scholarship, partly as a result of two intimately linked and persuasive arguments relating to the changing character of Elizabeth’s rule over forty years on the throne. Patrick Collinson’s concept of the ‘monarchical republic’ and John Guy’s ‘second reign’ theory are both concerned with exploring Elizabeth’s government and the role of counsel within kingship. As Peter Lake points out, the phrase ‘monarchical republic’ was coined by Collinson to discuss the reactions of members of Elizabeth’s privy council, most notably Burghley, to moments of extreme anxiety and crisis in the regime, characterised by assassination plots directed against the queen, the continuing threat of Mary, Queen of Scots and the diminishing hopes of Elizabeth producing a direct, Protestant heir. In the years 1584–5, for instance, contingency plans written up by Burghley suggested that in the event of Elizabeth’s assassination or death without an heir, the privy council and parliament should take proactive measures in the interests of protecting the Protestant commonwealth to exclude Mary, Queen of Scots from succession to the English throne.14 Such contingency plans, also identified at an earlier point in the Elizabethan regime by Stephen Alford, were, he argues, examples of Collinson’s ‘monarchical republic’ – where active members of the authorised ranks of counsel took the initiative in creating a provisional, transitional kind of government in the absence of a ruler and thus invoking the inherent authority of the parliament without a monarch, or ‘Grand Council’ as Burghley envisaged it, in its own right to weigh up potential claimants for succession.15 There has been much discussion in response to Collinson’s concept of the ‘monarchical republic’.16 Some scholars, for instance Markku Peltonen, Andrew Hadfield and John Guy, have taken Collinson’s ‘monarchical republic’ model to the more acute ‘republican’ end of the spectrum, in what Lake has identified as a ‘maximum’ interpretation, as opposed to a ‘minimum’ interpretation, of what the term ‘monarchical republic’ could mean when applied to the Elizabethan context.17 However, a ‘minimum’ understanding of the term ‘monarchical republic’, as intended by Collinson’s original use of the phrase, seems to be the most helpful in the study of late Elizabethan politics. For although the term ‘republic’ was part of the Elizabethan lexicon, used variously to refer to ancient Roman government, the classical works of Plato and Cicero, the republics of Venice, Pisa and Genoa, or ‘that prodigiouse republicke or colourable commonwealth in Holand & zeland’, it was not a term generally applied by Englishmen to their own situation.18 Markku Peltonen, among others, has drawn our attention to the language of virtue and action, defining thought and behaviour that embodied the ethos of classical humanist and republican ideas.19 More often than not, however, the language of virtue

5

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth was expressed and harnessed for discussion and debate over how to protect the English commonwealth from tyranny, rather than to articulate a form of proto- or quasi-republicanism. Perhaps, because of over-use, the term has lost some of its analytical rigour, being stretched and applied far beyond the original remit of what Collinson had intended. Collinson argued that ‘to have a monarchical republic you must have a word interchangeable for the sixteenth century with republic, a commonwealth’.20 Perhaps this term ‘commonwealth’ is one we should be exploring more fully in studies of late Elizabethan politics, rather than, as Blair Worden has warned, ‘reach[ing] for the term “republicanism” too readily’.21 A more thorough investigation of what privy council, political yeomanry and private subjects alike considered the structure, role and responsibilities of the ‘commonwealth’ to be, and the various meanings attached to the word, would enhance our understanding of the workings of Elizabethan government, the differing views of the extent of a monarch’s prerogative and what role counsel and parliament had to play in maintaining and managing the wellbeing of the body politic. Building on the work of Phil Withington and David Rollinson on the politics of commonwealth, an important objective of this study is to examine what ‘commonwealth’ meant, in the context of overseas trade and diplomacy, to a queen and her privy council, to governors, members and servants of a mercantile joint-stock company, to illegal private traders, to a humanist, Protestant ambassador and to his various audiences in the late Elizabethan regime.22 Alongside discussions over the concept of the ‘monarchical republic’, there has also been much debate in recent scholarship concerning the nature of Elizabeth’s government in the later years of her reign. John Guy has argued for a marked shift in the style of monarchical government in the 1590s, going as far as to identify two distinct reigns of Elizabeth, divided by the mid to late 1580s.23 Guy asserts that the concept of the Elizabethan commonwealth as a ‘mixed polity’, where the assent of parliament was required to make any significant political changes, and where parliament – the queen, Lords and Commons conjoined – was the only authoritative legislative body, diminished during this second period or ‘reign’.24 Paul Hammer’s work on the influence of the Earl of Essex and his conflicts with the Cecils in the politics of the late Elizabethan regime has also reinforced this idea of a significantly different political climate in Elizabeth’s later years.25 Peter Lake, however, has challenged Guy’s ‘second reign’ theory by suggesting an earlier Elizabethan aversion, expressed by Elizabeth herself and by anti-popish and anti-puritan voices in the regime to the idea of ‘mixed-estate’ government.26 Lake also contests the concept of the ‘monarchical republic’ as an unproblematic definition of what Elizabeth’s rule looked like.27 More recently, Alexandra Gajda has also challenged the uncomplicated character of Guy’s hypothesis by suggesting that the chronological division

6

Introduction imposed by Guy has served to homogenise a literary and political culture both pre- and post-1585 that was much more varied, complex and creative, responding to the specific circumstances of Elizabeth’s ever-mutable reign. Her work reveals an array of contrasting theories of government that remained in print circulation throughout the 1590s, emphasising the diversification of political thinking in late Elizabethan England, despite the concerted efforts of the regime to foster the theory of absolute monarchy.28 Gajda highlights the importance of contrasting the authoritarian definitions of monarchy promoted by the late Elizabethan regime with the pervasive popular interest in histories of government, expressed through the medium of poetry and drama, which discussed resistance and deposition, tyranny and civil war and were ‘frequently used as a vehicle to explore political ideas, and to scrutinise the actions of monarchs and their greater subjects’.29 She identifies the prose and verse histories of the medieval baronial wars and Wars of the Roses found in the works of John Hayward, Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton, as well as various plays by Shakespeare depicting the fates of weak tyrants, such as Edward II and Henry VI and the despots Richard II and Richard III.30 Paulina Kewes takes this line of argument further in her exegesis of Henry Savile’s 1591 translation of Tacitus’s Histories and the Agricola, exploring ‘how late Elizabethan translators, historians, and imaginative writers guided readers to draw suitable topical inferences while avoiding official censure’.31 It was not only translators, writers of histories, poets and playwrights, of course, who offered up texts that provided their audiences with opportunities to ruminate on the state of government and the nature of Elizabeth’s rule through the stories of other times and places, real or imagined. As this study argues, works of travel narrative, diplomatic reports, mercantile accounts and descriptions of foreign lands that often combined history, translation and imaginative or at least creative writing functioned in a similar way.32 In this respect, we can place Fletcher’s work in a cultural, political and social milieu in which the narratives of other lands, whether historical, imaginative or far-off, were used to meditate on contemporary events, political developments and changing forms of government. His work can be interpreted as an attempt to mobilise the generic mode of travel scholarship in order to scrutinise foreign governments and theorise on the politics of commonwealth. Not only did this enable Fletcher’s audience to explore other political theories besides the regime’s orthodoxy, it also allowed the potential for reading into the fortunes of Russia a veiled criticism of the Elizabethan state, if readers chose to interpret his text in this way. Thinking with Russia could either be a harmless exercise in humanist political theory or, more controversially, a criticism of the changing face of Elizabeth’s reign, incorporating by inversion an elucidation of mixed-estate theories of government at a time when the regime was ramping up its claims to absolute monarchy.

7

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth As well as contributing to our understanding of Tudor conceptions of commonwealth and tyranny and the use of accounts of other lands to theorise on government, this work also engages with the specific historiographies of overseas trade and diplomacy and English accounts of interactions with Russia. The history of the Muscovy Company has attracted less attention than its due in the scholarship of early modern exploration, trade and diplomacy. An exception is T. S. Willan’s mid-twentieth-century account of the early history of English trading relations with Russia.33 In his analysis, Willan drew extensively on the work of nineteenth-century historians, such as George Hamel, E. A. Bond, Yury Tolstoi, E. D. Morgan and C. H. Coote, and from the early twentieth century, Inna Lubimenko.34 The Russian historian Vasilli Kliuchevskii produced a late nineteenth-century summary of Western European accounts of Russia, but his analysis focused on how useful the texts were for displaying an accurate picture of Muscovy in the sixteenth century.35 Sergei Mikhailovich Seredonin’s 1891 essay on Fletcher’s treatise similarly attempted to correct its factual ‘errors’, weighing up whether Fletcher’s text was a viable source for the history of early modern Russia.36 During the 1960s, various North American scholars took a particular interest in early Anglo-Russian encounters, presumably as a result of Cold War fears and fascination with the politics of Eastern Europe. Between 1964 and 1968, for instance, four separate editions of Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth were published in the USA.37 In the 1970s and 1980s, wide-ranging research on the early history of Anglo-Russian relations was pursued by Samuel H. Baron, examining Russian embassies to England, mercantile relations with Russia and Fletcher’s embassy in 1588.38 The intervening period has seen little work specifically focused on Fletcher, but Maria Unkovskaya, and Maija Jansson and Nikolai Rogozhin have explored sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anglo-Russian relations more generally.39 Significantly, within the last decade there have been several different analyses of sixteenth-century Western European encounters with and writing about Russia in the work of John Archer, Marshall Poe, Daryl Palmer, Elena Shvarts and Anna Riehl Bertolet.40 Palmer and Archer, in particular, have paid more attention to Fletcher from a literary perspective. However, there has been little attempt to put the Muscovy Company and Fletcher and his work thoroughly under the microscope and place him firmly within the context of late Elizabethan political culture, both domestic and foreign. This book aims to address the lacunae by analysing Fletcher’s voyage, experience and works on Russia within the context of late Elizabethan humanist discourse and the domestic and foreign politics of the 1580s and 1590s. It also seeks to tease out the important themes of commonwealth and tyranny found in the Muscovy Company literature, as well as in Fletcher’s works. Similar themes of commonwealth and corruption have been identified in the mercantile rhetoric of the East India Company ventures and activities.41 This

8

Introduction work, however, situates the language of ‘corporate virtue’ and corporate corruption among the earlier trading ventures towards the north-east pursued by the Muscovy Company.42 It outlines the lofty ideals of the Muscovy Company in embryo, the practical realities of company life abroad in a ‘barbarous’ and unfamiliar land and how these corporate concerns of commonwealth and corruption were mirrored in Fletcher’s diplomatic reports and in his book-length treatise on the Russian ‘commonwealth’. The discussion begins with an examination of the ‘discovery’ of Russia and the establishment of the Muscovy Company, exploring the language used by English explorers, merchants and ambassadors who encountered this unfamiliar land. Chapter 1 examines the records of the Muscovy Company, comprising instructions to company servants, correspondence between governors and company agents and ambassadors and the day-today aspects of mercantile affairs in Russia and at home. It discusses the ‘commonwealth’ culture cultivated within the Muscovy Company to cope with the challenges presented by travel, exploration and trade in a foreign and far-off land. It also examines aspects of corruption and tyranny in Muscovy Company affairs, exposed by the actions and writings of company servants and private traders alike. Chapter 2 examines Fletcher’s personal history, his development as a young man, his early career and training as an ambassador and his later journey and experience of Russia in his embassy of 1588–9. It discusses the significance of Fletcher’s primary role as a poet and his humanist education, as revealed in his reactions to Russia. Fletcher’s involvement in Muscovy Company affairs and the Anglo-Russian relationship during his embassy demonstrates, above all, his humanist inclination to pursue the vita activa of the vir civilis, the civil commonwealths-man, who acts virtuously and seeks to give counsel, where appropriate. His diplomatic writings present a distinctive view of the Muscovy Company situation and the Anglo-Russian relationship in 1588–9, in which he suggested radical alterations to the company organisation that would allow it to flourish in Russia. This is followed in Chapter 3 by an analysis of the early manuscript versions of Fletcher’s book-length treatise on Russia, tracing the development of his work from a diplomatic report and work of counsel for the private audience of the queen to a work of counsel for a public audience, as well as a work of reference, travel information and civil philosophy. This chapter begins to uncover the multiple languages and readings that can be found in his text and raises the issue of the multi-generic nature of his work; that it was not simply, and not even, ‘travel literature’ or narrative, nor simply counsel for a queen or a mirror for magistrates. The final section of Chapter 3 examines briefly the relationship between Fletcher’s early manuscript treatise and Richard Hakluyt’s first edition of The Principall navigations (1589), the most extensive

9

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth compilation of English exploration, travel and trade documents of the early modern period. The content of Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth, is discussed primarily in Chapter 4 in the context of the themes of commonwealth and tyranny, civility and corruption that emerge from the examination of the Muscovy Company accounts and the development of Fletcher’s diplomatic reports. This in-depth analysis of Fletcher’s account of Russia reveals it as more of a theorising of tyrannical government than a travel narrative of a new world discovery. Chapter 5 draws attention to the potential resonances that Fletcher’s text held for an English audience and points to the specific context of the late 1580s and early 1590s that could have influenced the production and reception of Fletcher’s text in its printed form. It explores the themes of tyranny, evil counsel, the role of the nobility and the effects of corrupt religion on an ostensibly civil commonwealth. Furthermore, it considers how Fletcher’s work could have been read and interpreted by a late Elizabethan audience, by utilising scholarship on early modern reading practices, particularly the work of Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton and the ideas of Michel de Certeau. By employing de Certeau’s concept of ‘reading as poaching’, in which the reader ‘invents in texts something different from what they “intended” … [and] creates something un-known in the space organised by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings’, the possibilities of what Fletcher’s late Elizabethan audience could read into his work are investigated.43 Finally, Chapter 6 discusses the immediate and controversial reception of Fletcher’s text on its publication in 1591. By examining the state of Anglo-Russian affairs, as well as the ideas expressed in Fletcher’s work, this chapter pieces together the story of how Fletcher’s text was suppressed and problematises previous accounts of why Of the Russe Common Wealth was censored. Furthermore, it explores the possible motives of counsel and critique that may have lain behind Fletcher’s work by examining his return to the role of humanist poet and the parallel themes in his poetry that bear upon the major subject of counsel in his account of Russia: how to identify a tyrant and how to guard against tyranny. This chapter concludes with a discussion of Fletcher’s later career, considering whether his experience and writing of Russia may have had a detrimental effect on his professional reputation. In summary, this book is about the organisation and politics of the Muscovy Company, the diplomatic nuances of the Anglo-Russian relationship and Giles Fletcher’s embassy to Russia, opening up his texts and the multiple contexts in which we need to place his work for full understanding of the politics of writing Russia in the late Elizabethan period. The work seeks to redress, in some part, the imbalance in the historiography of the ‘discovery era’ that has so often looked to the new worlds of the west and south at the expense of explorations to the north-east. Moreover, it looks to counter the

10

Introduction limited and persistently conservative historiography of mercantile and diplomatic Anglo-Russian relations, by discussing English encounters with Russia and the Muscovy Company literature through a discursive lens, focused around the themes of commonwealth and tyranny. The study aims to provide a more complex context for the writing and reception of Fletcher’s work on Russia, foregrounding early modern reading practices and exploring aspects of Elizabethan censorship, demonstrating how the way in which a book could be read made it susceptible to suppression. Finally, this work attempts to further open up the discussion of genre in the context of early modern travel narrative, which has often not done justice to the multi-generic nature of texts such as Fletcher’s, nor to the richly textured content of works that incorporate travel information, general reference, promotional and trade advice, civil philosophy and counsel for commonwealth. NOTES 1 See B. Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996); M. Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); A. Hadfield, ‘Censoring Ireland in Elizabethan England, 1580–1600’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 149–64; A. Gajda, ‘Political culture in the 1590s: the “second reign of Elizabeth” ’, History Compass, 8:1 (2010), 88–100; P. Kewes, ‘Henry Savile’s Tacitus and the politics of Roman history in late Elizabethan England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 74:4 (2011), 515–51; F. Cox Jensen, Reading the Roman Republic in Early Modern England (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 2 R. Hakluyt, The Principall navigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation made by sea or over land, to the most remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1500 yeeres (London, 1589), sig. *3v (hereafter Hakluyt, PN (1589)). See also R. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation made by sea or over-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1600 yeres (London, 1598–1600) (hereafter Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600)). 3 Richard Hakluyt (1552?–1616) was a prolific collector and editor of travel writing, discovery narratives and diplomatic and mercantile information in the late sixteenth century, see A. Payne, ‘Hakluyt, Richard (1552?–1616)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, 2008) (hereafter ODNB). 4 J. B. Ramusio, ‘Navigations and voyages’ (1557), in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 504 (first state), p. 500 (second state). 5 See R. Eden, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or west India (London, 1555) and Hakluyt, PN (1589). 6 Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 250–505, 819–25. 7 P. Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (London, 1591), pp. 13 and 1.

11

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 8 W. Warner, Albions England a continued historie of the same kingdome, from the originals of the first inhabitants thereof (London, 1597), the eleventh book, chapter LXII. 9 D. Vitkus, ‘Toward a new globalism in early modern studies’, Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2:1 (2002), v, quoted in Elena Shvarts, ‘Putting Russia on the globe: the matter of Muscovy in early modern English travel writing and literature’ (PhD thesis, Stanford University, 2004), p. 34. 10 For examples, see J. H. Elliot, The Old World and the New, 1491–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); D. B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620: From the Bristol Voyages of the Fifteenth Century to the Pilgrim Settlement at Plymouth (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974); T. Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, trans. R. Howard (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); S. Greenblatt, New World Encounters (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); P. C. Mancall and J. H. Merrell, American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500–1850 (New York and London: Routledge, 2000). 11 E. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Routledge, 1978). 12 For example, see U. Bitterli, Cultures in Conflict: Encounters between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492–1800, trans. R. Robertson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989); F. Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World; The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery, trans. D. Fausett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); S. Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 13 See J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); P. Collinson, ‘The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 69:2 (1987), 394–424. 14 Collinson, ‘The monarchical republic’. 15 Collinson, ‘The monarchical republic’. See also S. Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 16 See J. F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 17 See Peltonen, Classical Humanism; A. Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); J. Guy, ‘Monarchy and counsel: models of the state’, in P. Collinson (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 135; P. Lake, ‘ “The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I” (and the fall of Archbishop Grindal) revisited’, in McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic, pp. 129–39. 18 H. Constable, Discoverye of a counterfecte conference (London, 1600), p. 60. 19 See Peltonen, Classical Humanism, passim. 20 P. Collinson, ‘Afterword’, in McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic, p. 251. 21 B. Worden, ‘Republicanism, regicide and republic: the English experience’, in M. van Gelderen and Q. Skinner (eds), Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, vol. I,

12

Introduction Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 313. 22 P. Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); D. Rollinson, A Commonwealth of the People: Popular Politics and England’s Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 23 J. Guy, ‘Introduction: the 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–19. 24 Guy, ‘Monarchy and counsel’, pp. 132–7. 25 P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 26 See P. Lake, ‘The “Anglican moment”? Richard Hooker and the ideological watershed of the 1590s’, in S. Platten (ed.), Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition: Continuity, Change and the Search for Communion (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2003), pp. 90–121, and Lake, ‘ “The monarchical republic” … Grindal’, pp. 129–47. 27 A reading of both Lake’s article on Richard Hooker, which critiqued Guy’s theory of the 1590s as a watershed, and his slightly later work on the ‘monarchical republic’ reveals his subtle change in emphasis towards a more nuanced and long-term view of the emergence of the ‘absolutism’ of the 1590s, problematising both the ‘second reign’ model of Guy and the assumptions bound up in much of the recent work using and expanding on Patrick Collinson’s model of ‘the monarchical republic’, see Lake, ‘ “The monarchical republic” … Grindal’, and Lake, ‘The “Anglican moment”?’. 28 Gajda, ‘Political culture’, 88–100. 29 Gajda, ‘Political culture’, 94–5. 30 Gajda, ‘Political culture’, 94–5. 31 Kewes, ‘Henry Savile’s Tacitus’, 525. 32 For further discussion, see Hadfield, ‘Censoring Ireland’; see also P. E. J. Hammer, ‘Letters of travel advice from the earl of Essex to the earl of Rutland: some comments’, Philological Quarterly, 74 (1995), 317–25; P. Stern, ‘Corporate virtue: the languages of empire in early modern British Asia’, Renaissance Studies, 26:4 (2012), 510–30. 33 T. S. Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956). 34 J. Hamel, England and Russia (London: R. Bentley, 1854); E. A. Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1856); Yu. Tolstoi, The First Forty Years of Intercourse between England and Russia, 1553–1593 (St Petersburg: A. Travshelya, 1875); E. D. Morgan and C. H. Coote (eds), Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1886); I. Lubimenko, Les relations commerciales et politiques de l’Angleterre avec la Russie avant Pierre le Grand (Paris: Champion, 1933). Other works include A. J. Gerson, E. V. Vaughan and N. R. Deardorff, Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1912); M. Wretts-Smith, ‘The English in Russia during the second half of the sixteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal

13

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Historical Society, 4th series, 3 (1920), 72–102; S. Yakobson, ‘Early Anglo-Russian relations (1553–1613)’, Slavonic Review, 13 (1934–5), 597–610; K. H. Ruffman, Das Russlandbild im England Shakespeares (Göttingen: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1952); M. S. Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia, 1553–1815 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1958). 35 V. Kliuchevskii, Skazaniia Inostrantsev o Moskovskom Gosudarstve (Foreign Accounts of the Muscovite State) (Petrograd: Literaturno-izdatel’skii otdel komissariata narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1918). 36 S. M. Seredonin, Sochinenie Dzhil’sa Fletchera ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ kak istoricheskii istochnik (The Treatise of Giles Fletcher’s ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ as a Historical Source) (St Petersburg: I. N. Skorokhodov, 1891). 37 L. E. Berry (ed.), The English Works of Giles Fletcher, the Elder (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, ed. R. Pipes and J. V. A. Fine, Jr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); G. Fletcher, Of the Rus Commonwealth, ed. A. J. Schmidt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966); L. E. Berry and R. O. Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). See also B. M. Haney, ‘Western reflections of Russia, 1517–1812’ (PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1971); C. Halperin, ‘Sixteenth-century foreign travel accounts of Muscovy: a methodological excursus’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 6 (1975), 89–111. 38 For example, see S. H. Baron, ‘Osep Nepea and the opening of Anglo-Russian commercial relations’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, new series, 11 (1978), 42–63; ‘Ivan the Terrible, Giles Fletcher, and the Muscovite merchantry: a reconsideration’, Slavonic and East European Review, 56 (1978), 563–85; ‘The influence in sixteenth-century England of Herberstein’s Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii’, in Explorations in Muscovite History (Farnham: Variorum, 1991), chapter XV; ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow and the Anthony Marsh affair’, Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, 46 (1992), 107–30, reprinted in Explorations, chapter III. 39 M. V. Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations, 1580–1696’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1992); M. Jansson and N. Rogozhin (eds), England and the North: The Russian Embassy of 1613–1614, trans. P. Bushkovitch (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1994). 40 M. T. Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); D. W. Palmer, Writing Russia in the Age of Shakespeare (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Shvarts, ‘Putting Russia on the globe’; M. Perreault, Early English Encounters in Russia, West Africa and the Americas, 1530–1614 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004); K. Mayers, North-East Passage to Muscovy: Stephen Borough and the First Tudor Explorations (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2005); A. R. Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen: “you speak a language that I understand not” ’, in C. Beem (ed.), Elizabeth and Foreign Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 101–23. 41 Stern, ‘Corporate virtue’. 42 Stern, ‘Corporate virtue’. 43 M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans S. Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 169.

14

Chapter 1

An adventuring commonwealth

English mercantile and diplomatic encounters with Russia, 1553–88

Wee shall keepe our owne coastes and Countrey, hee shall seeke strange and unknowen kingdoms. He shall commit his safetie to barbarous and cruell people. Clement Adams, ‘The newe navigation and discoverie of the kingdome of Moscovia, by the Northeast, in the yeere 1553’

The early history of the Muscovy Company was one of risk and exploration, negotiation and trade, commonwealth and corruption. It was a history that revealed the importance of contemporary notions of order, honour and civility in maintaining the Elizabethan commonwealth abroad, when exposed to the perceived ‘barbarity’ of distant lands. Although motivated largely by the quest for adventure and profit, voyages of exploration, such as the early English ventures to explore a north-east passage, were often understood (and justified) as contributing to the moral and economic benefit of the public good – the ‘commonwealth’ – as well as to the gain of those involved. From the outset of Tudor Anglo-Russian relations, the Muscovy Company faced the threefold problem of securing civil treatment for their merchants and ambassadors from a people they perceived to be ‘barbarous’; maintaining the civility and commonwealth structures of Englishmen living in a savage land; and continuing profitable mercantile and diplomatic relations between the two, despite the illicit private trading of interlopers and the company’s own members. An examination of the extant Muscovy Company accounts reveals the important discussions of order, honour and obedience and in contrast, disorder, dishonour and disobedience that pervade English first-encounter narratives concerning the unfamiliar land of Russia. Such concerns with mercantile behaviour, virtue, corruption and the maintaining of civility abroad were later expressed in East India Company rhetoric of the seventeenth century.1 Exploring the Muscovy Company’s origins, priorities and ideology, through the concept of ‘commonwealth’ not only furnishes us with an essential piece of the puzzle to

15

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth understanding the life and work of Giles Fletcher, the elder, during the time of his embassy to Russia in 1588–9, but also enables us to explore more thoroughly the development of early modern English conceptions of the b ­ enefits of trade.2 These discussions emphasised how the trade to Russia could deliver moral and economic benefits to the public weal, as well as profit to the ­company – an Elizabethan commonwealth-in-microcosm. THE ENGLISH ‘DISCOVERY’ OF MUSCOVY The English venture to discover a northern passage to Cathay was originally proposed by Robert Thorne, the younger, in 1527 and later by his business partner Roger Barlow in 1540.3 This northern passage was seen by Barlow, Thorne, and later on by Richard Hakluyt, the renowned sixteenth-century compiler of English exploration, trade and travel accounts, as a gateway to new and rich lands and as a novel discovery in its own right. Thorne and Barlow, Bristol merchants living in Spain, were among the few individuals who attempted to raise England’s awareness of her potential adventuring possibilities in the early sixteenth century, when she was already lagging behind her continental counterparts. In 1527 Thorne wrote two letters, one to Henry VIII and one to Dr Lee, the English ambassador to Spain, publicising his ideas about the possibility of England discovering a northern passage to Cathay.4 These two letters were later printed in Hakluyt’s Divers voyages touching the discoverie of America, and the ilands adjacent unto the same (1582) and in The Principal Navigations (1589 and 1598–1600), under the titles ‘A persuasion of Robert Thorne’ and ‘The Book of Robert Thorne’.5 The purpose of Thorne’s first letter was to encourage an English discovery of a north-western passage to Cathay. Thorne argued that England had not only an opportunity, but a duty to explore the northern parts of the globe and to compete with the impressive and lucrative discoveries of Spain and Portugal. The north was presented as an undiscovered area, lying in such close proximity to the English as to demand its discovery by them. It was also identified as their best hope of making substantial progress in a sphere where until now the English had been fairly inactive. The north was relatively free from previous claims of possession, ‘For out of Spaine they have discovered all the indies and Seas Occidentall, and out of Portingall all the Indies and Seas Orientall … So that now rest to be discovered the sayd North parts, the which it seemeth to mee, is onely your charge and duety.’6 In 1540–1 Henry was once more encouraged in his duty to consider further discovery of the north. This time a north-eastern passage to Cathay was suggested. This had been a joint vision of Thorne and Barlow, but was presented to Henry by Barlow, as Thorne had died in 1532.7 Fifty years after Thorne’s and later Barlow’s petitions to Henry, Hakluyt explained one of his primary motives for collecting and publishing the

16

An adventuring commonwealth exploration and trade narratives of England, that ‘I both heard in speech, and read in books other nations miraculously extolled for their discoveries and notable enterprises by sea, but the English of all others for their sluggish security, and continuall neglect of the like attempts especially in so long and happy a time of peace, either ignominiously reported, or exceedingly condemned’.8 Hakluyt’s purpose was to explain how in Henry’s reign, England had been encouraged by the few writers, such as Barlow and Thorne, to take up her duty to discover the north, yet ‘as the purpose of David the king to builde a house and temple to God was accepted, although Salomon performed it: so I make no question, but that the zeale in this matter of the aforesaid most renowned prince may seeme no lesse worthy (in his kinde) of acceptation, although reserved for the person of our Salomon her gratious Majesty’.9 According to Hakluyt, by the 1580s the time had truly come to celebrate England’s adventuring spirit and wonderful discoveries, especially in the northern hemisphere. As well as prestige and renown in the eyes of other Christian princes, the discovery of a northern passage to Cathay would provide England with much-needed commercial markets. In the 1550s England’s economic situation was precarious and her prospects bleak. Due to widespread inflation in Europe and debasement of the English currency during the 1540s in order to pay state expenses, followed by attempts to repair the damage of the debasement by revaluing the English currency in 1551, English prices fluctuated drastically, particularly between 1549 and 1551.10 An increase in exports would help to combat this financial crisis and stabilise England’s economic position, but this was an area in which the English commonwealth was simultaneously floundering. In the cloth trade, England’s biggest export industry, exports had risen steadily through the first half of the sixteenth century and the means of cloth and wool production had expanded with demand and high prices, but the boom peaked in 1549–50 and declined considerably from that point onwards. The slump in the early 1550s indicated a fall in the demand for cloth at home and abroad, which resulted in employers reducing their cloth production and employees losing jobs and livelihoods.11 The combination of rapid inflation and the contraction of the cloth trade had a detrimental effect on all echelons of society, but particularly on the commons who suffered more unemployment and less income at a time of rising prices.12 Causes for the slump in the cloth industry have been attributed to a glut in the cloth market at Antwerp, which was compounded, in England’s case, by the debasement and subsequent revaluation of their coinage in the 1550s.13 During the mid-1540s England was also at war with both Scotland and France.14 These conflicts cost huge amounts of money, thus contributing to inflation and the social and economic distress suffered by commoners. The bad harvests of 1549, 1550 and 1551 added another problematic layer to the miserable state of England’s economy in the 1550s, and further bad harvests in

17

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 1555 and 1556 caused grain prices to increase rapidly to over double their normal rate, worsening the economic situation of the English commonwealth.15 Within a decade, a religio-political element was added to the continuing economic crisis. In 1563–4 and in 1569–73, the breakdown of trade relations between England and the Netherlands and later England and Spain brought disruption to the English trade at Antwerp. The city of Antwerp was completely devastated by the ‘Spanish fury’ of 1576, leading to further decline of the once flourishing hub of European trading networks. In the mid-1580s the situation was further exacerbated by the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule and the consequent takeover of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma, causing English merchants to flee from the Low Countries.16 The problems in England’s economy, so reliant on the export of cloth, were aggravated by their dependence on Hanse middlemen in the Baltic, controlling England’s access to essential naval and food supplies from the east, as well as an export market for English cloth. Thomas Bannister and Geoffrey Ducket, two English merchants of the Muscovy Company, described England’s dependence on Baltic-imported goods through Hanseatic middlemen as ‘the bondage of … the town of Dantsick’.17 It was this severe economic situation that encouraged English merchants, entrepreneurs, investors and mercantile advisers to dismiss the conventional limits of their worldview and to consider the prospect of discovering distant and unknown markets via northern routes of exploration.18 In response to the dire state of the English economy in the early 1550s and the growing awareness that other continental powers were looking for new markets beyond traditional frontiers, Thorne and Barlow’s earlier suggestion to explore the potential of a navigable north-eastern passage to Cathay was finally taken up. In 1553 an estimated group of 240 people, made up of merchants, high officers of state, investors and other interested parties, gathered in London to discuss and launch this dangerous and costly voyage of discovery.19 According to Clement Adams, the venture was financed by 240 men subscribing £25 each.20 The group that met together in 1553 was not yet a company, just a gathering of promoters and investors, hoping to find a faster and more efficient route than that used by the Portuguese, in order to access the exotic luxuries of Cathay and the East Indies and find a lucrative vent for English cloths. The pioneering voyage to explore whether a north-eastern passage to Cathay actually existed was launched in late May 1553. Sir Hugh Willoughby was appointed captain general and Richard Chancellor, his pilot general.21 Willoughby was an experienced soldier and captain and had served in the Scottish campaign in 1544, as well as commanding Lowther Castle from 1545 to 1550 and campaigning in the border counties and eastern marches in 1551.22 He had no seafaring experience, however, and was recommended more for his physical prowess, good looks and military successes on land, than for his

18

An adventuring commonwealth maritime expertise. According to Clement Adams, ‘although many men … offered themselves’ for the foremost position of Captain General, Willoughby was chosen ‘before all others, both by reason of his goodly personage (for hee was of a tall stature) as also for his singular skill in the services of warre’.23 Chancellor, on the other hand, had trained as an apprentice pilot under Roger Bodenham in 1550 on a voyage to the Levant that was intended by Sebastian Cabot to train up English pilots who severely lagged behind their continental counterparts.24 As a result, Chancellor was by far the most expert and experienced navigator of the three ships that set sail in the summer of 1553. As Henry Sidney warned in his send-off speech to the crew, pilot and captain, the three vessels were fated to confront ‘the raging Sea, and the uncertainties of many dangers’.25 Sidney went on to express his high estimation of Chancellor as pilot, but also listed some of the practical challenges that he would face in this adventure: [W]‌e shall here live and rest at home quietly with our friends, and acquaintance: but hee in the meane time labouring to keepe the ignorant unrulye Mariners in good order and obedience, with howe many cares shall hee trouble and vexe himself, with howe many troubles shall he breake himselfe, and howe many disquietings shall hee bee forced to sustaine.26

In addition, he would face extreme weather conditions ‘and shall hazard his life amongst the monstrous and terrible beastes of the Sea’.27 Indeed those who did attempt to explore a north-eastern route to Cathay encountered ‘drifts of snow and mountaines of yce even in June, July and August’,28 thick fogs, whirlpools and ferocious storms, ‘divers strange beastes’ they could not name, dangerously shallow waters with no land in sight, ‘very evill wether’ and boat-capsizing sea ice.29 Sidney’s premonitions of danger were not unfounded, as five weeks after their departure from Harwich, the three vessels were caught in a terrible squall off the north coast of Norway. During the tempest, Chancellor’s vessel, the Edward Bonaventure, lost contact with the other ships, the Bona Speranza and the Bona Confidentia. These two vessels, led by Willoughby, were blown by the storm in a north-easterly direction and once the storm had passed, unsure of their whereabouts they continued their journey north-east. At the sight of land, later thought to be a glimpse of Novaya Zemlya, Willoughby decided to turn back south in order to find a safe harbour in which to attend to the Bona Confidentia, which was suffering from bilge problems. Due to contrary winds the two vessels ended up heading south and west in the direction of the previously appointed meeting place at Wardhouse (Vardøhus – the fortress on the island of Vardø) on the extreme north-eastern coast of Norway – a safe haven and rendezvous if the three ships found themselves separated.30 Willoughby, and the Bona Speranza and Bona Confidentia never reached Vardø, but halted

19

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth in the mouth of the river Varzina, situated east of Vardø, on the Kola Peninsula, ‘seeing the yeere farre spent, and also very evill wether, as frost, snow and haile, as though it had beene the deepe of winter, we thought best to winter there’.31 In Willoughby’s manuscript account of the expedition, found later on his ship, a marginal note labels this harbour ‘the Haven of Death’, a signifier of Willoughby’s demise there in January 1554 along with the rest of his crew at the hands of the severe arctic winter.32 Due to Willoughby’s lack of seafaring experience and insufficient knowledge of arctic conditions, the fatal decision was taken to winter in the Varzina river and as a result all were, according to Hakluyt, frozen to death – a failure, perhaps, on the part of mercantile advisers to provide adequate advice on how to cope in the extreme conditions of the far north.33 E. C. Gordon has argued that a more plausible cause of death may have been carbon monoxide poisoning from battening down the hatches and burning sea coal instead of wood to keep warm and to cook.34 She argues this on the grounds that contemporary accounts of this incident seem to suggest that all the members of the crew had died at the same time along with their dogs and had been found dead with their bodies in positions that implied they had been going about their daily routines, rather than huddled together for warmth and survival.35 According to Unwin, Mayers and Gordon, a similar incident was recorded in 1596 that threatened the crew of the van Heemskerck and Barents expedition to the Arctic who had huddled in a wooden hut, closing up all gaps, doors and the chimney and building a fire of sea coal. As everyone became dizzy and faint, a crew member managed to throw open the door before he himself fainted and saved the rest of the crew from imminent death.36 Having lost contact with the other two vessels during the storm over the north coast of Scandinavia, Chancellor and his crew on the Edward Bonaventure continued towards Vardø to await their missing companions, as arranged. They waited for seven days for the other two vessels to arrive, but to no avail, and ‘when they sawe their desire and hope of the arrival of the rest of the shippes to be every day more and more frustrated, they provided to sea againe, and Master Chanceler held on his course towards that unknown part of the world’.37 At length, Chancellor and his crew came across a large bay, which was in fact the White Sea. They entered into it for some distance and cast their anchor in a smaller bay at the mouth of the Dvina river. On arrival there, Chancellor spied and accosted some indigenous fishermen, who at the sight of the ‘strange greatnesse of [Chancellor’s] shippe’ and the ‘strange nation’ emerging from it, quaked in ‘great feare, as men halfe dead’.38 Clement Adams recorded how their fears and lack of communication skills were overcome by Chancellor’s winning smiles and sign language as he ‘looked pleasantly upon them, comforting them by signes and gestures’.39 Adams’s carefully crafted narrative depicted Chancellor explaining to the fishermen that he wished to

20

An adventuring commonwealth be taken to their ruler.40 Consequently, a secret messenger was sent down to Moscow to tell of the arrival of the newcomers and eventually Chancellor was summoned by the Russian emperor, Ivan IV, to journey to Moscow to present his letters from King Edward VI.41 Being well received by a richly adorned ruler at a sumptuous court and sensing a lucrative trading opportunity, Chancellor decided to make the most of the apparent failure of the venture to find a north-eastern passage to Cathay and negotiated a trading relationship with Russia instead. As a result of his skilful and astute representation of Edward VI and of those who had funded the exploration, Chancellor obtained favourable trading privileges, resulting in an English monopoly over the Russian trade, in varying degrees, for the next fifty years.42 Hakluyt described Chancellor’s fortuitous finding of the Bay of St Nicholas (Dvina Bay) as ‘the strange and wonderfull discoverie of Russia’ and heralded it as England’s own hard-won contribution to the discovery of new worlds and the expansion of global interaction and trade. He boldly asserted that travailing through ice and storms, taking on blizzards and leviathans, as the English had done, was much harder going than Columbus’s Caribbean jaunt or the ‘pleasant prosperous and golden voyages’ of the Spaniards over the ‘milde, lightsome, temperate and warme Atlantick ocean’.43 Such a generous relation of Chancellor’s accidental stumbling on the imperfectly known land of Russia on the peripheries of Christendom could only have been presented in such a way as this in the wake of Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of a new world to the far west of Europe and Africa. Before this point, Russia may well have been perceived simply as a distant and little-known land on the edge of Christendom’s boundaries. Indeed in the court of an eighteen-year-old Henry VIII, the subject of Russia was fit only ‘for a Sunday frolic’, as two of Henry’s courtiers in the Shrove Sunday masque of 1510 presented themselves in the exotic fashions of the far-distant lands of Muscovy.44 The tragic fate of the Bona Speranza and the Bona Confidentia, followed by Chancellor’s opportunistic commercial negotiations in Russia, altered the original vision of the group that had met and financed the voyage in 1553. Direct access to a Russian market, which could supply them with such naval necessities as masts and cordage, would cut out the Hanseatic middleman, as well as providing a ready market for English cloth and wool.45 Additionally, with the marriage of Mary Tudor to Philip II of Spain in 1554, Russia and the north-east now provided a politically acceptable alternative for English exploration and trade, which would not encroach upon Spanish ambitions in the Atlantic new world. On ‘discovering’ a potential new market for English goods in Russia and a direct means of importing naval supplies, the promoters who had gathered in 1553 recognised the necessity for a more secure organisation for their informal enterprise. They applied for corporation status, which was granted on 26

21

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth February 1555 to 199 men and 2 women.46 This effectively made the Muscovy Company the first English joint-stock adventuring mercantile corporation that traded at posts outside of Western Europe. Thus the Muscovy Company set a standard for English overseas trade, exploration and expansion; the Cathaia, Levant, East India, and Virginia companies all following in its wake. The goods that England needed to find a market for were predominantly dressed cloths, kerseys and wool. They also began to export lead, tin, copper and iron to Russia.47 This trade not only provided a vent for such commodities, but would benefit the commonwealth by supplying employment opportunities and a greater demand for English finished goods.48 In return, England imported from Russia pitch, tar, ship masts, cordage, hemp, cables and ropes, as well as salt, tallow, wax, train oil, buff hides, cow hides and many kinds of furs.49 The suggestion of a more secretive trade in arms between the two countries also emerges intermittently in the Muscovy Company accounts. In 1561, for example, in response to rumours that Elizabeth I was importing arms from Germany and then exporting them to Russia, a royal proclamation was issued prohibiting the sale of armour or weapons to Russia or any country at war with any other in Christendom. The proclamation also repudiated the rumours that had been spread about Elizabeth’s own arms dealing.50 The reports may well have been true, for Elizabeth’s government had secretly imported large quantities of arms from Germany and the Low Countries through their agent at Antwerp, Thomas Gresham.51 There was also a precedent for supplying arms to states outside of Christendom who were at war with Christian countries in Europe, as revealed in the thriving English arms trade with Morocco in which English arms and naval supplies were traded for sugar and used against crusaders from Portugal and Spain.52 Despite the royal proclamation of 1561 against arms dealing with any country at war with any other in Christendom, Ivan IV still felt confident in November 1567 to request, via Anthony Jenkinson, ‘owt of England all kynde of Artyllery and thinges necessary for warre’,53 which seems to suggest the likelihood of the continuation of arms trading, although it was ‘to be doone in secrett’.54 Similarly in 1580, during the Livonian War, when Ivan was faced with ‘enymies besettinge and besiegginge three partes of his countrye, the Poll, Sweathen and the Crime [Tartar]’, he found that he was in ‘som want of powder, salt-peter, lead and brimston, and knew not how to be furnished therof, the Narve shutt up, but owt of England’.55 Ivan sent secret letters of request for arms to Elizabeth, this time via his messenger Jerome Horsey. Horsey made much of his dangerous cloak-and-dagger mission to covertly convey these letters out of Russia into England.56 However, there is no evidence, apart from Horsey’s own narrative, to prove that any arms were sent to Russia from England at this time or how well the emperor’s letters were received in the Elizabethan court.57 Nevertheless, Giles Fletcher explained in his diplomatic reports addressed to the queen on his return from Russia in

22

An adventuring commonwealth 1589, that the Russian state was dependent on the Muscovy Company trade to gain access to much-needed arms supplies, ‘speciallie powder, saltpeeter, brimstone, lead &c necessarie for the Emperours warrs’.58 The newly incorporated company that would continue the legitimate trade between England and Russia soon became known as the Muscovy Company, and later the Russia Company, although its official title, ‘the Company of marchants adventurers of England, for the discovery of lands, territories, iles, dominions, and seignories unknowen, and not before that late adventure or enterprise by sea or navigation, commonly frequented’, retained the original motives to find a northern passage to Cathay.59 Many of those who were involved in both the financing and the practical workings of the Muscovy Company were also active in promoting and financing the continued efforts to find a north-western passage to Cathay. An example of such shared investment in the discovery and outworking of both north-eastern and north-western trading ventures can be found in Michael Lok’s account of Frobisher’s attempts to find a north-western passage. His account provides a list of those investing in Frobisher’s voyages and many of the same names can be found in the Muscovy Company literature, for instance John Dee, Anthony Jenkinson, Francis Walsingham, Christopher Hoddesdon, William Borough and William Bonde.60 Alongside the Muscovy Company’s trade with Russia, the continuing search for the elusive northern route to Cathay was consistently renewed in the following years. Stephen Borough, an experienced sailor and navigator, embarked in the Serchthrift in 1556 to explore the Russian coast beyond the White Sea, to Vaygach Island, Novaya Zemlya and the land of the Samoyeds, and later to find and retrieve the frozen ships, the Bona Esperanza and the Bona Confidentia, which had been under Willoughby’s care.61 Borough was successful in finding the ships, but less so in making much progress along the unknown northern coastline of Russia.62 Thomas Randolph, one of the first career-orientated ambassadors of the day and ambassador to Russia in 1568,63 wrote a commission on 1 August 1568 for James Bassendine, James Woodcocke and Richard Browne to discover lands to the north-east from St Nicholas, but there remains no evidence that the voyage actually took place.64 Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, Muscovy Company servants, were specifically sent by the company in a further attempt to discover the way to Cathay in 1580.65 Despite very detailed instructions from John Dee, William Burrough and Richard Hakluyt, the elder, on what was thought to be the geography of the route, on what to take with them and how to survey the coast, as well as a letter from Gerardus Mercator, suggesting that the north-eastern passage to Cathay should be easy to find and navigate,66 the two ships became stuck in ‘infinite yse’ at the entrance to the Kara Sea and, after weeks of trying to get free, were forced to turn back.67

23

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth There were also successful attempts to develop and expand the Muscovy trade south into Persia. The Persian ventures were undertaken in order to find further markets for English goods and to compete with the Venetian monopoly over the Turkish trade in silks. Anthony Jenkinson, who was appointed captain general to the convoy of Muscovy Company ships carrying the Russian ambassador Osip Nepea back home to Russia in 1557, pioneered the exploration of trade routes into Persia via Russia.68 Jenkinson was an experienced traveller and merchant. He had been travelling in the Mediterranean basin since 1546 and in 1553 had gained a special licence from Suleiman the Magnificent to trade with the Turks at Aleppo.69 Jenkinson made four separate voyages to Muscovy between 1557 and 1571 with the intention of exploring and establishing the trade with Persia through Russia.70 Further voyages to expand the Persian trade were undertaken in 1563 by Thomas Alcock, George Wrenne and Richard Cheyney, and in 1565 by Richard Johnson, Alexander Kitchin and Arthur Edwards.71 In 1568 Arthur Edwards was sent again into Persia, along with John Sparke, Laurence Chapman, Christopher Faucet and Richard Pingle.72 Muscovy Company employees Geoffrey Ducket and Thomas Bannister were sent out soon afterwards in 1569, along with Lionel Plumtree and twelve other Englishmen in the Thomas Bonaventure to explore the Persian trading opportunities. They returned from their trading expedition in 1573. The expedition, although initially successful in gaining new trading privileges from Shah Tahmasp I at Qazvin, had been long and arduous; several merchants had lost their lives and, as a result, some of the goods only recently purchased from the Persians were seized back and would only be released on payment of a large sum of money.73 Following Ducket’s report on the gruelling nature of the venture, the company were reluctant to invest in the Persian trade for several years. In 1579, however, Arthur Edwards left for Russia with factors and merchandise to trade in Persia. On arrival in Astrakhan, they learnt that Shirvan had been taken by Turkish forces, and so they split into two groups, Edwards remaining at Astrakhan and Christopher Borough going on to Derbent. Borough’s party and goods returned to London in September 1581, but Edwards perished in Astrakhan, and this proved to be the last Persian voyage undertaken by the company in the sixteenth century.74 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ANGLO-RUSSIAN DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS, 155 5–88 Although the English were primarily interested in mercantile relations, commercial access to Russia depended on the consent of the Russian emperor and thus necessitated the development of diplomatic relations between Ivan IV and England’s monarchs, starting with Edward VI, although he died shortly after the first expedition set sail, and followed by Mary I and Philip II and

24

An adventuring commonwealth subsequently Elizabeth I. Ivan’s motives for diplomatic and trade relations with England differed significantly from those of the Muscovy Company and English governments. Ivan was interested in a political offensive and defensive league with England, viewing discussions over trade as secondary issues of inferior importance. The Elizabethan government and the company, on the other hand, were primarily interested in gaining and retaining advantageous trading privileges in Russia and Persia, rather than forging offensive alliances with far-away princes. Due to this disparity in agenda and because Russia was beyond the familiar limits of European diplomacy, there were multiple opportunities for conflict and misunderstandings to arise in the new relationship, with potentially damaging consequences.75 Differences in English and Russian attitudes towards the delivery of titles of rulers posed a continuing threat to the smooth running of diplomatic relations.76 As Anna Riehl Bertolet has noted, Ivan’s full title was of great length.77 His heir Feodor’s was even longer: Theodore Ivanowich, by the grace of God great Lord and Emperour of all Russia, great Duke of Volodemer, Mosko, and Novograd, King of Cazan, King of Astracan, Lord of Plesko, and great duke of Smolensko, of Twerria, Ioughoria, Permia, Vadska, Bulghoria, and others, Lord and great duke of Novograd of the Low countrie, of Chernigo, Rezan, Polotskoy, Rostove, Yaruslaveley, Bealozera, Liefland, Oudoria, Obdoria, and Condensa, Commaunder of all Siberia, and of the North partes, and Lord of many other Countries, &c.78

English ambassadors and the queen herself at times abbreviated the Russian style for ease of use. Unfortunately, the Russian emperors perceived any abbreviation of their titles as an unforgivable slight on their honour and status. In correspondence with the tsar, Elizabeth found it necessary to explain how, without diminishing any of her power and honour, she abridged her own stile, which is thus contracted, videlecet, ‘Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queene of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.,’ which kingdoms and dominions of ours are expressed by these general words, videlicit, England, France, Ireland; in every which there are severall principalities, dukedomes and earledomes, provinces and countreyes; which being severally expressed would enlarge much our stile, and make it of great length.79

Elizabeth was at pains to point out that ‘we think it no dishonour to us compendiously to abridge the same in all our writings’.80 English ambassadors were also quick to detail the ‘cavilling’ which ensued when they abbreviated the tsar’s title in the Russia court.81 Diplomatic relations that were often strained through clashes in culture and etiquette were further exacerbated by the ad hoc nature of English interactions with Russia. For the company and queen sent ambassadors or merchant messengers to Russia only when there was a problem in trading privileges or

25

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth when the company’s position or success was under threat. In response Ivan, and later Feodor, regularly expressed discontent at the primary role accorded to mercantile affairs by the English over a desire for a concrete political alliance with the Elizabethan commonwealth. Thus each ambassador sent to Russia, from 1557 onwards, had to walk a very fine diplomatic line in order to ensure the continuation of economic privileges, while not offending the tsar or entangling England in an unwelcome political alliance.82 Prior to Giles Fletcher’s embassy in 1589, a number of ambassadors had represented the English crown and the Muscovy Company in the Russian court. In 1555, Richard Chancellor was sent out to Russia a second time after his initial 1553 journey of ‘discovery’, along with the first resident Muscovy Company agents George Killingworth and Richard Gray, who were to present Philip and Mary’s letters to Ivan.83 Although merchants and servants of the company were sent over regularly from 1555 onwards, the more formal and specifically diplomatic (as opposed to simply mercantile) contacts with Russia continued with the visit of the first Russian ambassador to England, Osip Nepea, in 1556.84 This was followed by Jenkinson’s mission of 1557, returning Nepea to his homeland and exploring trading possibilities in Persia.85 Jenkinson was sent out to Russia again in 1561 to continue his trading ventures into Persia, via Moscow.86 On his return to Moscow from Persia in 1563, Jenkinson secured more trading privileges for the Muscovy Company and returned to England in 1564. Jenkinson was sent back out to Russia for a third mission in May 1566, to protest against trading privileges that had been granted to an Italian merchant, Raphael Barbarini, who had conned Elizabeth into supporting his safe passage into Russia allegedly to pursue his debtors. A further purpose of the mission was to request the company’s complete monopoly over trade to St Nicholas.87 Jenkinson returned to England in the winter of 1566, but was sent back out to Russia in May 1567 in order to confirm Muscovy Company privileges over Russian trade, in the light of English interloping at Narva.88 Narva was a strategically important port on the Baltic coast, which had been captured by the Russians in 1558 during the Livonian War. For the English, this meant that some trade with Russia could be carried out through the Baltic, rather than having to take on the dangerous and time-consuming route round the northern tip of Scandinavia every spring. English interlopers were quick to seize the advantage of this shorter and easier route to Russian territory and thus posed a threat to the Muscovy Company’s prosperous business there. This threat only diminished when the Russians lost Narva to the Swedish in 1581. Thomas Randolph was sent to Russia immediately after Jenkinson’s return to England in June 1568, and returned home in August 1569.89 His mission was to attain confirmation of previous trading privileges and to negotiate an extension of Muscovy Company privileges, as well as avoiding

26

An adventuring commonwealth any discussion of Ivan’s requests for an Anglo-Russian offensive alliance.90 Randolph was successful on the mercantile front, but less so in deflecting Ivan’s desire for an Anglo-Russian entente. Consequently, Ivan sent back to England with Randolph an ambassador of his own, Andrei Grigoryevich Savin, to pursue negotiations with Elizabeth regarding an offensive alliance. Willan suggests that Savin brought with him a document outlining all aspects of the formal alliance that Ivan wished to establish with Elizabeth, with the expectation that she would peruse and ratify the articles of the league.91 There is an extant document detailing articles of a league and amity between the queen and tsar, covered with hasty corrections, defining the limits of the league of amity between the two.92 Elizabeth was willing to grant a league of amity based on an innocuous promise that she would make common cause with Russia against their common enemies and she secretly offered Ivan asylum in England if it was necessary. However, she gave to Savin no direct offer or confirmation of the desired offensive alliance that would mean Russia’s enemies would automatically become England’s.93 Ivan was outraged by Elizabeth’s blasé response to the ‘great affairs’ of alliance, accusing her of focusing solely on mercantile affairs and suggesting that she was ruled entirely by her merchants. In his anger, he revoked all the Muscovy Company’s privileges, prompting the queen and company to make a concerted effort to regain lost ground.94 Ivan IV’s favourite, Anthony Jenkinson, was chosen for the task of recovering the merchants’ lost privileges, setting off in June 1571,95 along with his secretary Daniel Silvester, who later acted as a messenger between Elizabeth and Ivan in 1573–4.96 Jenkinson was instructed to salvage the lost trade privileges by implying the possibility of political alliance between Elizabeth and Ivan, and yet to avoid any concrete commitments on Elizabeth’s part, a mission in which he was successful.97 Ivan’s plans for alliance, though, had merely been postponed, not abandoned, and as Elizabeth continued to correspond with Ivan regarding Muscovy Company grievances over their treatment in Russia, Ivan took the opportunity to push again for his longed-for alliance. Silvester, Jenkinson’s former secretary and successor, was sent to Russia in 1575 in order to placate the dissatisfied tsar, who was threatening retaliation against the company once more.98 After several audiences with Ivan, Silvester returned to Elizabeth bearing ill-tidings of Ivan’s threats to transfer the company’s privileges to the Germans and Venetians if Elizabeth did not prioritise his alliance over her merchants’ affairs.99 Having returned with Ivan’s letters in March 1576, Silvester was immediately sent back to Russia in June 1576 with the queen’s response. However, according to Jerome Horsey’s account, during the laborious journey to Moscow Silvester was killed by a bolt of lightning at Kholmogory in July 1577 and the ambassadorial mission came to an end.100 Silvester had apparently been given instructions, written and verbal,

27

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth to delicately discuss Ivan’s desire for a royal marriage and political alliance between Russia and England, but his papers were destroyed with him.101 In the Elizabethan state papers there survives a series of documents that reveal the drafting of a league of amity between the tsar and Elizabeth.102 Henry Huttenbach has argued that the successive drafting of these documents regarding the articles of a league between Elizabeth and Ivan occurred between 1575 and 1577.103 He also suggests that although in Randolph’s embassy of 1568–9 he was instructed by Elizabeth to side-step requests for an alliance, just as Sir Jerome Bowes was in 1583, Ivan threatened during the interim period to revoke the trading privileges the Muscovy Company had enjoyed, if Elizabeth did not agree to a formal league of amity between them. This prompted the queen to consider such a formalised league, hence the revisions in the proposed articles during the years 1575–7.104 The time frame suggested by Huttenbach reflects Silvester’s ultimately fatal embassy to Russia, as well as the Elizabethan regime’s response to Ivan’s threats to transfer the company’s privileges to the Germans or Venetians. Following Silvester’s unfortunate expedition to Russia, several years passed before Ivan renewed his attempts to secure a political alliance with Elizabeth. In May 1582 Ivan commissioned his ambassador Feodor Andreevich Pisemsky to journey to England to continue the political alliance negotiations and also to find an eligible English bride of royal blood for Ivan. Lady Mary Hastings, cousin to the queen, had been suggested as a prospective bride for Ivan, despite Elizabeth’s attempts to side-line his requests for a royal marriage.105 Lady Mary was the sister of Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, who had been seen by some as a plausible English candidate for the throne in the event of Elizabeth’s death in the early 1560s, as he was heir to the Plantagenet/ Pole line.106 He was later styled as a pawn in Leicester’s machinations for the throne in the scurrilous and seditious Catholic pamphlet known as ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’, printed in 1584.107 Although Pisemsky reached England in September 1582, he was not allowed to see Lady Mary until 18 May of the following year, for Elizabeth was particularly unenthusiastic about the marriage proposal and would not even allow Lady Mary’s portrait to be painted, giving the excuse that the lady had only recently recovered from smallpox. When Pisemsky was finally allowed to see Lady Mary, he prostrated himself before her in a manner not uncommon in the Russian court, but which drew significant attention from Elizabeth’s courtiers, with the result that ‘she was after called by her famillier frends in court the Emporis of Muscovia’.108 Although a source of amusement to her friends, the prostration of the Russian ambassador before the sister of the Earl of Huntington may well have rankled with Elizabeth. The queen repeatedly put obstacles in the way of the marriage negotiations, as well as avoiding being pinned down to any kind of alliance with Russia at every turn. Thus Pisemsky left England empty-handed,

28

An adventuring commonwealth but insisted on a representative of the queen accompanying him back to Russia to conclude an alliance between the two lands.109 Sir Jerome Bowes was chosen for this difficult task and appointed in June 1583.110 One of the aims of Bowes’s mission, as instructed by Elizabeth, was to dissuade Ivan from his intentions to marry Lady Mary Hastings, on the basis of the lady’s supposed ill health and disposition: [U]‌se all the best perswasions you can to dissuade him from that purpose, laying before him the weaknes of the Lady, when she is in best state of health and difficulties, that are otherwise like to be stood uppon by the Lady, and her friends, who can hardly be induced to be so farr separate the one from the other.111

His other objective was to avoid a political alliance with Ivan at all costs.112 Bertolet has produced an interesting analysis of the political relationship between Ivan and Elizabeth, in which she suggests that the misunderstandings in their relationship were caused by different cultures of writing and etiquette in royal correspondence.113 However, it must be remembered that the relationship between the two was often complicated by their representatives, who invariably acted with indiscretion or caused their own conflicts in foreign courts through ignorance of appropriate diplomatic protocol, exacerbating the strained relations regularly displayed in the written correspondence between Elizabeth and the tsars. Bowes, for instance, possessed previous diplomatic experience at the French court, assisting in the marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and François de Valois, Duke of Anjou. He had also been a member of Sir Philip Sidney’s ambassadorial retinue to Rudolf II in 1577.114 Despite his previous experience, however, Bowes’s diplomatic mission to Russia was disastrous for the company and for Anglo-Russian relations, both in the short and long term.115 This was partly due to his irascibility and his quarrelsome ambassadorial manner in the Russian court. In fact, complaints were made against Bowes by the Russian emperor, and were summarised by the Muscovy Company, accusing Bowes of ‘fallinge out with the noble men, the casting awaye of the Emperours Lettres written to her Majestie the dysdaine and rejection of the gifte geven him by the Emperour’.116 The Muscovy Company anxiously explained that ‘all which beinge matters of Princes negotiaciones and interteynment of Princes Imbassadours … the Emperours double complainte of Sir Jerome Bowes his behaviour doethe require something to be certified to his good lykinge Or els his highness will thinke that her majestie hath him in smale regarde and the Companie are like to feele the weighte of his displeasure.’117 Bowes, however, was not solely to blame for the negative outcome of the mission, for Elizabeth had placed him in a very difficult position, exhorting him to dissuade Ivan from both a political alliance and the negotiations over the proposed marriage

29

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth to Lady Mary Hastings, without giving him any power to bargain with or anything to offer the tsar in return. Bowes’s argumentative responses to the Russian emperor were later celebrated by the likes of John Milton and Samuel Pepys, representing Bowes as a valiant and faithful subject of the queen who stood up to the tyrannical Ivan the Terrible.118 However, in reality Bowes was dismissed from Ivan’s presence in disgrace a month before the emperor died in March 1584, having failed to conclude any concrete negotiations, and was subsequently held under house arrest for two months in Moscow after Ivan’s death while preparations for the funeral and the accession of his heir, Feodor I, took place.119 In May, Feodor granted a new set of privileges to the Muscovy Company, most likely while Bowes was still in Moscow. The privileges included the usual rights to have houses at Moscow, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kholmogory and St Nicholas, as well as the right to seek justice in controversies in Russia. However, in these new privileges the company lost their monopoly over the White Sea trade. They also lost their privilege to trade to Persia through Russia and now had to pay half duties on their goods, whereas previously they had been protected from customs duties. Additionally, they lost the right to explore further eastwards along the coast of Russia, beyond Pechora, which undermined the original vision of the company.120 These were, perhaps, the worst privileges that had ever been granted to the company in the short history of their trading relationship with Muscovy. After Bowes’s ill-fated attempt to negotiate on behalf of the queen in increasingly strained Anglo-Russian relations, the situation appeared to be resolved by an Englishman resident in Russia, one of the company’s employees, Jerome Horsey. Horsey had been an apprentice clerk of the company stationed in Russia since 1572 and had made friends in high places, being sent by Ivan on a secret mission to England in 1580. He later came to be favoured by the new emperor, Feodor, who sent him as a messenger to the queen to resolve the problems in the Anglo-Russian diplomatic and commercial relationship in 1585.121 Having impressed Elizabeth with his status as a messenger of the tsar, Horsey was commissioned as a special ambassador of Elizabeth and sent into Russia in 1586 with responses to Feodor’s letters. Horsey managed to negotiate new trading privileges for the company to trade throughout Russia free of customs duties once more and for the company’s houses to be exempt from rent payments. However, these privileges were dependent on the Muscovy Company not hindering the interlopers from England and merchants from other countries from trading to the White Sea ports of St Nicholas and Arkhangelsk. Thus the company had not regained their monopoly over the White Sea trade to Russia.122 Horsey was suspected of fraudulent activities (to be discussed later) and was recalled to England to explain himself, but fled back to Russia in late 1587, ostensibly to avoid his debtors and

30

An adventuring commonwealth the disgruntled company governors.123 Despite Horsey’s embassy, the Russian authorities began to complain of some members of the company colouring goods and violating the terms of the privileges, so that by September 1587, customs duties were once again being charged to the company. In response, Giles Fletcher was sent to Russia in the summer of 1588 to negotiate with the Russian authorities. Fletcher’s mission was intended to confront the disorder and decline in the Muscovy Company caused by ineffectual embassies, company corruption and illicit private trading by company servants and factors, particularly Anthony Marsh and Jerome Horsey. The embassy was also an attempt to regain the company’s monopoly over the trade to the White Sea, and to undermine the trading ventures of their Dutch and French competitors. In addition, Fletcher was to address the issue of the extensive debts racked up by Marsh and Horsey, for which the Russian authorities were now demanding payment from the Muscovy Company, and to accompany Horsey back home to face the wrath of the company governors.124 NEGOTIATING COMMONWEALTH IN THE MUSCOVY COMPANY ABROAD When the Muscovy Company had been officially formed in 1555, the explorer and cartographer Sebastian Cabot assumed the role of governor.125 Through incorporation, the company was given a legal basis for its ventures and a monopoly over the trade to Russia as a reward to the pioneers who had discovered this new trade. Following in the spirit of the initial voyage, the company was established on the basis of a joint-stock organisation. Instead of trading as individuals with their own capital, all merchants traded as a body, with corporately owned goods.126 Agents or factors were employed and paid by the company itself, rather than by individual members, who were shareholders. The shareholders were not involved in the day-to-day running of the company, but were rather investors who exercised their rights through the general assembly.127 A joint-stock structure for the company was, in practical terms, the best and perhaps the only option for funding such a dangerous and risky venture as trade with Russia via a northern route and further exploration of a north-eastern passage to Cathay. According to Queen Elizabeth’s account of the establishment of this trade, a joint-stock organisation was opted for because ‘in the beginning of this matter, thei perceyvinge this trade to be, so perilous in thadventure, so chargeable for thexpenses, & every way of soch a weight and moment, that it was to hevy for a fewe to beare, & to greate for ­private men to sustayne’.128 Eric Ash suggests that the joint-stock structure of the company was a result of Cabot’s influence, translating his knowledge of successful Italian joint-stock methods to the English situation, and his extensive inside information on Spanish practices and organisation.129

31

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Joint-stock trading also mirrored the familiar Tudor political concept of ‘commonwealth’, in which all members of the body politic had a duty to contribute to the public good even as they pursued their own affairs. The ideology and language of common charge and common wealth was extremely important to the establishment and ordering of the Muscovy Company and the prescriptions as to how they would do their business, revealing the nature of the company as a microcosm of Elizabeth’s commonwealth: That all adventures, losses, & charges: that all commodities, advauntages, & gaines, even from the beginninge of this trafficke, shold be common to all. That this Societie shold exercise, not everie man his owne, but alltogither the hole and common trafficke. That nothing shold be referred to the private gaine of any, but the hole all togither, to the common proffit of all, and to the publicke Dignitie of the hole Societie.130

Servants and factors of the company were in effect trading on its behalf, as its employees. This meant that individuals were not allowed to engage in private trade or in any way undermine the literal ‘common wealth’ of the joint-stock company, although often they were given very little in the way of incentive to respect these rules. In reflecting the ideal of Elizabethan commonwealth discourse in the establishment of their trade, the Muscovy Company in embryo and early life advanced high ideals of civility, honour and order, but such ideals were difficult to maintain and constantly under threat in the distant, cold and seemingly ‘barbaric’ context of Russia.

Maintaining commonwealth: order and honour in a foreign land Within the context of long-distance trade to an unfamiliar and uncivil destination, the governors of the Muscovy Company, the privy council and the queen were concerned with maintaining the civil identity and commonwealth principles of their own people abroad. The structuring principles of a viable commonwealth – good order, honour, duty and civility – played an important part in the language used by the Muscovy Company at home and in the community of their English servants and merchants living in Russia. Elizabeth had expressed the importance of order in her correspondence with Ivan in September 1568, describing the establishment of the Muscovy Company as conforming to the laws of her commonwealth, and the consequences when such order was rejected, ‘by præscription of good Lawes, the life of man, the order of all thinges is conserved … where lawe is contemned, and order broken, miserie of man, confusion of thinges, and utter destruction of bothe, doth consequentlie folowe’.131

32

An adventuring commonwealth The concept of good order was fundamental to Tudor society. It was a crucial key in a system of protocols that moulded and informed civil commonwealth, based on codes of deportment and behaviour defined by the church, supported and influenced by intellectual authorities, such as Erasmus, inculcated in grammar schools and played out in the everyday workings of family life. At its most basic level, good order was set by the example and tradition of the patriarchal family, ‘Necessary it is that good order be first set in families … and good members of a family are like to make good members of Church and common-wealth.’132 The concept of order, as expressed in the microcosm of the family and translated onto the macrocosm of the state, was inspired by the fifth commandment, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy dayes may be long in the lande whiche the Lorde thy God geveth thee’.133 The weekly invocation of the catechism – a requirement for the youth of every parish – epitomised the individual’s duty to keep order within him or herself, within the family and the society at large, ‘to submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: to order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters’.134 Indeed, the discourse of patriarchal and familial control and submission was integral to early modern political thought and practice, ‘a familie is the right government of many subjects or persons under the obedience of one and the same head of the family … the true seminarie and beginning of every Commonweale, as also a principall member thereof’.135 According to a contemporary catechism: [A]‌ll those to whom any authority is given, as magistrates, ministers of the church, school masters; finally, all they that have any ornament, wither reverent age, or of wit, wisdom, or learning, worship, or wealthy state, or otherwise be our superiors, are contained under the name of fathers; because the authority both of them and fathers came out of one fountain.136

Without the social structure of familial and political patriarchalism, based on the institutional foundations of church and school, on the intellectual authority of scholars, and on the daily practice of family life, a commonwealth was at risk of decay and destruction. Muscovy Company employees residing in Russia did not have access to any of these established and institutional control structures of Tudor society. The family, in particular, was a social, civil structure that they severely lacked. Perhaps, then, disorder and rebellion within the Muscovy Company employees living in their microcosm of commonwealth abroad in Russia was inevitable, for according to Jean Bodin, ‘no Colledge, nor bodie politique can long stand without a familie, but must of it selfe perish and come to nought’.137 Order had been required in the establishing of trading relations, for the company was set up ‘by the Authoritie of our high Courte of Parlament, & under the Conditions of thies good orders first instituted’ so ‘that this Societie

33

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth shold be, not onelie surelie established, but also worshipfullie ordered, in all respectes and degrees’.138 Even down to the passage to Russia and the behaviour of the crew on board pioneering ships, communal order was prescribed, ‘the above named foure shippes shall in good order and conduct saile, passe, and travaile together in one flote, ginge, and conserve of societie, to be kept indissolubly to be severed, but united within continuall sight’.139 Order was maintained by patriarchal authority: ‘the saide Captaine shall have the principal rule and government of the aprentices: And that not onely they, but also all other the sailers, shallbe attendant and obedient to him, as of dutie and reason appertaineth.’140 Similarly, maintaining appropriate order in travel and actions was a major concern of Elizabethan military expeditions, especially as there was a long tradition of complaints about unruly, disorderly and criminal behaviour in soldiers, dislocated from the normal social constraints and protocols of the commonwealth.141 Unlike attempts to colonise Ireland, and later North America, which implied the establishment of the colonising country in the microcosm – a translation of everything necessary for English habitation and survival in a new and potentially fertile land – the trading communities associated with places like Russia were not permanent.142 They were mobile and transitory, particularly on an individual level (although the company did retain a longer-term presence in Russia). They were also not a true reflection of English social life, with no familial structures, no women or children. Given that the family was both the microcosm and the cultivator of good order and civility in the Elizabethan commonwealth, the threat to the stability and the maintaining of commonwealth principles for those who lived in trading communities in unknown lands such as Russia was considerable. Rebellion and corruption could easily be caused and explained by the lack of familiar and familial social structures ordinarily found in the Elizabethan commonwealth. In the retaining of Englishness abroad the ethos of order was crucial not just economically, culturally and socially, but also spiritually. In his instructions from the queen, the ambassador Daniel Silvester was informed that Muscovy Company servants trading in Russia were ‘chargded to have used some light and contemptuous behaviour to the defacinge of suche dewe service and relligion as our good brother and his whole contrie usethe’.143 Consequently, Silvester was directed to ‘let the Governour and whole companie of our Subjects there have knowledge commandement given them in our name by you to them they may not only give offence to the naturall people of that contrie, but most of all to God in conforminge themselves contrarie to their knowledge and consciences to the relligion of that people’.144 Going native in religious terms by taking on Russian Orthodox religious practices and beliefs represented not only the overturning of expected Elizabethan civil norms, but also acted as an insult to the Russians, their hosts. This was

34

An adventuring commonwealth expressed in the instructions given to ambassadors and agents to pass on to the company’s servants, encouraging them to practise English forms of religion, rather than imbibing the religious practices of the Russians. Religious non-conformity, particularly the act of converting to a Russian Orthodox religion that was portrayed by English commentators as idolatrous and ‘popish’, undoubtedly ranked as a serious disorder, subverting the English commonwealth ideal of civility and undermining the fledgling Protestant realm. At a fundamental level, it was an unruly affront to God to go against their own consciences in following an idolatrous and ‘barbarous’ religion that bore a resemblance to the Antichrist’s ‘popish’ heresy. Yet, the Muscovy Company servants’ religious misdemeanours were represented not as a spiritual rebellion, but as an act of ‘mocking’ the Russians by making use of their religion while abroad. The English servants were accused of conforming to Russian Orthodoxy ‘more to serve the tyme and place then for any trew devotion they can have thereunto’, a view in which their assimilation of Russian religion was interpreted as opportunistic and insulting to the Russians, rather than as genuine conversion or an attempt at integration into Russian society in order to make a home in an alien land.145 Genuine conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, of course, would have been of much weightier consequence, both spiritually and politically, than opportunistic dalliance with native custom. Disorder and dishonour in the commonwealth abroad In 1587, the Muscovy Company’s chief agent in Russia, Robert Peacock, declared with pride and resolve that ‘Russia shall not corrupt me, nether one waye not other; it hath not increased me in welthe, it shall not decrese me in my good name’.146 Other company members and employees were not so consistent in their commonwealth principles during their dealings with Russia. Jerome Horsey was one such example of Elizabethan civility abroad gone wrong. One of the most disreputable and intriguing characters in the history of the early adventures of the Muscovy Company, Horsey held an ambiguous identity in both the English and Russian courts. He was at times heralded as honourable and at other times condemned as the essence of barbarity. He was consistently represented to the queen by the Muscovy Company as ‘a daungerous instrument and a mover of trouble and variaunce and soe wastfull and prodigall that their trade cannot beare the charge of such an one to have to doe for them’.147 The company provided sundry examples of ‘his unfaithfull fraudulent and deceiptefull dealinge’ and yet he was employed by the queen as her ambassador in 1586–7, and again in 1590–1, even after his several misdemeanours had come to light.148 To the company he represented the epitome of dishonour and disorder, as Peacock explained in a letter to Sir Francis

35

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Walsingham in 1587 ‘to tell of his disorderly behaviour here [Moscow] would be to enter a sea that hath no bottom’.149 To examine all his suspect activities over the course of almost twenty years in Russia is beyond the scope of this chapter, but exploring a couple of examples will suffice. Although Horsey had been resident in Russia and employed by the company for several years, he came to the attention of the queen only in the 1580s. In the papers relating to the activities of Horsey, the chronology and events appear somewhat confused. What can be ascertained is that the company accused him of having brought about the imprisonment of one Thomas Wymmington ‘because this Wymmington had discovered to the Companie the abuse of ther servauntes in Russia’.150 He was also accused of orchestrating the imprisonment of other Muscovy Company employees, such as Richard Silke, his wife and family, John Chapel and ‘one Finche, an Englisheman’,151 with the result ‘that he is feared by all our nation ther for a common Accuser and noe man will live with him’.152 The company’s representation of Horsey’s career is punctuated by a belief that Horsey constantly and dishonourably acted above his status. The company complained that in 1586 ‘When [Horsey] came into Russia with the Queenes letters, he bare himself so boulde uppon the title of her servaunte, that he would place and displace the agent at his pleasure. He wrote himself Hierom Horssey, president.’153 In this usurped position as ‘president’ of the company, he began to improve the company’s buildings, borrowed large sums of money from the tsar’s treasury in the company’s name and claimed an extra allowance from the company for his charges. He was also accused of having falsified inventories and invented ‘mens names to be debtores for great sommes of money for commodities soulde them, whearas in deede there weare noe such men in beinge but ymagined men’.154 He was ready to stand charges for some of his deceptions involving his falsified accounts and defrauding of the company and ‘he came to the aunsweringe of certen variaunces hanging in accoumpt between us [the company] & him towchinge such thinges as he had charge of whilest he was one of our servauntes in Russia’.155 Yet one affair that points most clearly to his ambiguous reputation concerned the Russian empress, the English queen and an English midwife. This affair, which still remains shrouded in mystery, involved a question of honour, and more specifically the importance of upholding female honour as a marker of civil commonwealth conduct in a patriarchal society.156 In August 1585 Horsey, being found in great favour in the Russian court, was chosen to carry over to England letters from the new emperor Feodor to Elizabeth. He was armed with Feodor’s ‘most lovinge and kinde lettres gratuities and tokens of remembraunce’ expressing ‘soe honorable and brotherlie a zeale in his highnes towardes her Majestie and for her people’, that the queen ‘did by the reason of soe acceptable thinges brought by the said Hierom Horssey

36

An adventuring commonwealth make the more estimacion and accompt of him and appointed that he should be used above his degree and callinge’.157 These letters also contained Feodor’s complaints against the behaviour of Sir Jerome Bowes, the most recent English ambassador in Russia, complaints against the behaviour of Robert Peacock and John Chapel, employees of the company, and complaints against Elizabeth’s treatment of the most recent Russian messenger into England, Reynold Beckman. Feodor required that Horsey should be sent back to him with answers from Elizabeth regarding these grievances.158 Horsey, appearing to the queen in an elevated position as Feodor’s ambassador, was granted more honour and recognition than his position in the order of the commonwealth had previously accorded. In later correspondence with Feodor’s chief adviser, Boris Fedorowich Godunov, the company asserted that Horsey ‘at that time beinge not Content to keape himselfe within the limites of a messenger or bearer of the said Emperors lettres presumed to tell the Queene that order was given him from the Emperesse to move her Majestie for the sendinge over of a midwief into Russia’.159 Consequently a midwife was found and sent over to Russia with Horsey and a commendation to the empress from Elizabeth. On the midwife’s arrival in Russia she was kept, at Horsey’s command, in Volodga, 400 miles from Moscow, for the space of a whole year and was never allowed to see the empress.160 Indeed, the empress and her brother, Boris Godunov, claimed ignorance of the midwife’s arrival and residence in Russia. When Boris was later told of the presumption of Horsey, he made strong complaint to Elizabeth, claiming that the empress, his sister, had been ‘greatlye dishonored by suche a surmyse Especially in respecte of the unfittnes of the messenger to be used in suche a request’. He suggested that, as punishment, Horsey’s head should be cut off.161 Horsey had already been detained in England in late 1587 to answer the company’s charges against him of fraud and various other complaints made by the company and the Russian emperor about his behaviour.162 However, it was only when a complaint was made against him by the midwife he had taken over to Russia in questionable circumstances, that Horsey fled the English authorities. The company concluded that on the complaint being made by the midwife, ‘he feeleth himselfe touched with the guiltines of his Conscience & fearinge the daunger that would there upon followe is fled awaie from his native Countrie and as we thinke hath taken his jorney towardes Russia’.163 The company’s role in ascertaining the villainous character of Horsey’s crime was evident in the prejudiced rhetoric of their reports, ‘What he ment by that practise and what warraunte he had to move the Queene for a midwief it is to be conjectured by his soddaune departure uppon the mydwiefes complaints to the Queene.’164 Although Horsey had appeared willing to confess and face charges for fraud, private trade and corruption, the company presented the

37

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth crime against the honour of a midwife, the honour of the empress and the honour of the queen as having weightier consequences. These consequences Horsey could not pay off with money or talk away with civil words and honourable self-representation. It is perhaps surprising that in 1590 Horsey was again taken into confidence and commissioned by the queen to take letters back to Feodor.165 For in 1589, when Giles Fletcher escorted the disgraced Horsey back to England, he also brought back a letter of complaint from Feodor to Elizabeth. It is to be noted that in the extant copy of this letter held in the British Library, Horsey is named as the translator of the document from the original Russian into English. Horsey’s translation of Feodor’s letter included a section that explained ‘we have sente the same Jerom with your Ambassador Giles Fletcher unto our loveinge Sister Queen Elizabeth and Jerome for his foolishnes is not worthie to be with us for makeinge debate betwene our princelie highnes and you our lovinge Sister’.166 However, in Yury Tolstoi’s nineteenth-century translation of a contemporary Russian copy of this letter surviving in the Russian archives, the same sentence reads: [W]‌e have sent the said Jerom with your ambassador Giles unto you; and Jerom has deserved death for his misconduct, for the practices he used betwixt us, great prince, and you, and for the unbeseeming words he spoke about us, great prince, and you. And henceforth such villains are not to come into our kingdom with your merchants, that such villains might not cause any disturbance betwixt us, and might not harm the brotherly love betwixt us.167

Perhaps Horsey’s translating skills were not up to scratch; more likely though, Horsey used the occasion of the queen’s and privy council’s ignorance of Russian and his own superior grasp of the language to expunge from the tsar’s correspondence his own condemnation. This would account for the somewhat benign tone of Feodor’s complaints and the omission of the suggested death sentence in Horsey’s English rendering of this document. It further reveals Horsey’s political manoeuvring to deceive even the queen, by using the opportunity of being brought home by the ambassador Fletcher and the scant knowledge of Russian in the English court to ensure that his despicable reputation and the matter of capital punishment were lost in translation. Alongside Horsey’s adept deceptions, his patron, Francis Walsingham, no doubt played an integral role in persuading the queen to send Horsey back to Russia as her ambassador in 1590, despite the objections of the Muscovy Company. Horsey’s ambassadorial commission may also have been partly due to the positive testimony of Giles Fletcher.168 Concerning the affairs of Horsey, Fletcher explained that he ‘by commission thoroughly examined and inquired after [them], and all proved to bee most false’.169 In particular, the affair of the midwife Fletcher ‘found to bee mistaken by Mr. Horsey, who had received

38

An adventuring commonwealth his charge, not from the Empresse, but from hir brother, Borrise Fedorowich Godonoe, to procure owt of England, not a midwyfe, but soom Doctoritza that had skill in woomens matters’.170 The emperor and Boris Godunov, however, both denied any knowledge of it. Horsey had succeeded with Fletcher at least in ingratiating himself and representing his dishonourable activities in a more attractive light, hinting at the fluid nature of self-representation in this period.171 Regardless of whether Horsey had indeed been mistaken or whether he had other intentions involving the midwife, the representation of his worst crime being against the honour of reputable and powerful women reflects the early modern concern to uphold the natural order of civil behaviour and the honour of the individual, particularly the female individual, within an ordered society. Also significant is the reality that Horsey was subsequently taken back into confidence by the queen as an official ambassador in 1590–1, suggesting a certain degree of fluidity in judgements on testimony, self-representation and the fluctuating value of women’s honour. This dynamic of oscillation between commissioning, dismissal, removal and subsequent restoration to favour of courtiers and ambassadors alike was similarly played out in the situation of Elizabethans in Ireland. There, English lord deputies were routinely accused of committing serious improprieties, were subsequently removed, and were then able to regain favour back in England, sometimes later being reappointed as lord deputies; Sir John Perrot was one such example.172 Ultimately Horsey’s role in the affair of the midwife points to a more sensitised reaction to dishonourable behaviour abroad, especially conduct that dishonoured a woman of powerful status, in a context where it was easier to break the honour codes and disobey the laws of Elizabethan commonwealth society. MERCHANTS BEHAVING BADLY: CORRUPTION WITHIN THE MUSCOVY COMPANY The concern for order within the company as part of a functioning commonwealth was heightened when servants and factors of the company were engaging in illegal private trade. It highlighted the corrupting effects of unfamiliar codes of behaviour, found in Russian notions of honour and orthodoxy that did not neatly map onto Elizabethan ideals of civil commonwealth conduct. Such private trade, contravening the company’s founding principles, raised two significant issues in the maintenance of English civility abroad. Firstly, the company and its employees were closely linked with the crown and to a certain extent they were representatives of the queen. Therefore order, honour and obedient behaviour were absolutely essential in the company, both for the preservation of the Elizabethan commonwealth abroad and for the maintaining of English (royal) identity to the Russian authorities. Disobedience in the

39

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth form of private trading from within the Muscovy Company reflected badly on the civility of the queen, the company as a whole and the individual merchants themselves. Secondly, the issue of order and obedience, and lack of it in Muscovy Company employees, could potentially raise doubts as to the efficacy and ability of the queen to rule her subjects while they were abroad, especially those who were so closely connected to the queen’s interests. Just as in the contemporary Elizabethan socio-political discourse, men without masters or familial structures were a cause for concern, so men abroad without any familial structures were at risk of becoming rebels.173 The language of order and honour and an acknowledgement of the English monarch’s authority had to be upheld in the lived and written experience of Muscovy Company merchants, artisans and ambassadors, in order to avoid the taint and cost of rebellious subjects and traitors abroad. Despite the company’s lofty ideals of order and honour, however, complaints of private trading and fraudulent activities by company members and servants alike, as well as concerns over the decay of the trade in Russia, were rife. In the 1580s, for instance, it was feared by the company that the ‘lewde dealinge’ of Anthony Marsh, Peter Garrard, Jerome Horsey, Richard Relph and others ‘by privat traffique (which is utterly forbidden) as otherweis by supplanting the saide Pecock & Chappell his assistant, is so great and perilous, as yt will shortly overthrowe the trade and corporation’.174 The company’s method of dealing with corrupt behaviour within its ranks was to send agents out to Russia to check up on the conduct of their servants there. Thus in 1584 the company sent into Russia a number of agents, namely Robert Peacock, John Chapel, Christopher Holmes, John Merick, John Horneby and ‘Wimmington who is sent over as a promoter by the company to spy oute all our doings; wherfore nowe you may trust none of the companies servants, for they are all sworn to discloze whatsoever’.175 Richard Relph, a guilty target, wrote to his partners in illegal trade warning of the arrival of this group at the port of St Nicholas, ‘The newe agent & assistant loketh more like promoters then merchants; & spie so here at the shippes, that there dareth nether purser nor maryner trade, no not for so much as a cap cloth, the Masters are bound in two hundreth pounds to the contrarie.’176 The term ‘promoter’ in this context implied an agent who informed, accused or prosecuted in the company’s or the sovereign’s name, and also possibly lined his own purse with any fines that may have resulted from of an accusation. In response to the corruption he found in the activities of company servants, Peacock wrote letters to the governors of the company in England detailing the state of trade in Russia and particularly the misdemeanours of Horsey. He commissioned John Horneby to transport these letters containing accusations against Horsey safely to the governor of the company in England. According

40

An adventuring commonwealth to the company’s reports, Horneby became the innocent victim of Horsey’s attempts to stop the incriminating letters leaving Russia. After all other means of sending the letters out of Russia had been prevented by Horsey, Peacock finally decided to send the letters by way of a Polish merchant who was travelling overland. He sent Horneby after the Pole, who had already departed on his journey, with the letters for the company governors. Horsey, hearing of Horneby’s departure with the letters, ‘theruppon ymmediatelie went to the [Russian] Counsaill and enformed them that Robert peacocke the Agent had sent a messenger to the borders of the enemies with lettres conteyninge matter of treason against the state’.177 At which, Horneby was pursued, arrested and brought back with the letters, which, when examined, contained only matters of trade. Lord Boris Fedorowich, however, convinced that Horneby had been given a message of treason to relay by word of mouth, ordered that ‘to drawe the trueth from him he was put to the putkey’,178 an Anglicisation of a Russian word for torture, ‘pytka’, which in Horneby’s case involved him being ‘tossed up by the armes uppon a jubite, his armes unjoynted, had xxiiii lashes with a wyer whippe, and was afterwardes put to the fyer to have bene rosted’.179 Boris graciously called off his torturers as Horneby burned on the fire, finally convinced by his desperate pleas of innocence.180 Several of the official accounts written by members of the Muscovy Company deal with the affair in a matter-of-fact way.181 Christopher Borough’s relation of events, however, commented particularly on the harshness of Horneby’s treatment. Borough, who had been called by the company to give testimony about the disorders of its employees in Russia, had heard of the affair straight from the horse’s mouth, ‘that John horneby accounted him [Horsey] the only cawser of it I am able to justifie upon talke I had with him presently after his comminge home’.182 Perhaps Borough’s personal proximity to Horneby accounted for his judgement on Horsey’s actions: ‘a most fowle facte, this soe owtragious a deed might rather have beseemed Infidels then Christians: If so be Jerom Horsey be not fowned the sole worker herof, yet so cleare him selfe he can not, but he wilbe fownde a chiefe instrument in it’.183 For Borough, it was not the Russians’ torture that had represented the barbarism of the ‘infidel’, rather it was the actions of Horsey. There was no doubt that Horsey came from a Christian land, was of Christian upbringing and yet his actions resembled more the unnatural behaviour of the ‘infidel’, rather than the honour of the civil Christian. The whole affair concerning Horsey had caused Borough to wonder whether Christians still retained any conception of the key elements of civil commonwealth society: honour, order and duty, ‘yet an auncient saieinge it is that flattery purchaseth frindes, truth hatred; which in effect peradventure is not yet discontinewed, but though amonge the heathen in time past it might tollerablie beare swaie, pittie were it nowe, it shoulde still doe soe emonge

41

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Christians’.184 This was a damning indictment of English Christian commonwealth values, provoked by the behaviour of one rebellious traitor and servant of the company. Horsey’s behaviour had stained English civil identity in Russia and epitomised the latent fear in the regime over the ungoverned Englishman abroad. ‘WE FEARE THE POUNISHEMENT OF DEATH’: INTERLOPING AND THE TYRANNY OF MONOPOLY In the case of interloping, or private trading from merchants not within the Muscovy Company, the commonwealth of Elizabeth’s regime was conditional and exclusive. Elizabeth’s 1568 letter to Ivan explained the principal tenets in the establishment, organisation and good working of the Muscovy Company, under the authority of the queen and parliament, To this hie Courte of Parlement, the matter of trafficking into Moscovia, was referred. Where, it was ordered, that a solemne Societie of this trade sholde be constituted, not of Merchant men onelie, but of all soch Englishe men also, no man excluded, that under certain Conditiones and by an orderlie waye, indifferentlie præscribed, wold labor to be admitted into this feloship.185

Those who did not represent the commonwealth ideals of order, honour and duty set out in the establishing foundations of the Muscovy Company charter could not benefit from the discovery of and monopoly over the Russian trade, despite being subjects of the queen and thus members of her commonwealth. Interloping, or private trade, was a disruption to the natural order and demonstrated the presumption of an individual to step outside his role in the structured commonwealth and neglect his duty to the public good. To step outside this prescribed role in the body politic was to rebel, to be disordered and to be identified only because of being different. Such private traders were ‘all so obscure men, as if there owne naughtines had not mad them knowne, thei had never bene knowne unto us, nor at this tyme named in our Lettres’.186 Elizabeth’s conclusion was that these private traders, ‘men, by slander, infamie, and fraude, have delt with us there Soveraigne, as inobedient Subjectes; with this there Contrie, as unnaturall Persones’.187 This undermining of the natural order not only identified interlopers as rebels, as ‘unnaturall persones’, as those at variance with the moral standards of the commonwealth, but also reflected badly on the queen’s government of commonwealth and company: ‘For this matter towcheth the Queanes Majestye muche in honour, that anye of her Subjectes dare attempt suche matter, in Contempt of her Majestye, and lawes.’188 Regarding the contentious issue of private trade by interlopers outside the bounds of the company, Elizabeth explained to Ivan that the Muscovy

42

An adventuring commonwealth Company had been established by ‘the Common Counsell, & publike judgement of the hole Parlament of the Realme’. Thus ‘no Subjecte of oures can justelie complain or trewlie reporte that he is excluded from this Societie, but eyther, he is oute of it, by his owne negligence, or unworthie of it, by his owne falte’.189 Those unworthy or negligent, and by implication dishonourable, had missed their opportunity and were prohibited from involvement in this new trade with Russia. It was only the ordered and honorable ‘commonwealth’ subject who had the privilege and opportunity to be involved in the company’s adventure. In 1568, Geoffrey Ducket and Thomas Bannister, assistants to the ambassador Thomas Randolph, were directed to deal with the disobedient servants of the company and other interlopers.190 They petitioned the emperor, ‘accordynge to the Queanes heighnes Commyssyon, gyven untoo them, that they maye bye thy majesties Authorite command home all suche ynglishe men, as lye heare in trade of merchandize, in contempt of the Queanes Majestie, and her lawes & agaynste the Orders of the Cumpanye’.191 Ducket and Bannister made it explicit in their address to Ivan that any private trade with Russia undertaken by English subjects not of the company was illegal, and could be judged treasonous. Those involved in such trade – the perpetrators identified by Ducket and Bannister were Ralph Rutter, Thomas Glover, Christopher Bennet and John Chapel (later an employee of the company) – were ‘all Rebells and traytours too owre Soverayne, Ladye, the Queenes heighnes’.192 Disobedience at this level and in these particular circumstances was represented by the company as rebellion against the Elizabethan commonwealth. The consequences were harsh in word, if not in deed: [W]‌e saye plainlie, if any Subjecte of oures, eyther secretlie at home, or boldlie abrode, attempte to overthrowe this order for this Societie, so præscribed by oure Lawes, so confirmed by our Royall assent, whither he live on land or Sea, in what corner of ther worlde soever he hide him, he shall never escape just punishemente, for soch a contempte of us & oure Lawes.193

In a letter to the emperor detailing the history of the Muscovy Company, Elizabeth denounced such interlopers, warning him against subjects ‘who, beinge, unfathfull to there owne Masters, unnaturall to there owne Contrie, disobedient to us there Soveraigne, what faith they will kepe in strange contries, or what dewtifull service they will do in the ende, to any other Prince, your Majestie by your greate wisdom can well judge’.194 Whether Ivan took this advice to heart is unclear, for in the late 1560s an English interloper was bold enough and ‘unnatural’ enough to petition the Russian emperor against the rule of his own sovereign, pleading that ‘we feare the pounishement of death, nether knowe we by whome to send thye letters’.195 He and his group of illegal interlopers appealed to the ‘most

43

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth mightie emperor and greate duke John Vassillewitche over all rusland extend unto us all englishe marchantes thie majesties greate mercie’.196 The petition of Christopher Bennet against the queen and the Muscovy Company, directed to Ivan, detailed the situation from the point of view of the interlopers and their trade at the Russian port of Narva. Bennet explained that Sir William Garrett (or Garrard) and the Muscovy Company had realised that ‘englishe men not beinge of [the] company to the numbers of 70 shipps and more’ were trading with Russia at the port of Narva and selling goods ‘for money better chepe then he and his company did sell’.197 In response, the Muscovy Company agents in Russia had tried to persuade Ivan to offer new privileges to the queen and company, allowing only Muscovy Company merchants to trade at Narva. They had also persuaded Elizabeth to proclaim ‘a lawe throughout all england that uppon paine of death that no englishe marchant or other subjectes for any kynde of bessines should not come with shippinge … but onlie the said Sir William garret and his company joyned with him in common stocke’.198 Bennet represented the concerns of the ‘interlopers’ trading at Narva to the emperor, and their potential fate at the hands of a cruel Muscovy Company and a queen who commanded that ‘not onlie we should be pounished to death and our goodes devided thone half to the quenes Majestie & the other half to Sir William Garret and his company. But also instead of us our fathers or mother and wyves and childrene should be pounyshed to death’ if the interlopers were caught trading with Russia at the port of Narva.199 In his supplication to Ivan, Bennet demonstrated his disorderliness and unnaturalness in choosing to mimic the Russian custom of prostration and head-knocking, so castigated by foreign observers. He explained to Ivan that ‘if the waie were opine from the narve to mosco all we englishe marchantes wold come and knoke our heads unto thie Majestie wepinge and crying owt uppon Sir William garrett for the great injure and wronge that he and his company hath done unto us’.200 Derogatory comments on the Russians’ manner of prostrating and thus debasing themselves before their social superiors was a common trope in Western European travel narratives of Russia. The imperial ambassador Sigismund von Herberstein described the manner in which Russians petitioned their emperor: ‘if he desires to offer his thanks to the grand-duke for any great favour, or to beg anything of him, he then bows himself so low as to touch the ground with his forehead’.201 George Turberville recounted in his poems on Russia how ‘the stranger bending to the god, the ground with browe must beat’.202 Fletcher similarly reported that a Russian mousick, or common man, on meeting his social superior ‘must turne himselfe about, as not daring to looke him on the face, and fall down with knocking of his head to the very ground, as he doth unto his Idoll’.203

44

An adventuring commonwealth Bennet’s justification for petitioning the Russian emperor in this brow-beating fashion was ‘that we dare not goo to our quenes majestie nor to Sir William garrett nor his company’ for fear of death.204 He continued: [W]‌e besiche thee to staye the said Sir William Garrets companye & to seale upp there goodes and not to suffer any of them to goe away nor to suffer them to shippe any of their goodes … until there come letters of mercie and favour from the quenes majestie and from Sir William garret and his company for the savegard of our heads.205

Effectively Bennet was requesting protection and action from the Russian emperor against the queen and the Muscovy Company. This was close to treason.206 Clause 1 of the 1563 Treason Act – ‘An Act to Retain the Queen’s Majesty’s Subjects in their due Obedience’, stated, among other things, that ‘all persons whatsoever’ who did promise any Obedience to any pretended Authority of the See of Rome, or to any other Prince, State or Potentate … or shall do any overt Act to that Intent or Purpose … every of them shall be to all Intents adjudged to be Traytors, and being thereof lawfully convicted shall have Judgement, suffer and forfeit, as in Case of High Treason.207

Although the Treason Act of 1563 was quite clearly aimed at combating Catholic disaffection with Protestant supremacy, there were other cases in which the language of treason applied, for instance in the distant land of Russia.208 In linguistically prostrating themselves before the Russian emperor and petitioning for his protection against their anointed monarch, Bennet and his companions had expressed obeisance, if not obedience to another sovereign. Much of the historiography surrounding perceptions of treason in Elizabethan England focuses necessarily around the threat of militant Catholicism t­aking hold once more in the Protestant commonwealth, the personal safety of the queen and the tricky issue of succession.209 Yet Bennet’s case reveals that there were other, further-flung arenas beyond the reach of the regime in which Elizabethan subjects were acting for private gain rather than the public good, and could act treasonously against the Elizabethan commonwealth. As well as demonstrating his knowledge of Russian customs of social etiquette, Bennet also revealed his understanding of the Russian calendar system in his petition to Ivan, by referring to ‘the yeare 7075’ when ‘certine newes [came] out of England’ of the queen’s proclamation against interloping at the port of Narva on pain of death. Bennet was using the Russian Anno Mundi calendar system based on the Byzantine calendar, which placed the date of the creation of the world on 1 September 5509 BC, to refer to what would have been the year 1567. Bennet further confirmed his Russian expertise and his insider knowledge of the Elizabethan court by requesting Ivan to write to Elizabeth, on Bennet’s behalf, ‘in Englishe or dutche … for that the queens

45

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Majestie hath no Russe tolmatchie nether any to translate thie Majesties letters out of Russe into inglishe’.210 ‘Tolmatchie’ or ‘tolmak’ was a Slavic word for interpreter, originating from the Arabic word ‘tirgiman’.211 By addressing the Russian emperor on his own terms, Bennet and the interlopers he represented attempted to negotiate power for themselves against a monopolising company and queen.212 They highlighted ‘the great injure and wronge that he and his company hath done unto us and hath brought us to lowsse our heads & our traid of merchandize’ and requested Ivan ‘to suffer all englishemen to traffique into their domynyons as freley as Sir William garrett and his companye’.213 Their request was initially successful, for in May 1568 the Russians were apparently complaining of the high prices of the Muscovy Company’s goods, and by July it was reported to Burghley that Ivan had granted the interlopers ‘a larger prevelydge than the merchauntes [Muscovy Company] themselves have’.214 The interlopers’ success, however, was short-lived, for following Randolph’s embassy in 1568 their privileges were revoked.215 Bennet’s petition juxtaposed the tyranny of the queen and Muscovy Company with the mercy of the Russian emperor, revealing the exclusive nature of the benefits of the Muscovy Company commonwealth in microcosm and the Elizabethan commonwealth as a whole, conditional on appropriate behaviour that ostensibly put public good before private gain. Bennet and his companions were petitioning for the right to trade freely at Russian ports. In this cause, they represented the queen and company as exclusionary and monopolising powers, putting individuals’ lives, and the lives of their families, at risk by not allowing them to continue trading at Narva and prohibiting them from mercantile activity on pain of death. The familiar and accepted representation of the Muscovite ruler as barbaric, treacherous and cruel and the English monarch as civil, Christian and orderly was turned on its head by Bennet’s own head-knocking supplication to Ivan the Terrible. Both the Muscovy Company accounts and the actions and correspondence of private traders point to the importance of the themes of order, honour and civil behaviour in attempts to maintain an Elizabethan brand of ‘commonwealth’ when encountering the unknown Russian subject and land. Faced with an unfamiliar other, the commercial and ambassadorial writing focused on the disorder and unnaturalness of its own, it looked in on itself. The themes of ideal civil commonwealth behaviour in contrast to disorderly corruption and tyranny were similarly borne out in the experience and writings of the ambassador Giles Fletcher – the subject of the following chapter. NOTES 1 P. Stern, ‘Corporate virtue: the languages of empire in early modern British Asia’, Renaissance Studies, 26:4 (2012), 510–30.

46

An adventuring commonwealth 2 L. Munro, ‘Fletcher, Giles, the elder (bap. 1546, d. 1611)’, in ODNB. 3 A brief biography of Robert Thorne, the younger (1492–1532) can be found in R. C. D. Baldwin, ‘Thorne, Robert, the elder (c. 1460–1519)’, in ODNB. 4 See H. Dalton, ‘Roger Barlow: Tudor trade and the Atlantic world’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2008), ch. 6. 5 R. Hakluyt, Divers Voyages touching the discoverie of America, and the ilands adjacent unto the same (London, 1582), sigs B1–D4; Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 250–8, and Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), pp. 212–21. 6 R. Thorne ‘A declaration of the Indies’, in Hakluyt, Divers Voyages, sig. B2. See also ‘A persuasion of Robert Thorne’, in Hakluyt PN (1589), p. 250. 7 J. Parker, Books to Build an Empire: A Bibliographical History of English Overseas Interests to 1620 (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1965), pp. 25, 29, 37. 8 Hakluyt, PN (1589), epistle dedicatory, p. 2. 9 Hakluyt, PN (1589), epistle dedicatory, p. 3. 10 C. E. Challis, The Tudor Coinage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), pp. 81–112. See also C. G. A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500–1700, vol. II, Industry, Trade and Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 113. 11 H. S. Cobb, ‘Cloth exports from London and Southampton in the later 15th and early 16th centuries: a revision’, Economic History Review, 31 (1978), 601–9. See also H. Zins, England and the Baltic in the Elizabethan Era, trans. H. C. Stevens (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972), pp. 160–91. 12 A. G. R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State: The Commonwealth of England, 1529–1660, 2nd edn (Harlow: Longman, 1997), p. 52. 13 B. Dietz, ‘Antwerp and London: the structure and balance of trade in the 1560s’, in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds), Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays Presented to S. T. Bindoff (London: Athlone Press, 1978), pp. 186–7. See also Smith, Emergence of a Nation State, p. 52. 14 S. Adams, ‘Britain, Europe and the world’, in Patrick Collinson (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 191–9. 15 Smith, Emergence of a Nation State, pp. 52–3. 16 G. D. Ramsay, The Queen’s Merchants and the Revolt of the Netherlands: The End of the Antwerp Mart (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). See also Zins, England and the Baltic, p. 170. 17 Zins, England and the Baltic, pp. 8–34, quoted at p. 9. 18 E. H. Ash, ‘ “A note and a caveat for the merchant”: mercantile advisors in Elizabethan England’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 33:2 (2002), 1–31. 19 See C. Adams, ‘The newe navigation and discoverie of the kingdome of Moscovia, by the Northeast, in the yeere 1553’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 280. 20 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 280. A note of Cecil’s investment can be found in British Library (hereafter BL) Lansdowne MS 118, fo. 52.

47

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 21 ‘The voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie knight wherein he unfortunately perished at Arzina reca in Lapland’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 267. 22 J. McDermott, ‘Willoughby, Sir Hugh (d. 1554?)’, in ODNB. 23 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, pp. 280–1. 24 J. McDermott, ‘Chancellor, Richard (d. 1556)’, in ODNB. 25 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 281. 26 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 281. 27 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 281. 28 Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), preface to the reader. 29 ‘The voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie’, pp. 269, 270. 30 ‘The voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie’, pp. 269, 270. 31 ‘The voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie’, p. 270. 32 Hugh Willoughby’s account of his voyage, BL Cotton MS Otho E VIII, fo. 16r. 33 ‘The voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie’, p. 270. 34 E. C. Gordon, ‘The fate of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his companions: a new conjecture’, Geographical Journal, 152:2 (1986), 243–7. 35 Gordon, ‘The fate’, pp. 243–7. 36 R. Unwin, A Winter Away from Home (London: Sheridan House, 1995), pp. 113–14. See also K. Mayers, North-East Passage to Muscovy: Stephen Borough and the First Tudor Explorations (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2005), pp. 66–8, and Gordon, ‘The fate’, 247. 37 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 283. 38 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 283. 39 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 283. 40 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 284. 41 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, pp. 283–4, and ‘The letters of King Edward the sixt written at that time to all the kings, princes and other potentates of the Northeast’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 263–5. See also I. Lubimenko, ‘The correspondence of Queen Elizabeth with the Russian Czars’, American Historical Review, 19:3 (1914), 525–42, and A. E. Pennington, ‘A sixteenth-century English Slavist’, Modern Language Review, 62:4 (1967), 680–6. 42 T. S. Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), p. 5. See also T. S. Willan, The Muscovy Merchants of 1555 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953), p. 9. 43 Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), preface to the reader. 44 D. W. Palmer, Writing Russia in the Age of Shakespeare (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 3. See also F. Stout, ‘ “The country is too colde, the people beastlie be”: Elizabethan representations of Russia’, Literature Compass, 10:6 (2013), 484.

48

An adventuring commonwealth 45 Zins, England and the Baltic, pp. 1–3, 5, 11–12. See also G. D. Ramsay, ‘The settlement of the Merchants Adventurers at Stade, 1587–1611’, in E. I. Kouri and T. Scott (eds), Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Basingstoke and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987), pp. 452–72. 46 There is a list of the members of the incorporated Muscovy Company printed in full in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I, ed. R. Lemon and M. A. E. Green, 12 vols (London: HMSO, 1865–72), Addenda, Mary, 1553–1556, VII, no. 39 (hereafter CSPD). The original manuscript can be found in The National Archives, London (hereafter TNA), SP 15/7, fo. 115. 47 See M. Lok, ‘Notes made by Michael Lok of the benefit of trading with Russia’, 1575, BL Harleian MS 541, fos 165–73. Another copy of this document can be found in BL Additional MS 48020, fos 330–2. 48 Thomas Bannister and Geoffrey Ducket to Sir William Cecil, 12 August 1568, Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, ed. J. Stevenson, A. J. Crosby et al., 23 vols (London: HMSO, 1863–1950), VIII, no. 2415, p. 518 (hereafter CSPF). 49 CSPF, VIII, no. 2415, p. 518. 50 A. J. Gerson, ‘The organization and early history of the Muscovy Company’, in A. J. Gerson, E. V. Vaughan and N. R. Deardorff (eds), Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1912), p. 58, and Willan, Early History, pp. 64–5. 51 P. E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 56–7, 67. 52 E. W. Bovill, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s gunpowder’, Mariner’s Mirror, 33:3 (1947), 179–86. 53 ‘Antho. Jenkinsons message done to the Q. Majestie from the Emperor of Moscovia’, November 1567, BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fo. 332. 54 ‘A message unto the quenes excellent Majestie from th’Emperor his highnes of Moscovia, to be doone in secrett unto her highnes by me her graces servant A. Jenkinson’, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ashmolean MS 1729, fo. 14ab. Another copy of this manuscript can be found in BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fo. 332. There is no mention of being ‘doone in secrett’ in the BL copy of the manuscript. 55 J. Horsey, ‘A Relacion or Memorial abstracted owt of Sir Jerom Horsey His Travells, Imploiments, Services and Negociacions, observed and written with his owne hand; wherin he spent the most part of eighten years tyme’, printed in E. A. Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1856), p. 185. 56 Horsey, ‘A Relacion’, p. 185. 57 See Willan, Early History, pp. 63–6. 58 G. Fletcher, ‘The summe of my Negotiation’, BL Lansdowne MS 60, no. 59, fo. 158r (hereafter Fletcher, ‘SN’). 59 Willan, Early History, p. 7. 60 ‘The account gyven by Michael Lok of the third voiage of Martin Furbusher for the discoverye of Cathai &ct. by the Northwest partes’, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, HM MS 715.

49

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 61 R. C. D. Baldwin, ‘Borough, Stephen (1525–1584)’, in ODNB. 62 ‘The voyage of Steven Burrough towarde the river Ob intending the discoverie of the northeast passage’ and ‘The voyage of the foresaid Steven Burrough from Colmogro in Russia to Wardhouse in serch of certaine English ships not hard of the yeere before’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 311–21 and 327–31. See also Mayers, North-East Passage to Muscovy, pp. 77–89. 63 See G. M. Bell, ‘Elizabethan diplomacy: the subtle revolution’, in M. R. Thorp and A. J. Slavin (eds), Politics, Religion and Diplomacy in Early Modern England: Essays in Honor of De Lamar Jensen (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994), pp. 267–88. See also J. Lock, ‘Randolph, Thomas (1525/6–1590)’, in ODNB. 64 ‘A commission graunted by M. Randolfe for a discoverie to the Northeast by Sea’ and ‘Instructions given to the discoverers in that action’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 406–7. See also Willan, Early History, p. 100, n. 4. 65 ‘Journal of the ships George and William, Arth. Pett and Ch. Jackman, commanders, which sailed May 21, 1580, from London, on a voyage for the discovery of a passage to Cathay by the North Seas’, BL Cotton MS Otho E VIII, fos 68–77. 66 ‘Some directions for a voyage to Cathay by the North Sea, signed John Dee’, 15 May 1580, BL Cotton MS Otho E VIII, fos 80r–v. See also ‘John Dee’s instructions for Charles Jackman and Arthur Pett’, 17 May 1580, BL Lansdowne MS 122, no. 5, fos 30r–v. See also ‘Instructions for the North-East Passage by Richard Hakluyt, lawyer, 1580’, in E. G. R. Taylor (ed.), The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1935), I, pp. 147–58, and Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 460–3, 483–5. 67 Map of Pet and Jackman’s ships in the Kara Sea, 1580, BL Cotton MS Otho E VIII, fo. 78r. 68 J. H. Appleby, ‘Jenkinson, Anthony (1529–1610/11)’, in ODNB. 69 Appleby, ‘Jenkinson, Anthony’. 70 For accounts of ‘The voyage of Anthony Jenkinson from the citie of Mosco in Russia to Boghar in Bactria, An. 1558’, ‘The voyage of Anthonie Jenkinson through Russia, and over the Caspian Sea into Persia, An. 1561’, ‘The voyage of Anthony Jenkinson into Russia the third time, An. 1566’ and ‘The voyage of Anthony Jenkinson into Russia the fourth time, An. 1571’, see Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), I, pp. 324–35, 343–52, 372–4, 402–12. 71 For accounts of these voyages, see Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), I, pp. 353–63. 72 Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), I, pp. 389–91. 73 For Ducket’s account, see BL Additional MS 48151, fos 169–174. For an account ‘from the mouth of M. Lionell Plumtree’, see Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 419–22. 74 Willan, Early History, pp. 149–52. 75 For an insightful discussion of Elizabeth’s correspondence with Ivan IV, see A. R. Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen: “you speak a language that I understand not” ’, in C. Beem (ed.), Elizabeth and Foreign Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 101–23. 76 See Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen’, p. 108.

50

An adventuring commonwealth 77 Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen’, p. 108. 78 G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Common Wealth (London, 1591), p. 19r (hereafter Fletcher, RCW). 79 ‘The Queenes Majesties letter to Theodore Ivanovich Emperour of Russia, 1591’, in Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), I, p. 500. 80 Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), I, p. 500. 81 See an anonymous account of Jerome Bowes’s embassy to Russia, ‘A briefe discourse of the voyage of Sir Jerome Bowes knight, her Majesties ambassadour to Ivan Vasilivich the Emperour of Muscovia, in the yeere 1583’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 493. See also Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 157r. 82 For further discussion, see Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen’, pp. 101–23. 83 Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 299–301. 84 ‘A discourse of the honourable receiving into England of the first ambassador of the Emperor of Russia in the yeere of Christ, 1556’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 321–6. 85 ‘The voyage of Anthony Jenkinson into Russia, wherin Osep Napea first Ambassador from the Emperor of Moscovia to Q. Marie was transported into his countrie. Ann. 1557’ and ‘The voyage of Anthony Jenkinson from the citie of Mosco’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 333–43 and 347–59. 86 ‘Voyage of Anthonie Jenkinson through Russia’, pp. 365–74. For Jenkinson’s commission, royal letters to the Russian emperor and the Sophy of Persia, and instructions from the Muscovy Company, see Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 359–64. For further discussion of Jenkinson’s voyage of 1561–63, see K. Meshkat, ‘The journey of Master Anthony Jenkinson to Persia, 1562–1563’, Journal of Early Modern History, 13 (2009), 209–28. 87 ‘Voyage of Anthony Jenkinson into Russia the third time’, pp. 397–9. See also ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth to Ivan IV, accrediting Anthony Jenkinson, who is to communicate with him on various matters; 20 Apr. 1566’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 160v. 88 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth to Ivan IV, 18 May, 1567’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fos 189v–190v. See also Willan, Early History, pp. 88–9. 89 For Randolph’s commission and correspondence relating to his embassy, see ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth to Ivan IV, accrediting Thomas Randolph as her ­ambassador, 12 June, 1568’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fos 225v–249v (Latin and English). See also ­‘A ­letter from the Russia Company, to Mr. Randolph, Ambassador in Russia; ­relating their uneasiness that they cannot hear from him, April 26, 1569’, BL Lansdowne MS 11, no. 37, fos 93r–94v; ‘Privileges granted to the Merchants-adventurers procured for them from the Emperor of Russia, by Sir Thomas Randolph, Ambassador of the Queen’s Majesty, July 10, 1569’, BL Lansdowne MS 11, no. 16, fos 50r–55v; ‘Mr. T. Randolph’s account, and the balance due to him at his return from his Embassy in Moscovy, 1569’, BL Lansdowne MS 11, no. 34, fo. 88. 90 Lock, ‘Randolph’. 91 Willan, Early History, pp. 112. 92 See Yu. Tolstoi (ed.), The First Forty Years of Intercourse between England and Russia, 1553–1593 (St Petersburg: A. Travshelya, 1875), pp. 74–8. See also Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen’, pp. 105–6.

51

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 93 Willan, Early History, pp. 110–16. 94 Willan, Early History, pp. 116–18. 95 ‘Voyage of Anthony Jenkinson into Russia the fourth time’, pp. 426–37. See also TNA, SP 70/147, ‘Anthony Jenkinsons answere to interrogations in Russia, May 1572’, fo. 413. 96 See ‘Instructions given by Her Majestie, Maie 1575 to Daniel Silvester, being then sent to the Emperor of Russia’, BL Lansdowne MS 155, no 55, fo. 131; see also ‘Instructions given to Daniel Silvester, ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to the Emperor of Russia, May 1575’, BL Egerton MS 2790, fos 178–80. 97 See Tolstoi (ed.), First Forty Years, pp. 115–16. See also H. R. Huttenbach, ‘The search for and discovery of new archival material for ambassador Jenkinson’s mission to Muscovy in 1571–72’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 6:3 (1972), 416–36. See also Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen’, pp. 101–23. 98 ‘Instructions to Daniel Silvester’, BL Egerton MS 2790, fos 178–80. 99 Willan, Early History, pp. 125–8. 100 Horsey, ‘A Relacion’, p. 184. See also G. M. Bell, A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives, 1509–1688 (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1990), pp. 221–7. 101 M. V. Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations, 1580–1696’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1992), p. 76. 102 TNA, SP 103/ 61, ‘Articles agreed upon for a League of Amitie betweene her Highnes and the great Duke of Muscovia’, n.d., fos 1r–10v. 103 See H. Huttenbach, ‘New archival material on the Anglo-Russian treaty of Queen Elizabeth and Tsar Ivan IV’, Slavonic and East European Review, 49 (1971), 535–49. 104 Huttenbach, ‘New archival material’. 105 Willan, Early History, pp. 161–4. 106 C. Cross, The Puritan Earl: The Life of Henry Hastings, Third Earl of Huntington, 1536–1595 (London: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 143–8. 107 Often referred to as ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’, the tract was originally published as The copie of a leter, wryten by a Master of Arte of Cambrige, to his friend in London concerning some talke past of late betwen two worshipful and grave men, about the present state, and some procedinges of the Erle of Leycester and his friendes in England (Paris, 1584). 108 Horsey, ‘A Relacion’, p. 196. See also Cross, Puritan Earl, p. 30. 109 Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, pp. 67–84. 110 ‘Elizabeth’s instructions’, BL Cotton MS Nero B VIII, fos 32–4. A copy of her letter presenting Bowes to Ivan IV as her ambassador can be found in TNA, PRO 22/60/5. For ‘Bowes’s report on his embassy’, see TNA SP 91/1, fos 24r–5v. 111 ‘Elizabeth’s instructions’, BL Cotton MS Nero B VIII, fo. 33v. See also Willan, Early History, pp. 161–3. 112 ‘Elizabeth’s instructions’, BL Cotton MS Nero B VIII, fos 32–4. 113 Bertolet, ‘The tsar and the queen’, pp. 101–23.

52

An adventuring commonwealth 114 M. Unkovskaya, ‘Bowes, Sir Jerome (d. 1616)’, in ODNB. 115 Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, pp. 89–103. 116 ‘Observations of the Russia merchants, on a letter sent by the emperor of Russia to the queen of England’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 43, fo. 144. 117 ‘Observations of the Russia merchants’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 43, fo. 144. See also Willan, Early History, pp. 163–5. 118 The legend of Bowes’s behaviour in the Russian court appears in John Milton, A brief history of Moscovia (London, 1682), pp. 90–7. Bowes also appears in Samuel Pepys’s diary, according to Unkovskaya, ‘Bowes’. See also R. M. Croskey, ‘A further note on Sir Jerome Bowes’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, 10 (1977), 39–45. 119 ‘A discourse of the Ambassage of Sir Jerom Bowes’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 499. See also Unkovskaya, ‘Bowes’; Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, pp. 100–8. For further discussion of Bowes’s account of his embassy and its reception, see R. M. Croskey, ‘Hakluyt’s accounts of Sir Jerome Bowes’s embassy to Ivan IV’, Slavonic and Eastern European Review, 61:4 (1983), 546–64. 120 Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoricheskago Obshchestva (Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society), 149 vols (St Petersburg: Imperatorskoy akademii nauk, 1867–1916), XXXVIII, pp. 141–4 (hereafter SIRIO). For an English translation of the reconfirmation of these privileges in September 1585, see Tolstoi (ed.), First Forty Years, pp. 261–9. See also S. H. Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow and the Anthony Marsh affair’, Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, 46 (1992), 109, reprinted in Explorations in Muscovite History (Farnham: Variorum, 1991), chapter III. 121 R. Hellie, ‘Horsey, Sir Jerome (d. 1626)’, in ODNB. 122 SIRIO, XXXVIII, p. 184. 123 For details on Horsey’s employment as ambassador to Russia see BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fos 363–6; see also BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fos 136r–137v. and no. 42, fos 140r–143v. See also Unkovskaya ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, pp. 134–5. 124 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 109–10. 125 Willan, Muscovy Merchants, pp. 9, 84, and Gerson, ‘Organisation and early history’, pp. 116–20. 126 See C. E. Walker, ‘The history of the joint stock company’, Accounting Review, 6:2 (1931), 97–105. 127 Willan, Muscovy Merchants, pp. 6–7. 128 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth to Ivan IV, emperor of Russia, 16 September, 1568’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fos 241–9. 129 Ash, ‘ “A note and a caveat” ’,9; Walker, ‘History of the joint stock company’. See also W. R. Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), II, p. 36; A. Sandman and E. H. Ash, ‘Trading expertise: Sebastian Cabot between Spain and England’, Renaissance Quarterly, 57:3 (2004), 813–46. 130 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 248. 131 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 248.

53

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 132 W. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (1622), quoted in Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 87. See also S. D. Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 34–66; A. Fletcher, ‘Introduction’, in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 31–9. 133 Exodus 20:12, The Holie Bible conteynyng the Olde Testament and the Newe (London, 1568). 134 Quoted in Amussen, An Ordered Society, p. 36. 135 J. Bodin, The six bookes of a commonweale (London, 1606), p. 8. 136 A. Nowell, A Catechism Written in Latin (1563), trans. T. Norton (1570), ed. G. E. Corrie (Cambridge, 1853), pp. 130–1, quoted in G. J. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought (Oxford, 1975), p. 46. 137 Bodin, Six bookes, p. 9. 138 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 248. 139 ‘Instructions given to the Masters and Mariners to be observed in and about this Fleete, passing this yeere 1557, towards the Bay of St Nicolas in Russia’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 332–3. Also printed in E. D. Morgan and C. H. Coote (eds), Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1886), I, pp. 7–10. 140 ‘Instructions given to the Masters and Mariners’, pp. 7–10. 141 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, p. 24. 142 On the colonisation of Ireland, see N. P. Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); A. Hadfield, ‘English colonialism and national identity in early modern Ireland’, Éire-Ireland, 28:1 (1993), 69–86; D. Shuger, ‘Irishmen, aristocrats and other white barbarians: a cultural analysis of English colonialism as considered in the “Irish Tracts” of Edmund Spenser and John Davies’, Renaissance Quarterly, 50:2 (1997), 494–525. On colonisation of the New World, see N. P. Canny, ‘England’s new world and the old, 1480s–1630s’, in N. P. Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. I, The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the 17th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 148–69; P. Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 143 ‘Instructions to Daniel Silvester’, BL Egerton MS 2790, fos 178–9. 144 ‘Instructions to Daniel Silvester’, BL Egerton MS 2790, fos 178–9. 145 ‘Instructions to Daniel Silvester’, BL Egerton MS 2790, fos 178–9. 146 TNA, SP 91/1, Robert Peacock to Sir Francis Walsingham, 8 February 1587, fo. 53. See also Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, pp. lxxxix–xci. 147 ‘A discourse on the troubles caused by Jerome Horsey’, 1588–90[?]‌, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 137r. 148 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 137r. See also ‘A discourse of the second and third Imployments of Sir Jerom Horseye Esquire nowe Knight sent from

54

An adventuring commonwealth his Majestie to the Emperor of Rushea in Anno 1585 and 1589’, BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fos 363r–374v; Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, pp. 131–40. 149 TNA, SP 91/1, Peacock to Walsingham, fo. 53. See also Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, pp. lxxxix–xci. 150 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 137r. 151 ‘Articles exhibited by the Companie of Merchauntes tradinge to Russia Aginst Hierom Horssey’, BL Lansdowne MS 62, no. 10, fos 23–4. Also printed in Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, Appendix III, p. 330. There is another copy in TNA SP 91/1, ‘Articles exhibited by Muscovy merchants against Hierom Horsey’, fos 95r–96v. 152 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 137r. 153 ‘Articles exhibited’, BL Lansdowne MS 62, no. 10, fo. 24r. 154 ‘Articles exhibited’, BL Lansdowne MS 62, no. 10, fo. 22r. 155 ‘A letter from the Muscovy Company to Boris Godunov, December 1587’, BL Lansdowne MS 53, no. 19, fo. 39v. 156 See Willan’s discussion of Horsey in Willan, Early History, pp. 169–70, 199, and Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, pp. lxv–lxviii. See also L. E. Berry and R. O. Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyages (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 249–61. 157 ‘Matters to be conteyned in her Majestes Lettres to be wrytten to the Emperor of Russia in the behaulfe of the Companie of Merchauntes tradinge those partes’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 33, fo. 125v. 158 ‘Matters to be conteyned’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 33, fo. 125v. 159 ‘A letter’, BL MS Lansdowne 53, no. 19, fo. 39v. 160 ‘A letter’, BL MS Lansdowne 53, no. 19, fo. 39v. See also ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fos 136r–137v, and ‘Letter from Christopher Borough to the governors of the Russia Company regarding Russian trade, November 1587’, BL Lansdowne MS 52, no. 37(a), fos 102r–103v. 161 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 136v. For other accounts of Horsey’s misbehaviour and the matter of the midwife, see ‘A letter’, BL MS Lansdowne MS 53, no. 19, fos 39v–40r, and ‘Letter from Christopher Borough’, Lansdowne 52, no. 37(a), fos 102r–103v. 162 See the letters addressed to Lord Boris Fedorowich and Andreas Shalkan in BL Lansdowne MS 53, no. 19, fos 39v–42v. 163 Letters addressed to Lord Boris Fedorowich and Andreas Shalkan in BL Lansdowne MS 53, no. 19, fo. 39v. 164 ‘A discourse’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 40, fo. 136v. 165 See Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, pp. xciii–cx. See also Feodor’s letter to Elizabeth I, which complained of the appointment of Horsey as an ambassador to Russia once more, TNA SP 91/1, fos 82r–87v, and Feodor’s letter to Lord Burghley, TNA SP 91/1, fos 88r–90v. The controversy over Horsey’s second employment as ambassador to Russia can also be seen in the Muscovy Company’s petition to Lord Burghley, see TNA SP 91/1, fos 91r–92v.

55

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 166 ‘The transcripte of the Emperours letter of Russia to the Q. Elizabeth: by Master Doctor Fletcher her highnes Ambassador … translated by Jer. Horsey’, BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fo. 338v. 167 ‘Czar Theodore to Queen Elizabeth’, April 1589, in Tolstoi (ed.), First Forty Years, p. 353. 168 See TNA, SP 91/1, ‘Accusations aginst Hierom Horsey’, 1590, fos 74r–75v. Also printed in Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, pp. 373–5. 169 ‘Jerom Horseie answear to the generall complaints in the Emperouer his letters’, printed in Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, Appendix V, p. 371. 170 TNA SP 91/1, ‘Accusations’, fos 74v–75r. 171 For further discussion of Jerome Horsey, see Palmer, Writing Russia, pp. 97–127. 172 See R. Turvey, ‘Perrot, Sir John (1528–1592)’ and M. A. Lyons, ‘Fitzwilliam, Sir William (1526–1599)’, in ODNB. 173 A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), pp. xix, 9–10, 12–13. 174 ‘Notes prefacing the letter from Richard Relph on Rose Island to his companions in Cazan, warning them of the company’s actions’, 12 August 1584, BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fo. 359v. Another copy of the notes and letter, which includes two extra paragraphs in the ‘notes’, can be found in BL Lansdowne MS 42, no. 23, 68r–71v. See also ‘Letter from Christopher Borough’, BL Lansdowne MS 52, no. 37(a), fos 102r–103v. 175 Richard Relph, ‘Copie of a letter written on Rose Island in Russia, to Nicholas Spencer & George Henage at Casan before his coming home in August, 1584’, BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fo. 360. 176 ‘Copie of a letter’, BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fo. 360. 177 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 136r. 178 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 136r. 179 ‘Articles exhibited’, BL Lansdowne MS 62, no. 10, fos 23–4. 180 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 136r. 181 ‘A discourse’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 40, fo. 136r, and TNA SP 91/1, ‘Articles exhibited’, fos 95r–96v. 182 ‘Letter from Christopher Borough’, BL Lansdowne MS 52, no. 37(a), fo. 102v. 183 ‘Letter from Christopher Borough’, BL Lansdowne MS 52, no. 37(a), fo. 102v. 184 ‘Letter from Christopher Borough’, BL Lansdowne MS 52, no. 37(a), fo. 102v. 185 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 247r. 186 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 244v. 187 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 244v. 188 ‘The Russia Company of England petition the Emperor against Glover, Rutter, &c. as interlopers, and that they may be punished’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 41, fo. 138v. 189 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fos 246v–247v.

56

An adventuring commonwealth 190 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fos 241–9. See also ‘Queen Elizabeth to Ivan IV on behalf of Tho. Bannister and Geoffrey Ducket, appointed to represent the Company of Merchants’, June 1568, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fos 226v–228v. 191 ‘Russia Company’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 41, fo. 139r. 192 ‘Russia Company’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 41, fo. 138v. 193 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 248r. 194 ‘Letter from Queen Elizabeth’, BL Royal MS 13 B I, fo. 249r. 195 Christopher Bennet, ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen Majestie geven in a supplication to the Emperor of Russia’, n.d., BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 37, fo. 130r. Baron suggests the date for this document is 1569, see S. H. Baron, ‘A guide to published and unpublished documents on Anglo-Russian relations in the sixteenth century in the British archives’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 11 (1977), 381. 196 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 37, fo. 130r. 197 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 37, fo. 130r. 198 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 37, fo. 130r. 199 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 37, fo. 130r. 200 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL MS Lansdowne 112, no. 37, fo. 130v. 201 Sigismund von Herberstein, Notes Upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country, entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, by the Baron Sigismund Von Herberstein, trans. and ed. R. H. Major, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1851–2), II, p. 124. For another example, see Anthony Jenkinson’s ‘The maners, usages and ceremonies of the Russes’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 344. 202 G. Turberville, Tragicall Tales (1587), p. 188v. 203 Fletcher, RCW, p. 46r. 204 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 37, fo. 130r. 205 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 37, fo. 130v. 206 D. A. Orr, Treason and the State: Law, Politics and Ideology in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 21–5. 207 23 Elizabeth I, c.1, quoted in Orr, Treason and the State, p. 24. See also F. A. Youngs, Jr, ‘Definitions of treason in an Elizabethan proclamation’, Historical Journal, 14:4 (1971), 675–91. 208 L. Ward, ‘The treason act of 1563: a study of the enforcement of anti-Catholic legislation’, Parliamentary History, 8:2 (1989), 289–308. 209 P. Lake and M. Questier ‘Puritans, papists and the “public sphere” in early modern England: the Edmund Campion affair in context’, Journal of Modern History, 72:3 (2000), 587–627; Ward, ‘The treason act of 1563’, 289–308. 210 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 37, fo. 130v. 211 R. A. Roland, Interpreters as Diplomats (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), p. 80, n. 3.

57

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 212 For further discussion of negotiating power in the early modern period, see M. J. Braddick and J. Walter (eds), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 213 ‘Bennet agaynste the Queen’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 37, fo. 130v. 214 Willan, Early History, p. 98. 215 ‘John (Iwan IV.) Vasselwitch, czar of Muscovy, to Q. Elizabeth; stating the conduct of, and the reception he had given to her ambassador (Tho. Randolph) … Voloydaye, June 20, 1569’, BL Cotton MS Nero B VIII, fo. 4.

58

Chapter 2

A commonwealths-man in Russia

Giles Fletcher’s early career and embassies

So the case standeth in a Common-wealth: and so it is in the consultations of Kings and Princes. If evill opinions and naughty perswasion cannot be utterly & quite plucked out of their hearts, if you cannot even as you would remedy vices, which use and custome hath confirmed: yet for this cause you must not leave and forsake the Common-wealth. Thomas More, Utopia (1539)

Giles Fletcher’s mission to Russia was intended to combat the diplo­ matic ­disarray left by Sir Jerome Bowes’s ambassadorial faux pas and the ­inadequacies of Jerome Horsey in the Russian court required attention.1 A workable and amicable political relationship needed to be encouraged with Feodor I, following the death of the ‘English’ emperor, as Ivan IV had been disparagingly labelled by his own chancellor.2 In addition, Anthony Marsh’s extensive private trading in Russia and his accrual of large debts now being demanded from the company had to be addressed in light of increasing recriminations against the English and the cancelling of the company’s privileges.3 Reigniting a successful trading and diplomatic relationship with Russia was more crucial than ever in the 1580s in the broader context of the increasing threat of Spanish domination in Western Europe and the continuing need to find new markets for English goods in competition with French, Hanseatic and Italian merchants. In the early stages of English mercantile contact with Russia, diplomatic negotiations took shape in the wake of developing trade relations and were made up of a series of ad hoc embassies by individuals, who may have been merchants with previous experience of Russia or gentlemen with ­experience of diplomacy ­elsewhere. Rather than a definite and clear diplomatic policy, these ad hoc embassies put great effort and resources into reacting to particular issues at particular times. The embassy of Giles Fletcher in 1588, however, represented a change in diplomatic tack. The commission of an experienced scholar and

59

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth parliament man with a developing diplomatic career, who brought a distinctive ideological view of practically engaged political virtue to the role of ambassador to Russia and to the severe problems posed by the corrupt state of the Muscovy Company, represented a new development in diplomatic practice between the two countries. Fletcher must have been seen as an unusually competent, virtuous and trusted man to be chosen for this particular mission in the context of the company’s decline and failure and with the threat of a Spanish Europe looming large. This chapter examines Fletcher’s embassy to Russia by exploring how his own personal history framed his particular experience there and influenced his negotiations at the Muscovite court. GILES FLETCHER, THE ELDER: SCHOLAR, POET AND PARLIAMENT-MAN Fletcher’s upbringing, humanist education and experience had prepared him well for the challenges posed by this important and difficult mission to Russia. Giles was born in Cranbrook, Hertfordshire in 1546, the second son of the clergyman Richard Fletcher. He studied at Eton, where he showed a facility in poetry at a young age. In October 1563 when Queen Elizabeth visited the school she was presented with a collection of Latin verses, eleven epigrams of which were written by Fletcher – twice as many as any other of the students.4 Fletcher entered King’s College, Cambridge in 1565. He worked his way up through various appointments at King’s, including lecturer in Greek from 1572 until 1579, deputy public orator in 1577, senior fellow in 1578 and bursar of the college, 1579–80. He demonstrated his aptitude and accomplishments as a scholar and adept administrator with his highest appointment as dean of arts in 1580–1.5 Fletcher’s poetic talent flourished at Cambridge. While there, he wrote several pastoral poems concerned with further reformation of the church, displaying his keen Protestantism and his appeal to potential patrons of that frame of mind, such as Sir Francis Walsingham and Thomas Randolph.6 His Latin eclogues, which were some of the first of their kind in England (although not published in print until 1678 in Poemata varii argumenti), point to a reforming approach to poetry as well as to religious politics.7 He went on to compose a poem entitled De literis antiquae Britanniae, which was later printed by Fletcher’s son, Phineas, in his Piscatorie Eclogs and other Poeticall Miscellanies (1633).8 This was an allegorical poem explaining the history of British learning, from a particularly Protestant and Cantabrigian perspective. In September 1569 Fletcher also wrote a poem on the death of Bishop Edmund Bonner, the infamous persecutor of heretics who had gained the title ‘Bloody Bonner’ for his violent persecution of the ‘godly’ during the reign of Mary Tudor.9

60

A commonwealths-man in Russia In the early 1570s Fletcher penned several poems in memory of Walter Haddon, a renowned humanist scholar and civil lawyer, and his son, Clere Haddon, a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, who both died in 1571.10 The poems were printed in a revised collection of Haddon’s poems, Poematum Gualteri Haddoni, Legum Doctoris, sparsim collectorum, libri duo (1576). Fletcher, among many others, admired Walter Haddon as the Ciceronian scholar and statesman par excellence, who defended the reformed religion against attack from the Portuguese priest, Osorio.11 Fletcher was also particularly fond of Clere Haddon, who had been a friend at Eton and King’s.12 His elegy for Clere, entitled Adonis, mourned his untimely and tragic death by drowning in the river Cam only four months after the death of his father, lamenting the loss of a talented and fair youth.13 As well as revealing the depth of feeling and respect Fletcher had for the Haddons, his poems clearly demonstrate Fletcher’s humanism and his own desire to pursue a life of virtue and duty: ‘Diligent virtue brings its own reward; nor does the urn which holds man’s ashes hold his name; they whom the fates forbid to live, live on in the fame of virtue’.14 Around this time Fletcher wrote three epitaphs for Bridget Butts and an eclogue in celebration of the marriage of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford to Anne Cecil in December 1571.15 Edward de Vere was himself a courtier poet and was much in favour with Elizabeth during the 1570s, the queen attending his marriage to Ann.16 Celebrating the Earl of Oxford’s marriage through poetry was, no doubt, a patronage-seeking move on Fletcher’s part. In fact, the marriage eclogue, along with De literis antiquae Britanniae, two of the pastoral eclogues and the obituary of Clere Haddon, were presented to Mildred Cecil, Lady Burghley, in the hope of gaining preferment of some kind.17 Additionally, Fletcher composed a poem on the coat of arms of Maximilian Brooke, eldest son of Lord Cobham. Brooke had come to King’s in June 1577 and Holinshed recorded that Fletcher ‘greatlie loved this gentleman’.18 In 1579 he also wrote a commendatory poem for Peter Baro’s In Jonam Prophetam Praelectiones. Baro and Fletcher both lectured at King’s in the late 1570s, Fletcher in Greek and Baro in Hebrew and divinity, which would account for their acquaintance.19 In 1576, Fletcher contributed a commendatory poem to John Foxe’s third edition of his Actes and Monuments.20 This was an important text to be associated with, for in April 1571 it was decreed by the convocation of the province of Canterbury that Foxe’s work should be placed in all churches and in the halls and houses of the archbishops and deacons of the land. Although this was not sanctioned by the queen, nor enacted by parliament, Foxe’s Actes and Monuments was adopted almost as a canonical text of the Anglican Church and retained as regulation and inspiration for clergymen and congregation alike in churches throughout the commonwealth until the ascendancy of Archbishop Laud in the 1630s. As such, Fletcher’s poetry was part of the accepted canon of

61

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth the reformed church. Other contributors of commendatory poems to the Actes and Monuments were such notables as Sir Thomas Ridley, Abraham Hartwell, Thomas Drant and Philip Stubbes. Some of these men were at Cambridge at the same time as Fletcher, suggesting that Fletcher may have been a participant in informal networks that were defined by the aspirations of poetic counsel and further reformation of the church.21 Fletcher’s life, career and writings consistently demonstrated his commitment to the Elizabethan commonwealth and to reformed religion. In his early pastoral poetry, Fletcher presented the need to protect and encourage the fledgling Church of England, perhaps following in his father’s religious footsteps. Fletcher’s father, Richard Fletcher, vicar of Cranbrook, Hertfordshire, allowed three consecutive puritan ministers to preach within his parish in the 1570s and 1580s. Patrick Collinson suggests that this was more the result of lay pressure than because of any particular affinity that Richard Fletcher himself had with puritanism, but this may have had some influence in the formation of Fletcher’s religious persuasion, for he settled in Cranbrook after leaving Cambridge in the autumn of 1581 and was resident there until late 1584.22 Fletcher continued to visit and stay in Cranbrook often, and his own family – his wife and children – lived in Cranbrook while he was away on embassies or affairs of the City of London in the following decades.23 Fletcher’s studies and time at King’s between 1565 and 1581 – the books he read, the people he met – would have had an impact on the development of his religious and political ideas. Scholars who made a name for themselves at Cambridge as puritans and religious controversialists while Fletcher was there included Thomas Cartwright, William Fulke, Robert Browne and George Gifford. The furor caused by the rebellious abandonment of academic dress and surplice in chapel by Fulke at St John’s College in the 1560s and the controversial anti-episcopal preaching of Cartwright at Trinity in 1570 would doubtless have had a ripple effect throughout the university that would not have gone unnoticed by Fletcher.24 In 1570, Fletcher himself had firsthand experience of religious controversy in his own college when the provost of King’s, Philip Baker, was deprived of his position, on charges of being a ‘papist’, of not preaching, of threatening violence to other officers and of mismanaging college affairs. The fellows of King’s College had first issued complaints against the provost in 1565 and again in November 1569, calling for his removal. Although Fletcher did not sign any of the complaints against Baker, he did pen two poems lamenting the corrupt state of the college under his management.25 Baker was replaced by Roger Goad, but within six years, grievances by the fellows of King’s were being brought against the new provost. This time Fletcher signed his name to the articles against Goad that were sent to the Bishop of Lincoln, demanding Goad’s removal. Goad was accused by the fellows of

62

A commonwealths-man in Russia usury, corruption, bribery, ‘uncleanes of life not to be named’, selling university places, hindering learning at the college and in Goad’s own words to Lord Burghley, ‘that I have very wyde back doores to loose and lewde lyvinge’.26 However, as Berry points out, the complaint against Goad came under suspicion because ‘Mr Fletcher hathe confessed at Dr. Wattes howse that the articles were brought upp to make a showe to drawe on a Commission’.27 Those who looked into the case also queried ‘Whether this devise grew from amongst them selves or was received abroad from any other?’28 Fletcher’s involvement in this affair proved to be ill thought through for Goad thoroughly repudiated the charges, and Burghley took Goad’s part. As a result, the fellows involved were forced to present a public submission to Goad. In their apology, Fletcher, Robert Johnson, Robert Dunning, Robert Liles and Stephen Lakes were enjoined to confess that they had defamed Goad and had exhibited ‘dyvers untrue and sclanderous articles against him’.29 Despite the public humiliation, Fletcher appears to have got off lightly, for Dunning was expelled from the university, Johnson disappeared from the college’s records after this time and Liles was later expelled in 1583. Daryl Palmer asserts that ‘it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the Goad affair in defining Fletcher’s career: the event serves as a touchstone for Fletcher’s intellectual origins and as a measure of his eventual failure’.30 However, Fletcher’s involvement in this scandal does not appear to have affected his career at King’s, his ability to gain patrons when he left Cambridge or indeed to be preferred by Elizabeth as Remembrancer of the City of London and as an ambassador on delicate, but important missions for the Elizabethan regime. He may not have gained Burghley’s patronage as a result of this action, but nor was he blocked from continuing his career at this stage. Palmer presents Fletcher’s writings and the ultimate ‘failure’ of his later career as a reaction to the submission he was forced to make to Burghley and Goad in 1576, fashioning Fletcher as zealously Protestant and rivalry-driven, as ‘the outspoken reformer from King’s’ who wanted to ‘both write and right his world’.31 Although aspects of Palmer’s analysis ring true, certain elements of his narrative have clearly been crafted to advance a particular argument. Palmer implies a greater involvement on Fletcher’s part in the earlier action against Baker than can plausibly be sustained from the extant evidence.32 Throughout his works and in his career choices, as we shall see, Fletcher appears as a more cautious advocate of the importance of counsel through poetry and through pursuing the virtuous vita activa, rather than as the radical agitator portrayed by Palmer. Alongside his Protestant leanings, Fletcher’s humanist ‘civil philosophy’ entailed a strong belief in the role of the virtuous and active commonwealths-man, shaped by the standard texts that permeated the education and thought of many aspiring, civic-minded intellectuals: Cicero’s De inventione and De officiis. The possession and practice of the cardinal

63

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth virtues – prudentia, justitia, magno animo et fortiter and temperantia – demonstrated that such a man was honestus, endowed with dignity, honourable, distinguished and upright.33 The responsibility of a civil humanist was to strive for a life of honestas, the vita activa, which involved providing good counsel, performing the duties of governance and service, and ‘never … desert[ing] the cause of the commonwealth’.34 In this respect, Fletcher was able to perform this humanist vita activa admirably by moving from a life of scholarly devotion into the arena of the Elizabethan political yeomanry as an MP with a proven track-record of intellectual excellence, and as an up-and-coming parliament-man, versed in the civil law. Fletcher married Joan Sheafe, the daughter of Thomas Sheafe, an influential clothier yeoman in Cranbrook, in January 1581 and finally left Cambridge for Cranbrook in the autumn, having received his Doctor of Civil Laws degree in June 1581. Fletcher’s first child, Phineas, was born in April 1582, later to become a renowned poet, and in the same year Fletcher was made chancellor of the diocese of Sussex. By 1584, Fletcher was elected to parliament, most likely with the assistance of Lord Cobham as a patron, representing Winchelsea, one of the Cinque Ports.35 During Fletcher’s first parliament, he served on a committee to consider abuses in the Church of England and how to reform them. This committee was set up in response to petitions presented to parliament by those of an advanced Protestant view who believed the Elizabethan religious settlement had not gone far enough in reforming the corruptions of the established church and who felt they were being politically out-manoeuvred by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, in the convocation of clergy and in the realm as a whole.36 Members on the committee included those illustrious ‘men of business’ Robert Beale, James Morrice and William Fleetwood as well as the courtiers Sir Thomas Heneage and George Carey, MPs such as Sir William Herbert and Edward Lewkenor and the lawyers Francis Alford and Christopher Yelverton.37 The committee were to ‘view over the said Petitions, and to reduce the contents of the same into some particular Heads or Articles’ to be passed up to the House of Lords.38 When the bill of reforms drawn up by the committee finally reached Elizabeth, she dismissed it in what would become an all too familiar fashion, with the remonstrance that the House of Commons was not to interfere or intervene in matters of the church, whether it be for reformation or discipline. Elizabeth insisted that ‘she would not receive any motion of innovation’ or alter the law or establishment of the Church of England in any way.39 Fletcher’s first experience of parliament exposed him to a form of elected representative assembly in which Elizabeth intervened directly and forcefully to dictate what could and could not be discussed in parliament, curbing the enthusiasm of ‘forward’ men of business who had become too ‘froward’ – ungovernable – in the pursuit of further reformation of the church, and through her intervention

64

A commonwealths-man in Russia denying the ideal of a mixed-estate conception and practice of government.40 In this context, taking into account the committee membership that Fletcher was sharing his duties with – the clerks, the courtiers, the MPs – it is possible to see Fletcher’s own role as bearing many of the hallmarks of Graves’s and Collinson’s conception of the Elizabethan ‘man of business’ – the faithful, second-tier agents of the ‘pillars of the regime’.41 As a result of his parliamentary activities, the Fletchers moved to London in 1585, where Giles obtained the patronage of Sir Francis Walsingham and of Thomas Randolph, who had been ambassador to Russia in 1568–9. Fletcher’s patronage from staunchly Protestant figures such as Randolph and Walsingham, and later from Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex – inheritor of the pan-European Protestant zeal of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Sir Philip Sidney – revealed his alignment with the ideology of virtuous protection of God’s true church.42 REMEMBRANCER OF THE CITY OF LONDON Graves suggests that with Thomas Norton’s death in 1584, there was no obvious successor to this formidable ‘man-of-business’, but it may have been Fletcher’s Cambridge connections and education, as well as his performance in the parliament of 1584, that attracted the attention of privy councillors and paved the way for him as a successor to Norton in the position of Remembrancer of the City of London in 1586.43 Fletcher was considered for the position in December 1585 and held it until 1605.44 He was recommended for this position by the queen in order to replace ‘the late services divers waies supplied by our late loveinge subject Thomas Norton deceased’.45 The queen was ‘moved to thinke that the Continuance of that service to be supplied by some trustie and sufficient man is a matter verie expedient bothe for us and you’.46 For Fletcher, this was an opportunity for career progression and to put into practice his civil philosophy of the vita activa. In the queen’s letter of recommendation Fletcher was highly praised: ‘[W]‌ee have thought good to recommend unto you for the same purpose, our welbeloved subjecte Docter fletcher, as one whom for his learninge integretie and other Commendable partes wee judge meete and sufficient to supplie the place of the said Norton.’47 The position of Remembrancer of the City of London has been relatively neglected in the historiography of Elizabethan politics, largely because it has been presented as a neutral, non-partisan role, the main responsibilities of which were to act as secretary to the lord mayor and as a conduit of communication between the lord mayor and city, and the queen, privy council and parliament. The exception is Michael Graves’s examination of Thomas Norton as a crucial figure in parliament, council and city relations. He presents Norton, the remembrancer, as ‘the most impressive of all the council’s men-of-business’ – a key player in attempts by privy councilors to control and

65

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth manage parliamentary affairs with the aim of pressing Elizabeth into particular policy directions.48 The success of Norton as a ‘man of business’ and as remembrancer was further articulated by Collinson’s study of parliamentary ‘men of business’ and their politically expedient function of being the ‘fall guys’ for their patrons in high places. Although the remit of Fletcher’s appointment was clearly set out by the prescriptions and restrictions of the Court of Aldermen’s confirmation of the office, the role still carried significant potential for influencing the right people in the right place at the right time, belied by the scant historiography the position has attracted.49 Acting as the communications conduit between city, parliament, the queen and the privy council, the remembrancer mediated between the most powerful individuals and establishments of the Elizabethan commonwealth. When Fletcher took on the role of remembrancer in 1586, it was still a relatively new one, having only been created in 1571. Although the office was new, the path to future royal preferment by appointment to a city office was well trodden. Edmund Dudley and Thomas More, for example, had begun their careers in this way, both having been appointed as under-sheriffs for the City of London, Dudley in 1496 and More in 1510.50 Graves suggests that the role of remembrancer was created as a result of Burghley being elevated to the House of Lords in 1571, but ‘still overseeing parliamentary business, [he] needed eyes and ears’ in the House of Commons, which were provided by Thomas Norton.51 As the first remembrancer of the city, Norton had carved out the role from the original basic remit of indexing the City of London records to becoming an integral part of the lord mayor’s entourage, as secretary and channel of communications. In performing this office, Norton had become increasingly involved in identifying and advancing the interests of the city in relation to parliament and the queen.52 In this position, Norton became a pragmatic politic, highly useful to the regime, but ultimately dispensable.53 As Collinson argues, the ‘pillars of the regime’ whose interests were represented in parliament and the city by their clients, their ‘men of business’, were careful to rein in their advanced Protestant views and mixed-estate zeal, but were ‘content to see men with a lighter baggage of public responsibility live dangerously on their behalfs’.54 It must be remembered, however, that ‘men of business’, like Norton and William Davison, did have their own agency in the Elizabethan regime. Often they were compelled to act for their own personal, ideological reasons, even if it cost them dear.55 Graves and Collinson both identify the role of remembrancer as a key part in Norton’s activities as a man of business. Norton was London’s ‘principal secretary and the guarantor of administrative continuity’, performing ‘an invaluable semi-public role as middleman between the privy council and the government of the city’.56 As Norton’s successor, a member of parliament and a successful diplomat, we might

66

A commonwealths-man in Russia also see Fletcher as one of those ‘learned and articulate [men of business]’, along with men such as William Fleetwood, James Morrice and Robert Beale.57 The City of London’s response to the queen’s recommendation of Fletcher was gracious and polite, but also prescriptive. The city aldermen were very careful to specify the exact role, responsibilities and limits of the position. Fletcher was to act as secretary to the lord mayor and allwayes attend and be reddy aswell in this corte as at the mansyon howse of the Lord Maior for the tyme beinge when the Lord Maior shall send for hyme for the wrytinge and ingrossinge of all suche lettres as frome tyme to tyme shalbe sent frome this Corte or frome the Lord Maior for the tyme beinge to any person or persons whatsoever.58

He was to ‘wryte the trewe copyes of all suche lettres of ymportance’ and was to be ‘ready to be ymployed in all other the messages needes servyces and affayres of this cyttye frome tyme to tyme as this Corte or the Lord Maior for the tyme beinge shall thincke mete to use and ymploye hime’.59 There were, however, conditions: the city’s Common Council would accept the recommendation of Fletcher to the position of remembrancer ‘provyded allwayes that he shall in no wyse intermeddle in or with the Office or Offyces of any of the sworne Offycers belongynge to this Cyttye withowte their consentes’.60 Given Norton’s interpretation of this role and his eventual imprisonment at the displeasure of the queen, apparently ‘for his overmuch and undutiful speaking touching’ the marriage plans between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou, perhaps it was necessary for the city to define stipulations and restrictions on the role of remembrancer, reining in the potential of political use and abuse of the position as necessary.61 In simple terms, then, according to the aldermen, Fletcher was a messenger and chronicler, but under no circumstances should he interfere in the politics. There may, however, have been an expectation among privy councilors that Fletcher would follow closely in Norton’s footsteps, representing with prudence and subtlety the interests of Burghley and/or other members of the privy council to the city and in parliament. Certainly in 1596 the Earl of Essex thought nothing of using Fletcher, in his position of remembrancer, to persuade the city to support his scheme for an assault on Calais, deploying the troops who had just returned from the Cadiz expedition.62 The aldermen, encouraged by Fletcher, supported Essex’s attempt to influence royal policy and, using Fletcher as their mouthpiece, communicated to Burghley ‘the earnest wishes of the citizens that her Majesty would think of the recovery of Calais’ and their ‘great readiness in the city to contribute very largely to the utmost of their ability’.63 Seen in this light, Fletcher’s appointment to this role of remembrancer and the role itself appear far from neutral, despite the

67

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth aldermen’s attempts to restrict the influence that the remembrancer had been wont to have when the position was held by Fletcher’s predecessor, Norton. As well as being most notably Burghley’s man in both city and parliament, Norton was also commissioned to interrogate Catholic seminary priests between 1578 and 1583. According to Robert Persons, an English Jesuit priest, Norton had truly taken to the role, being labelled by Persons ‘the rackmaster’, and accused of playing an active part in the torture of seminary priests under interrogation.64 Norton had been given this derogatory epithet by Persons in his A defence of the censure gyven upon two bookes of William Charke and Meredith Hanmer … against M Edmond Campion (1582), although Richard Topcliffe, by most accounts, had been the main ‘inquisitor’ and torturer.65 Similarly in January 1591 Fletcher was ordered by the privy council to examine the seminary priest George Beesley and his companion Robert Humberson in order to obtain confessions from them regarding their intentions in England.66 Beesley had been imprisoned on 21 December 1590 in a cell too small to stretch out in and was so severely tortured that he was skeletal and unrecognisable when taken to the gallows. He was eventually hanged, drawn and quartered on 1 July, condemned under the statute which had made the act of being a Catholic seminary priest treasonous.67 Later in the year, Fletcher was called on again to examine and take confessions from Eustace Whyte, a seminary priest, and Brian Lassy, a distributor of ‘popish’ literature and letters to papists. Fletcher was advised by the privy council that if Whyte and Lassy would not answer the questions put to them they should be ‘put to the manacles and soche other tortures as are used in Bridewell’.68 It seems that as a ‘man of business’, a civil lawyer of advanced Protestant conviction and a seasoned diplomat, the order to torture Catholic seminary priests was just part of the job, another day in the life of the busy and businesslike Remembrancer of the City of London. While holding the position of remembrancer, Fletcher undertook various requests from both the city and the privy council to address matters of business, for instance in April 1587 he was directed by the privy council to order the creditors of the stationer Thomas Charde to give Charde more time to pay his debts and not to arrest him on this account. In May of the same year, Fletcher was summoned by the Court of Aldermen to appear at Star Chamber to meet with the privy council the following day concerning affairs of the city. He was also ordered that day to go before the privy council and request warrants to remove all Irish vagrants in the city, first to Bristol and then to Ireland. One of the constant underlying anxieties of the Court of Aldermen was the potential political and social disruption caused by the presence of aliens in the city.69 These ‘aliens’, though, also ‘provided a convenient scapegoat for economic difficulties’, particularly in the late 1580s and early 1590s.70 In January 1590, Fletcher was requested by the privy council to consider the complaint of the legatees of John Norden against William Trumbull for

68

A commonwealths-man in Russia his refusal to pay the legatees certain sums of money. In April 1594, Fletcher’s services were required by the lord mayor to communicate to Burghley that the money lent by the city to the queen was overdue and repayment was requested, as well as a reminder to Burghley that the city still had two suits pending. Three years later, the privy council asked Fletcher, among others including Richard Topcliffe, to seek out and examine those players who had been involved in the performance of the Isle of Dogs.71 When this play was performed in July 1597 it caused a scandal and was immediately denounced as seditious and slanderous. The play itself is now lost, but it may have satirised members of the privy council or the queen herself. Those involved were sought out by Fletcher, Topcliffe and others, and three of them were arrested, among them Ben Jonson, who had co-written the play with Thomas Nashe. All the London theatres were shut down for several months in response to the ‘great disorders’ caused by such plays.72 Fletcher’s responsibilities in the role of remembrancer seem to have been many and varied. Whether these activities reflected what the privy council and city considered to be the role of the remembrancer, or whether they were extra-curricula activities that might fall more into the ‘man of business’ sphere is hard to tell. Ultimately, however, Fletcher was part of a cohort of earnest Protestant humanists who had attracted the patronage and interest of members of the council like Walsingham and Burghley and/ or institutions like the City of London, and who were trying simultaneously to advance their own careers and their ideal of a godly, civil commonwealth. They were loyal to the queen and their patrons, but not entirely subservient and in certain circumstances might advance views the queen disliked, often with the tacit approval of their immediate patrons. Many of their tasks were routine (writing letters, acting as messengers) but they had been trained to express themselves and to write and think analytically about politics, and most of them eventually found ways to put this training to use. One way was through diplomatic service, and Fletcher’s career path provides a perfect example. His embassy to Russia gave him the opportunity to formulate a full analysis of Russian political and commercial practices and attitudes, while simultaneously reflecting on the harmful effects of an all-encompassing tyranny in comparison to the ideal, civil commonwealth. TRAINING ON THE JOB: FLETCHER’S EMBASSIES Fletcher’s diplomatic career began in 1586 with the opportunity to accompany Thomas Randolph, the queen’s ambassador, on a mission to Scotland. The purpose of the mission was to forge a stronger relationship between Elizabeth and James VI and to persuade him to sign an alliance with her in defence of the gospel. James was offered a pension at £4,000 as an incentive to sign the treaty with Elizabeth, but demanded a larger sum than the queen was

69

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth prepared to give. As a result of the diplomatic skill of Randolph, James was persuaded to take the £4,000 pension, on the condition that Elizabeth would do nothing to bar his right of succession to the English crown.73 This mission constituted Fletcher’s ambassadorial training. His selection for subsequent ambassadorial missions in 1587 and 1588 presumably sprang from the patronage and experience gained under Randolph.74 His first ambassadorial mission in his own right was undertaken in May 1587 to Hamburg in order to negotiate the restoration of the Merchant Adventurers’ trade rights.75 Fletcher was to accompany the governor of the Merchant Adventurers, Richard Saltonstall, to the Senate of Hamburg in order to negotiate trade rights, independent of the Hanseatic League.76 The treaty between the Merchant Adventurers and the Hanse towns had expired in 1577 and no positive negotiations had since been pursued. Representatives of the Hanseatic League approached Elizabeth in the summer of 1585 to try to restore mutual trade terms and the privileges that their confederacy had previously held with England. Elizabeth proposed the restoration of trading rights that the Hanse towns had held at the beginning of her reign, if the Hanse would restore all the rights and privileges that had recently been taken away from the English. The Hanse representatives held a conference in Lübeck to discuss Elizabeth’s proposal, but could come to no agreement, at which point the Hanse town of Hamburg decided to take matters into its own hands and requested that the queen send ambassadors to Hamburg to treat for a new residence and the restoration of trade.77 Not suspecting any problems with the mission, Fletcher and Saltonstall were surprised to find on their arrival internal dissent and disagreement in the Hamburg Senate regarding the conditions for re-establishing the trade. This led to months of negotiating, U-turns and refused offers of terms, finally resulting in the Hamburg Senate stating that it could not, after all, act independently from the rest of the Hanse towns in negotiating a restoration of trade rights. Fearing that a favourable treaty would not be reached in Hamburg, Fletcher and Saltonstall, in an act of impressive opportunism, decided to explore what opportunities for a new trade agreement could be found in the neighbouring Hanse town of Stade. The Senate of Stade welcomed the offer of a trade agreement on the understanding that negotiations with Hamburg would be completely broken off first. The overwhelmingly positive result was a ten-year treaty with Stade on terms more favourable than those that Hamburg had offered.78 The mission had been an unexpected and unusual success, as it proved to be the first time that a treaty was signed independently with one of the Hanse towns without the consent of the rest of the league. Fletcher and Saltonstall had out-manoeuvred the Hamburg Senate, who, according to Fletcher, had wanted to reinstate Hanse privileges from 200 years ago and in the event of that not happening ‘to bannish the English commodities quite

70

A commonwealths-man in Russia owt of Germanie’.79 Although during this mission, Fletcher walked a potentially risky diplomatic line, he successfully gained more favourable privileges with Stade, revealing his qualities as a skilful negotiator, an adept representative of the queen’s and company’s interests and as a man able to make the most of a conflicting situation.80 This success no doubt placed him in high regard with the queen and privy council as a suitable representative of the English commonwealth abroad. FLETCHER’S RUSSIAN COMMISSION Fletcher returned from Stade in October 1587 and within eight months he was commissioned as Elizabeth’s ambassador to Russia. The immediate context for Fletcher’s mission to Russia was framed by the failed embassy of Sir Jerome Bowes in 1583–4, the death of the tsar, the disgraceful behaviour of Jerome Horsey and the fraudulent schemes of Anthony Marsh. The large-scale fraud and embezzlement of goods being orchestrated by Marsh in league with Russian officials and courtiers represented one of the most severe crises in Anglo-Russian relations in the sixteenth century.81 In June 1588 Fletcher left England to journey to Russia and present himself at the Russian court as both the queen’s ambassador and advocate of the Muscovy Company.82 It was not uncommon for English diplomats to play this dual role of both royal and corporate representative, exposing the typical Elizabethan motivation of saving money, by forcing the mercantile companies to bear some of the costs of diplomacy.83 All of Elizabeth’s ambassadors to Russia had to deal with both the political and mercantile; both royal commissions and the affairs of the company. In fact the two were inextricably linked, although as we have seen this was a significant problem in the eyes of the Russian emperors, who wished rather to deal solely in royal issues – i.e. matters of international diplomacy and alliance – as opposed to those of trade. This may have been an intentional practice on the part of the Elizabethan government to emphasise the interconnectedness of politics and commerce and to ensure that the Russians could not separate mercantile from political issues. Fletcher landed at St Nicholas, Russia in September 1588, arrived in Moscow in November and obtained his first audience with Feodor I on 19 December. His embassy, however, was interrupted for several months by two incidents: firstly, the tsar’s ongoing talks with Jeremias II Tranos, the Patriarch of Constantinople and secondly, the arrival of Lukash Paulus, an envoy from the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II. Paulus was sent in advance of Rudolf’s ambassador, Nikolaus von Warkotsch, to prepare the political ground for his arrival. Warkotsch was coming from Prague to discuss an alliance between the tsar and Rudolf, in order to aid Maximilian III, who had been defeated in Poland

71

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth by the Swedish ruler, Sigismund III Vasa, in the war for the Polish succession. Warkotsch was also to negotiate with Feodor about aiding Rudolf against the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Murad III.84 To Fletcher’s great consternation, his embassy was put on hold at the Russian court as Boris Godunov and Andrei Shchelkalov, Feodor’s closest advisers, favoured the Imperial embassy, over the English. Alarmingly, in addition to the negotiations between Russia and the Holy Roman Empire, Fletcher also ‘found a League in hand betwixt the [Russian] Emperour and the King of Spain about an opposicion against the Turk’, which ‘was sett forward by the Patriarch of Constantinople, who being banished by the Turk, had been with the Pope and was sent by him to the Emperour of Russia’.85 Jeremias, the Patriarch of Constantinople, had travelled to Moscow with several points of treaty to present to Feodor.86 The first, according to Fletcher, was to persuade the Russian emperor to sign a treaty of alliance with Spain against the Turk, the second was ‘to treate with them [the Russians] about the reducing of the Russe Churche under the Pope of Rome’ and the third was to offer his resignation from the patriarchship and translate the See of Constantinople to the city of Moscow.87 As a result of these competing diplomatic interests at Feodor’s court, Fletcher did not conclude all his business in Russia until the summer of 1589.88 Maria Unkovskaya argues that Fletcher’s embassy was preoccupied with gaining confirmation of Russia’s neutrality in relation to Anglo-Spanish hostilities, rather than a concern to address the problems in the relationship between the Muscovy Company and the Russian emperor.89 In the specific context of Fletcher’s diplomatic negotiations, as Unkovskaya argues, the Pope was attempting, and initially succeeding, to persuade Feodor to join a Catholic league, uniting Spain, Rome and Russia against the Turk. In fact, Fletcher explained that there was ‘already one appointed for Ambassage into Spaine’; this was ‘Peter Ragon a Slavonian and the Emperours Interpreter’.90 In this sense, Fletcher did recognise the Spanish and papal threat in the Russian court during his stay and later pointed out that this was one of the reasons why he had been so badly treated.91 However, he asserted that a shadow had been cast over ‘this consultation concerning a league betwixt the Russe & the Spaniard’ when news of Elizabeth’s victory over the Spanish Armada reached Moscow.92 As Fletcher smugly reported, the proposed alliance between Spain and Russia ‘which was in some forwardnes at my coming to Mosko … was marred by means of the overthrow given to the Spanish King by her majestie the queene of England this last yeare’.93 Furthermore, the extant sources relating to Giles Fletcher’s embassy suggest that his mission was much more focused on Muscovy Company affairs and relations with the Russian authorities, rather than the international political concerns of keeping Russia on side.94 If this had been the main purpose for Fletcher’s mission, we would expect to see much more discussion in his diplomatic reports of attempts to

72

A commonwealths-man in Russia dissuade Russia from a ‘popish’ alliance with Spain and Rome. As it stands, Fletcher’s reports spilt more ink on complaints about the manner in which he was received in Moscow and suggestions to combat the internal problems of the Muscovy Company. In many cases the instructions given to Elizabethan ambassadors on what articles of negotiation to pursue have survived. Unfortunately this is not the case for Fletcher’s embassy to Russia. Therefore it is necessary to try to piece together the aims, requests and articles of negotiation for his mission from the English reports detailing the outcome of the embassy and the Russian official account of Fletcher’s visit, found in the ‘stateinyi spisok’ (a list of articles from the diplomatic reports of foreign embassies).95 The ‘stateinyi spisok’ relating to Fletcher’s embassy was printed, among many other papers from the Russian archives, in the nineteenth century by the Imperial Moscow Society of History and Russian Antiquities.96 Information regarding the aims of Fletcher’s mission can also be gleaned from Hakluyt’s account of the success of the embassy and Fletcher’s own diplomatic reports, which were presented to Burghley on his return from Russia.97 According to the brief account of Fletcher’s embassy included in the 1589 edition of The Principall navi­gations, Fletcher had been sent to Russia to ‘treat with the new Emperour Phedor Ivanowich about league and amitie … as also for the reestablishing and reducing into order the decaied trade of our English men there’.98 This entailed dealing with the financial and political fall-out from the huge fraud masterminded by Anthony Marsh that had been uncovered by Peacock in 1584.99 The Russian government were pressing for the repayment of 23,553 roubles of debt, which they claimed had been accrued by the company. The company, however, argued that the debts had been incurred by a rogue company servant and believed they should not have to pay Marsh’s debts.100 Marsh, initially with the help of Horsey and William Turnbull, had been appropriating goods from the company and selling them privately for his own profit. He had embezzled company goods up to the value of 1,800 roubles. He had also borrowed over 25,000 roubles from members of the Russian court in order to develop his own business in private trade, buying Russian wares to be sold in England, often transporting them back home in Muscovy Company vessels.101 According to Willan, 2,700 roubles were borrowed by Marsh from the tsar’s treasury, some 4,000 roubles from Boris Godunov and the rest from other Russian courtiers and merchants. Willan suggests that Shchelkalov, the tsar’s chief secretary, was also financially and practically involved in Marsh’s large-scale private trading enterprise, which would explain how Marsh had managed to borrow so much money from Russian officials.102 As a result of the mounting complaints from those in Russia who had lent money to Marsh and Russian merchants who objected to his privileged position in their trade, a Russian inquiry into Marsh’s activities was commissioned in June 1588.

73

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Following this investigation, it was decided by the Russian authorities that the company would continue to be held responsible for Marsh’s debts and that Marsh should be sent back to England to face an inquiry.103 The story of Fletcher’s embassy, as presented by Hakluyt and by Fletcher himself in his diplomatic reports and in his narrative account of Russia, was one of success and achievement in the face of overwhelming opposition.104 In his diplomatic report to Burghley, Fletcher described how, having spent many months petitioning Feodor for an audience, he had eventually gained new privileges for the English merchants, despite being obstructed at every point by ‘Chancellour Andreas Shalcove, who is also the Officer of Ambassages’.105 Hakluyt’s account of the embassy listed twelve ‘principall pointes which he intreated of, and were granted unto him by the said Emperour’. These included reconfirming the ‘league and amitie, betweene hir Highnes, and the saide Emperour Pheodor Ivanowich, in like manner as was before with his father Ivan Vasilowich’, re-establishing some of the former privileges that the company had enjoyed from the beginning of their trade and confirming its ‘sole trade through the Emperours countries, by the river Volga, into Media, Persia, Bogharia, and other the East Countries’.106 Fletcher initiated several new agreements relating to the ordering of company affairs in Russia, which stipulated that the trading privileges gained must not be revoked in response to ‘every surmise and light quarrell’, nor should the company’s goods be forcibly taken away by the emperor’s officers.107 Fletcher also managed to negotiate a reduction in the amount of Marsh’s debt to the Russian court, from 23,553 roubles to 7,800 roubles.108 Additionally, the Muscovy Company’s affairs were now to come under the protection of Boris Godunov, rather than under the authority of Shchelkalov, who had been invariably hostile to the company. Fletcher’s diplomatic negotiations, as represented by Hakluyt, also resulted in the agreement that criminal offences committed by Englishmen should not be punished under Russian jurisdiction, nor should any Englishman be tortured in Russia; rather their misdemeanours should be referred to the company and dealt with by Elizabeth.109 These appear to have been the most favourable privileges the Muscovy Company had received since Randolph’s embassy in 1568–9.110 However, the detailed work of S. H. Baron on the Russian account of Fletcher’s embassy suggests that Fletcher’s negotiations may not have been initially as successful as Fletcher and Hakluyt made out.111 The Russian account of the embassy reveals an alternative, or at least a more expansive narrative of Fletcher’s negotiations in Russia. Whereas Fletcher’s report and Hakluyt’s account of the embassy recorded sixteen unique points of negotiation successfully achieved by Fletcher, Baron demonstrates that the Russian account of Fletcher’s embassy in the ‘stateinyi spisok’ lists up to thirty-six articles of petition presented by Fletcher to the tsar by word of mouth and in writing.112 Further,

74

A commonwealths-man in Russia Baron suggests that out of these thirty-six articles, Fletcher mentioned only fourteen of these requests as having been achieved and explained that ‘thear is graunted in effect all that I required on the behalf of the Companie, save that half Coustoom is claimed hereafter’.113 Baron speculates on whether Fletcher had been deliberately misleading in his report on his embassy about what he had achieved for the company or whether he had merely abbreviated this information.114 In the Russian record of Fletcher’s embassy, the thirty-six requests are presented in the form of two lists of eighteen items each. The first list includes all of the items later recorded by Hakluyt and Fletcher in their accounts of what Fletcher’s embassy had achieved.115 The wording of this first list also reveals a distinction between some of Fletcher’s requests that were ‘to be inscribed in the privilege’ – ten of the eighteen – and some which were of a more specific nature, concerned with particular grievances, for instance those against Marsh.116 These specific requests, argues Baron, would not be appropriate for inclusion in a formal document of privileges.117 The second list of eighteen requests also included items that did not necessarily relate to the formal agreement of the company’s privileges, but rather to the company’s day-to-day business requirements, for instance the request that company merchants who owed money should not be jailed, but sureties taken instead; that company members should be allowed to practise their own religion; and that Russian officials should help company employees who had been plundered to recover their property. This second list of requests does not parallel Hakluyt’s or Fletcher’s list of the privileges that were achieved by his embassy.118 The tsar’s response to Fletcher’s requests was presented to him in April 1589 as he was dismissed from the Russian court. The document detailed which articles of petition had been refused by Feodor, including Fletcher’s request that English interlopers and foreign private traders be banned from trade at many places in Russia and that the Russians provide assistance in the company’s exploration of the northern coast of Russia and their search for a north-east passage.119 Additionally, the company were now to be charged at half-custom, instead of the duty-free trade they had been accustomed to prior to Bowes’s embassy in 1584 and the Russian government would not allow them to trade through the port of Narva and other Livonian towns, but to trade solely at the port of St Nicholas. Other requests relating to the day-today business of the company were turned down, such as the right to hire Russian assistants and the right to have coins minted without custom charges. Regarding Marsh’s debts, the company were to pay 12,162 roubles, as well as 1,840 roubles of customs duties and 300 roubles of rent on their company houses.120 With this, Fletcher was dismissed and proceeded to prepare for departure from Russia.

75

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Shortly after Fletcher’s dismissal, a letter arrived in Moscow from Queen Elizabeth, dated 15 January 1589, informing the tsar of the outcome of the English inquiry into Marsh’s activities in Russia.121 The letter was sent along with a deposition from Anthony Marsh, a petition from Marsh to the tsar and a letter from Valentyn Palmer, a business partner of Marsh’s, as further evidence to prove that Marsh had acted on his own in his extensive borrowing from Russian courtiers for his private trading enterprise and had fraudulently used the company.122 Elizabeth also wrote to Boris Godunov requesting that Marsh’s case be re-evaluated on account of the new evidence that had been gained through the English inquiry into his activities in Russia.123 In his deposition in England and in a written statement, Marsh claimed that the loans the company were now being charged for had been accrued by his own doing, but that the figures demanded by the Russian government from the company were greatly in excess of what he owed.124 He also accused Shchelkalov of forcing him to testify that he had incurred debts on the company’s behalf, which had then resulted in the company being charged for all the debts that Marsh had racked up.125 Fletcher, still in Moscow following his dismissal, requested another audience with the tsar in order to inform him of the new developments in the Anthony Marsh affair and to deliver the queen’s letters, but he was refused and had to content himself with handing over the letters and other documents to Shchelkalov himself, the Officer of Embassies.126 While on his journey up to the port of St Nicholas to set sail for England, Fletcher was stopped and asked to wait at Volodga for further communication from the Russian government. He received a letter from Feodor in reply to Elizabeth’s letter of 15 January 1589. The letter heatedly rebuffed Marsh’s charges against Shchelkalov and yet it also included alterations to the original answers that the tsar had given to Fletcher’s requests at his dismissal on 15 April 1589. Instead of charging the company with repaying 12,162 roubles of Marsh’s debt, the debt was reduced to 7,800 roubles. This is the figure that we see represented by Fletcher in his diplomatic report to Burghley written in September 1589, when Fletcher was safely back on English soil. Other debts were also remitted, for instance 1,840 roubles of customs duties and 300 roubles of rent that had been taken from the company were to be returned. Additionally, it was at this point that Shchelkalov was relieved of his duties of arbitrating in Muscovy Company affairs in Russia and was replaced by Boris Godunov.127 Baron points out that Fletcher had little to do with these last-minute changes to the privileges granted by Feodor to the company in 1589; these alterations made Fletcher’s embassy look more successful than initially it had been. Baron also highlights the fact that the testimony of Marsh, who had tried to defraud the company, ironically had a largely positive impact on the successful trading of the Muscovy Company under the jurisdiction of Boris Godunov for the next decade.128

76

A commonwealths-man in Russia Since we have no extant copy of Fletcher’s instructions and the nature of the articles he was specifically asked to negotiate, we can only speculate as to the accuracy of the account of Fletcher’s articles of negotiation found in the Russian archives. Fletcher, in his report to Burghley, accused Andrei Shchelkalov and the emperor’s interpreter of tampering with and misrepresenting his articles: My articles of petition delivered by word of mouth, and afterwards by writing, with all other writings wear altered and falsified by the Emperours Interpreiter, by meanes of the Chauncellor Andreas Shalcove, speciallie whear it concerned him self, manie things wear putt in, and manie things strook owt, which being complained of and the points noted would not bee redressed.129

Baron also recognises that the Russian sources of Fletcher’s embassy are ‘riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, deceptions and outright falsification’.130 Nonetheless, the Russian sources do provide a more detailed insight into the Russian perception of Fletcher’s embassy and flesh out some important details of the articles of negotiation that may have been lost in Fletcher’s abbreviated (or whitewashed) diplomatic accounts and Hakluyt’s celebratory list of the ‘many good and equall conditions’ obtained by Fletcher.131 The Russian account of the embassy also demonstrates the distinction between articles negotiated for inclusion in formal privileges and the day-to-day practical demands based on the company’s desire to exploit their privileged position in Russia for the good ordering and running of the company abroad. As for Fletcher’s embassy, it was, in the end, relatively successful, considering that he was sent into Russia at a difficult juncture in the Anglo-Russian relationship. The extent to which Fletcher can be credited with this success is debatable, yet the negotiation of unfettered passage into Persia for company merchants was a particular success, not matched in the previous reign of Ivan, especially when compared with the disastrous outcome of Bowes’s embassy and the general decay of the company in Russia during the 1580s. Although Fletcher was successful in regaining some semblance of the company’s previous privileges, he returned with many complaints about his experiences in Russia and with a list of suggestions to remedy the dire state of the Muscovy Company and their resident community. FLETCHER’S AMBASSADORI AL WRITINGS Fletcher wrote two reports about his Russian mission, one dated September 1589, the other probably written around the same time.132 Fletcher’s reports reflected his experiences and reception in Russia and also his suggestions for resolving the Muscovy Company’s problems, as well as offering advice on how to handle the diplomatic relationship between the two countries. These

77

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth diplomatic reports stand out as distinctive in the Muscovy Company literature, in their concern to promote innovative, structural remedies for the problems of the Muscovy trade and the corruption and disorderly behaviour rife in the Muscovy Company abroad. No other ambassador to Russia seems to have provided such hands-on advice, or to have been so concerned with the literal common wealth of company, queen and country. His report entitled ‘The summe of my negotiation’ deals with Fletcher’s reception and experience in Russia, what he had achieved and what he had not been able to negotiate during his mission. His other report ‘Means of the decay & remedies for the Russe trade’ was more of a trouble-shooting document reporting on the present state and decrease of the Muscovy Company, followed by solutions to address the ruinous state of the Russian trade. Fletcher also started to put together a comprehensive account of the land and peoples of Russia, later printed as Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591), which will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters.133 ‘THE SUMME OF MY NEGOTIATION’: CIVILITY AND SEQUESTRATION The struggle for diplomatic and political superiority which provided the undertone to Fletcher’s reports, as well as the cause for his mission, also dictated his actual experience of negotiations in Russia. Fletcher’s first ambassadorial report recorded ‘1 My intertainment. 2 The causes of my hard intertainment. 3 What is doon and brought to effect. 4 What could not bee obtained on the behalf of the marchants’.134 In detailing the way he was entertained as an ambassador, Fletcher revealed the uncivil character of the ‘Russe’, and Russia itself, pointing to the negative characteristics and the ultimate barbarity of the Russian people – traits and themes that can also be traced in other travel narrative images of Russia.135 Fletcher’s critical portrait of Russia may well have revealed his view of the land exactly as he experienced it, but it is also worth considering that an image of Russia which highlighted the backwardness, ignorance and savagery of the country would have served to heighten Fletcher’s own ambassadorial successes and to excuse his failings during the mission. Fletcher painted a picture of a violent, vindictive Russia: ‘the Russ practise any seazure or violence upon our Marchants goods (as was lykely beefore my coming thither)’.136 Russia did not have a civil code of practice in terms of mercantile affairs, ‘the Russe havinge no respect of honour and credit in respect of his profit’.137 There was also the issue of the emperor’s dismissive attitude towards mercantile affairs, hinting at a deeper disparity in English and Russian attitudes towards merchants. Fletcher invoked the term ‘mousick’, or ‘muzhik’, which he used interchangeably for merchant and common

78

A commonwealths-man in Russia man – ‘their Commons, whom they call Mousicks. In which number they reckon their Marchants, and their common artificers’, to reflect the way in which the Russian emperor had referred to merchants in reference to letters sent by the queen.138 Fletcher informed the queen that regarding the letters, treatises and presents sent by her Majesty, the emperor ‘rejecteth them & little regardeth the treatises boon in hir name: bycause (as hee sayeth) they coom but from the Mousicks’.139 Fletcher did attempt to reconcile the disparate English and Russian perceptions of mercantile affairs, endeavouring to bridge the gap between the Russian perception of merchants and the status the English accorded to them. He related how he had attempted to explain to Feodor ‘that your Highnes had a speciall care what was doon at this time on the behalf of your Marchants, whom yow accounted not as Mousicks or base people (as they termed them) but as verie speciall and necessarie members of your common wealth’.140 Indeed the trade of the Muscovy Company contributed significantly to the tangible common wealth of England, providing luxuries and necessary imports as well as an important export market for the country. Fletcher further suggested in his ‘summe of my negotiation’ that one of the reasons for the decrease of the trade in Muscovy and for the Russian emperor’s poor treatment of the queen’s ambassadors and merchants was that as for your highness Letters written at this time on the Companies behalf, it was informed that the same wear gott by great importunities, that your highness sett your hand to manie things which yow did never read over, and for my self that I was sent but as a messenger not as an Ambassadour, that I never spake with your Highnes.141

The frustration and wounded pride are palpable in Fletcher’s discourse; his appointment as ambassador for the queen was a position of great honour, achievement and status. Elizabeth’s ambassadors and the Muscovy Company merchants were quite literally visual representatives of English honour and civil behaviour, as well as representatives of the queen herself, and to suggest otherwise was offensive to both the monarch and the ambassador. Fletcher’s reception in the Russian court, however, did not herald civil codes of conduct that would fit into an Elizabethan framework of commonwealth behaviour, nor did it express any sense of the honour that was expected and due to the queen, the company and the English commonwealth. Fletcher protested that ‘My whole intertainment from my first arrival till towards the very end was such as if they had divised meanes of very purpose to shew their utter disliking both of the trade of the Marchants, and of the whole English nation.’142 Fletcher’s complaints regarding his reception in Russia and at the Russian court revealed a perceived lack of civility in the Russian condition; they did not know how to treat ambassadors appropriately, in line with the expected

79

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth diplomatic codes of etiquette and honour practised in the courts of ‘civil’ Europe. Fletcher was not allowed to send any letters back to England, was given an allowance for food ‘so bare and so base’ and had to suffer the insult of the queen’s diplomatic gifts being rejected. The day after they had been delivered, the gifts were returned to Fletcher ‘and very contemptouslie cast down before mee’.143 Fletcher decided ‘to make soom advantage of my hard interteinment towards the end of my negotiation, by laying it all in on a dish before them, and applieng it to your Highnes dishonour (as indeed it was)’.144 This had the desired effect of causing some Russian remorse and gaining some English diplomatic leverage to negotiate with. However, Fletcher’s attempt to establish the cultural superiority of his monarch over the Russian emperor did not endear him to Feodor, nor secure him any better treatment. Fletcher went on to describe how he was ‘placed in a howse verie unhandsoom, and unwholsoom, of purpose (as it seemed) to doe mee disgrace, and to hurt my health, whear I was kept prisoner, not as an Ambassadour’.145 The theme of being held captive was pervasive throughout many Western European accounts of Russia, revealing a shared stock of images to represent this unfamiliar land. Baron Sigismund von Herberstein, ambassador to Russia from the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, had set the example of this shared language of imprisonment and surveillance by designated attendants in his Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii published in 1549.146 Other foreign emissaries reported a similar sense of sequestration on arrival in Muscovy, Daniel Printz von Buchau noted during his embassy to the Russian emperor in 1578 that ‘It is the custom of this people, unfamiliar with more enlightened laws to hold the ambassadors of foreign governments almost like prisoners so they will not be able to learn what they are doing’.147 Thomas Randolph reported on his time in Russia that he was ‘so straightie kept within his houwse as thoughe he and all his had byn committed prisoners’.148 Similarly, others who had visited Russia, for instance Sir Jerome Bowes, complained of being imprisoned ‘in mine owne house (as it were a close prisoner) so that for the space of eight or nine weekes, I was forced with all my companie to keepe within doores, not so much as to looke out at the windows, that were upon the streets side, with continuall watche, and gard set to observe all our doings’.149 Almost a century later, in 1653, Paul of Aleppo explained that his party was in great distress and anxiety because ‘we were shut up in close confinement, without a single person to inform us what the emperor was doing, or where he was, or what was passing in the world’.150 The captivity that foreign ambassadors were kept in was a reflection of the lack of freedoms suffered by the Russian people themselves, slaves in their own land. For as Fletcher later noted in his book-length treatise on Russia: ‘[I]‌nto what servile condition their libertie is brought, not onely to the Prince, but to the Nobles and Gentlemen of the Countrie … it may farther appeare by their owne acknowledgments in

80

A commonwealths-man in Russia their supplications … wherein they name and subscribe themselves Kolophey, that is, their villaines or bondslaves.’151 ‘MEANS OF DECAY & REMEDIES’: TROUBLESHOOTING THE MUSCOVY TRADE Fletcher’s other diplomatic report, ‘Means of decay & remedies for the Russe trade’ was clearly written in response to the increasing problems faced by the Muscovy Company and details the author’s thoughts on the state of Anglo-Russian trade in 1588–9. It recommended remedies to the stated problems and concluded with remarks on the ‘Means to terrifie the Russ & keep him in order’.152 Fletcher suggested four interconnected reasons why the Muscovy trade was declining. Firstly, he identified as problematic the Anglo-Russian conflict over which port to trade to and from. Having lost the port at Narva to Sweden in 1581, Russia wanted to draw all English trade to the port at St Nicholas for the ‘wayes by the Narve and Riga … are many times stopped up by reason of the warres with Polonian and Sweden’.153 The Russian emperor was also beginning to consider trade offers from the Netherlands and France, who promised ‘great numbers and a flourishing trade at that port [St Nicholas] to the enhaunsing of their commodities and the Emperours coustooms’.154 The Muscovy Company trade, on the other hand, was small in volume and the privileges of monopoly they had been granted by the emperor ostensibly prevented trade with any companies other than the Muscovy Company.155 Secondly, by keeping their trade at Moscow, the company was incurring great expenses as a result of transporting goods from the ports inland, as well as the housekeeping costs of having company residences at five different places in Russia – Moscow, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kholmogory and St Nicholas. Maintaining the company’s stock at Moscow was risking its loss to the tyranny of the Russian emperor, as the ‘stock is still in daunger to bee pulled & seazed on upon every pretence & picked matter by the Emperour & his Officers’.156 Thirdly, Fletcher turned to focus on the servants (or employees) of the company, explaining that ‘Their servants: which (though honest beefore) ar made ill by these means.1. The profanes of the Countrey and liberty they have to all kynd of syn: whearby it commeth to pass that many of them (being unmarried men) fall to ryott, whoredome … [and] lack of good discipline among themselves.’ The fundamental problem that Fletcher highlighted in their servants’ bad behaviour was financial: their conduct ‘draweth one expenses: so having not of their own they spend of the Companies’. Added to this, the servants’ lack of good teaching and knowledge in the ways of God and the very small wages and allowance that they received ‘maketh them practise other means to mend their estates. first by imbezeling and drawing from the company and then following a privat trade for themselves’.157 This behaviour completely

81

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth undermined the original vision of the governors of the company and the queen to trade all in one society for the common good, or common wealth, in the interests of the communal stock, rather than in the interests of private individuals. The fourth reason highlighted by Fletcher was the issue of ‘privat trade by certain of the company that have their factours thear upon common charge’.158 These factors, who were bankrolled by the company, but traded privately on their own, such as Marsh, or on behalf of certain company members, such as Horsey (who may have traded privately for Walsingham), were not only engaging in illegal private trade, they were also participating in inland trade ‘as if they wear Russe Marchants to the great dislike of the Russ’. To add insult to injury, they were shipping their privately traded commodities in and out of Russia in the Flemish boats of England’s commercial arch-rival, ‘which hindereth muche the common trade and profit of the company’.159 Company members, then, through their willingly intransigent factors, were actually working in flagrant defiance of the commonwealth ideology of the company in order to benefit from their own illicit trade; undermining the commonwealth structure of the company from the inside, for their own profit. Fletcher suggested several decisive remedies to these problems. Concerning the problem of private trade, he proposed a radical discarding of the joint-stock, commonwealth-like structure of the company, recommending that servants trade under one master, ‘every man to trade for himself under a governours deputy, that is to attend & follow their business on thother side’.160 He went on to argue that ‘the speciall means that undoeth our Marchants trade’ were ‘the seasures doon upon every pretence & cavillation & takings up upon trust by the Emperour and his Nobles’, but that this could be avoided ‘the rather when every man dealeth severally for himself with his own stock, which will not bee so ready to command as when all was in the hand & ordering of one agent’.161 In Fletcher’s observations on the decay of the Russe trade, the interconnected nature of his concerns – economic, social, political, spiritual and cultural – had all combined to produce the corrupt state of affairs and the potentially disastrous fate of the Muscovy Company in Russia if changes were not implemented. His explanations for the decline of the trade focused on the ‘profanes of the Countrey’ of Russia and the detrimental effect this had on the behaviour of the company servants and he described how to organise a company in such a way as to best account for the unfamiliarity of a new land, as well as appeasing the Russian emperor, and keeping the resident English from turning disorderly, rebellious and traitorous, or worse still going native. In Fletcher’s succinct analysis of the problems faced by the Muscovy Company in Russia, he asserted that the way the company was ordered at this time as a joint-stock company was hindering its success, putting its privileged

82

A commonwealths-man in Russia position at risk and causing a decline in the civility of servants and factors residing there. Fletcher’s principal remedy, at times explicit, at times implicit, was to change the ‘order’ of the company. He mentioned the problems that the joint-stock organisation of the company had caused, which were being compounded by the social, cultural and political conditions of Russia. Fletcher was at pains to point out that as the wages of the servants were so small and private trade prohibited, the servants resorted to embezzling from the company, as well as following private trade for themselves, despite the prohibition. These activities the servants were said to have ‘less conscience of, bycause they say they spend their time in so barbarous a Countrey whear they ar made unfit for all other trades, & service in other countries abroad’.162 The perceived barbarism of Russia was offered by the company’s servants as a reasonable excuse for indulging in private trade against the company’s commonwealth intentions. Somewhat resigned to their barbaric fate, the servants were anxious to capitalise in some way on their less than civil position. In stark contrast, Muscovy Company governors and ambassadors, such as Fletcher, hoped to retain English civility abroad, as well as the company’s lucrative trading privileges, in a far-off and uncivil land. In order to bridge the gap between company behaviour and company ideology, Fletcher suggested that allowing the employees of the company to trade either for themselves as factors or for their master as servants would not only increase the trade that could be offered to the Russians, but would also allow the employees to either make or break their own trade, ‘whear every man followeth his business by himself or his factor. Hearby their servants ill dealing will be prevented, and if the servant prove ill & unthriftie, it hurteth but his Master.’163 In this way, the civil English commonwealth and their queen could be spared the dishonour and embarrassment of unnatural private trade, financial disaster and merchants ‘turning Russe’. From Fletcher’s point of view, the economic good that the company provided for the English commonwealth could only be preserved by breaking down the commonwealth joint-stock structure of the company to ensure increased trade and civil behaviour on the part of the Muscovy Company merchants. For it seemed that English commonwealth ideals did not translate so well to the far-distant and ‘barbarous’ conditions of Russia. A further remedy that Fletcher suggested was the employment of a clergyman to satisfy the spiritual needs of the Englishmen abroad, and to act as a patriarchal head for the Muscovy Company merchants, who lacked any familiar (or familial) societal structures in their liminal existence somewhere in between the cultures of England and Russia. Fletcher’s exhortation to employ a clergyman and encourage the right instruction of religion was directly related to a pressing need in the context of Muscovy Company servants converting

83

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth to the Russian Orthodox religion. Indeed Fletcher recommended that it was necessary to have a preacher thear resident with them that they may learn to know God, and so their dueties towards their Maisters … if they have never so fiew in that Countrey (whear they want all good means of instruction towards God) the company ought in Christian duety to provide that means for them.164

Fletcher concluded by presenting to the queen two contrasting approaches to the Russian situation that would firm up the Anglo-Russian relationship and thus encourage the company’s trade to flourish. The options presented were either a ‘Means to please the Russe Emperour for the Marchants beehalf’ or a ‘Means to terrifie the Russ & keep him in order’.165 If the approach of appeasing the Russian emperor were to be taken this would involve the queen seeming ‘willing to joign with [Feodor]’, sending letters and presents which ‘seem indeed to coom from hir self and hir good affection, and not from the Marchants (as hee is perswaded still they do)’ and to ‘offer hirself ready to mediat beetwixt [Feodor] and the Polonian and Sweden’.166 It would be an approach of amity and conciliation. The other option, the ‘Means to terrifie the Russ & keep him in order’, would involve ‘threatning to stoppe the way to the port of Saint Nicolas’, showing that ‘shee hath means to incite’ the ‘Polonian, Sweden and Turk’ and letting it be known that ‘If the Russ practise any seazure or violence upon our Marchants goods … revenge may bee made at Pechora by the sea side Mart thear … Which may bee surprised by a fiew sail and a small company.’167 Pragmatic as ever, Fletcher’s approaches could be innocent as the dove, cunning as the serpent; either could be attempted or both: if pleasing the Russe did not achieve the desired effect, terrifying the Russe could be just as easily implemented. By overtly blaming Russian barbarity for the bad behaviour of English subjects living and working there, Fletcher’s writings diverged noticeably from other Muscovy Company material, revealing his active humanism made manifest in practical actions informed by the civil philosophy of virtue. Fletcher’s analysis of the English situation in Russia provided the opportunity to put into practice his philosophy of virtuous counsel by suggesting strategies to improve the trading and diplomatic Anglo-Russian relationship and proposing remedies to the problem of the English ‘turning Russe’ – the antithesis of the civil English commonwealth ideal. Implicit in Fletcher’s criticism of the Muscovy Company’s situation in the 1580s was a judgement of infectious barbarity directed against the Russians and the tyrannical government of their land. This is an argument that does not appear explicitly anywhere else in the extant Muscovy Company literature, and yet it was a causal theme for Fletcher in his diplomatic reports and was further elaborated in his wide-ranging account of Russia, Of the Russe

84

A commonwealths-man in Russia Common Wealth. The development of this theme is the subject of Chapter 4 through a detailed and in-depth analysis of Fletcher’s treatise. Before analysing the content of his printed treatise, however, it is necessary to investigate the complex pre-publication history of this work. The following chapter takes up this discussion of the creation and development of Fletcher’s more literary response to Russia, through an examination of the extant manuscript versions of The Russe Common Wealth, revealing Fletcher’s treatise as dynamically both ‘counsel-to-queen’ and ‘counsel-for-commonwealth’, as well as a text of reference and information for trade and travel. NOTES 1 M. V. Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations, 1580–1696’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1992), p. 100. 2 J. Horsey, ‘Travels’, in L. E. Berry and R. O. Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 313. 3 See S. H. Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow and the Anthony Marsh affair’, Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, 46 (1992), 107–30, reprinted in Explorations in Muscovite History (Farnham: Variorum, 1991), chapter III. 4 L. E. Berry (ed.), The English Works of Giles Fletcher, the Elder (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 7. 5 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 4, 6–7, 9, 13–15. 6 See L. Piépho, ‘The ecclesiastical eclogues of Giles Fletcher the elder’, in R. Schnur, A. Moss, P. Dust, P. G. Schmidt and J. Chomcrat (eds), Acta Conventius Neo-Latini Hafniensis (Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994), pp. 817–29. 7 L. Munro, ‘Fletcher, Giles, the elder (bap. 1546, d. 1611)’, in ODNB. 8 L. E. Berry, ‘Phineas Fletcher’s account of his father’, JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 60 (1961), 258–67. 9 K. Carleton, ‘Bonner, Edmund (d. 1569)’, in ODNB. 10 See G. Bray, ‘Haddon, Walter (1514/15–1571)’, in ODNB. 11 W. B. Austin, ‘Milton’s “Lycidas” and two Latin elegies by Giles Fletcher, the elder’, Studies in Philology, 44:1 (1947), 50–1. 12 Austin, ‘Milton’s “Lycidas” ’, 42–3. 13 W. Haddon, Poematum Gualteri Haddoni, Legum Doctoris, sparsim collectorum, libri duo (London, 1576), sig. M5. 14 W. B. Austin’s translation of Giles Fletcher, ‘De obitu clarissimi viri, D. Gualteri Haddoni, Elegia per Aegidium Fletcherum’, in Austin, ‘Milton’s “Lycidas” ’, 51. 15 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 8–9, 13. 16 A. H. Nelson, ‘Vere, Edward de, seventeenth earl of Oxford (1550–1604)’, in ODNB.

85

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 17 L. E. Berry, ‘Three poems by Giles Fletcher, the elder, in “Poemata varii argumentii” (1678)’, Notes and Queries, 204 (1959), 132–4. 18 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 14. 19 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 14. 20 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 5, 13. It is the third edition of Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (1576) in which Fletcher’s poem is found, not the second edition (1570), as stated by Berry. 21 See The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: With a Life of the Martyrologist, and Vindication of the Work, ed. G. Townsend, vols I–VIII (London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley, 1843), I, pp. 113–14. 22 P. Collinson, ‘Cranbrook and the Fletchers: popular and unpopular religion in the Kentish Weald’, in P. N. Brooks (ed.), Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays in Honour of Arthur Geoffrey Dickens (London: Scolar Press, 1980), pp. 171–202. 23 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 16, 25, 30. 24 See P. Collinson, ‘Cartwright, Thomas (1534/5–1603)’, and R. Bauckham, ‘Fulke, William (1536/7–1589)’, in ODNB. 25 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 8. 26 ‘Mr Provost’s account of the particular crimes slanderously charged against him’, May 1576, BL Lansdowne MS 23, no. 41. 27 ‘Certain queries to be put to those that exhibited the articles against the Provost’, 1576, BL Lansdowne MS 23, no. 39. 28 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 11. 29 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 12. 30 D. W. Palmer, Writing Russia in the Age of Shakespeare (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 132. 31 Palmer, Writing Russia, pp. 135, 131. 32 Palmer, Writing Russia, pp. 130–1. 33 For discussion of renaissance civic humanism, see Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. II, Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 61–2 and 217–24. 34 T. More, Utopia (1516) in The Complete Works of Sir Thomas More, VI, ed. E. Surtz and J. H. Hexter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 98. 35 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 15–17. See also P. W. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558–1603 (London: HMSO, 1981) II, p. 240. 36 P. I. Kaufman, ‘The Protestant opposition to Elizabethan religious reform’, in R. Titler and N. Jones (eds), A Companion to Tudor Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 282. 37 M. A. R. Graves, ‘The management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: the council’s “men of business” ’, Parliamentary History, 2:1 (1983), 11–38. 38 S. D’Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1682), p. 340.

86

A commonwealths-man in Russia 39 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 18. 40 For further discussion of the terms ‘forward’ and ‘froward’, see P. Collinson, ‘Puritans, men of business and Elizabethan parliaments’, Parliamentary History, 7:2 (1988), 187–211, reprinted in his Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 59–86, see especially pp. 66–70. All subsequent references to this article will refer to the reprinted edition in Elizabethan Essays. 41 Graves, ‘Management’ and Collinson, ‘Puritans, men of business’, p. 70. 42 See P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 51–4. 43 Graves, ‘Management’, 31. 44 London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA) COL/AC/23/0970(a), Corporation of London, Journals of the Court of Common Council, Journal 22, ‘Admission of Dr. [Giles] Fletcher as Remembrancer loco Thomas Norton 12’, 21 January 1586, fo. 77v. See also LMA, Corporation of London, Remembrancia I, 573; LMA, Corporation of London, Repertory 21, fos 384v–385v; LMA, Corporation of London, Repertory 27, fo. 40v. 45 LMA, COL/AC/23/0970(a), Journal 22, fo. 77v. 46 LMA, COL/AC/23/0970(a), Journal 22, fo. 77v. 47 LMA, COL/AC/23/0970(a), Journal 22, fo. 77v. 48 Graves, ‘Management’, 18. See also M. A. R. Graves, ‘Thomas Norton the parliament man: an Elizabethan M.P., 1559–1581’, Historical Journal, 23:1 (1980), 17–35. Graves’s presentation of Norton’s role and activities stands in stark contrast to J. E. Neale’s image of Norton as leader of the ‘puritan choir’ in the mid-Elizabethan parliaments, cf. J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559–1581 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953), I, pp. 91–240. 49 LMA, COL/AC/23/0971(a), Letter Book &c., ‘Order of the Court of Aldermen that Dr. Giles Fletcher be Remembrancer (Sec. to the Lord Mayor) of the City and subsequent swearing in of Fletcher’, 26 January 1586, fo. 128v. 50 See S. Baker House, ‘More, Sir Thomas (1478–1535)’, and S. J. Gunn, ‘Dudley, Edmund (c. 1462–1510)’, in ODNB. 51 Graves, ‘Management’, 30. 52 M. Axton, ‘Norton, Thomas (1530x32–1584)’, in ODNB. 53 Collinson, ‘Puritans, men of business’, pp. 72–7. 54 Collinson, ‘Puritans, men of business’, p. 70. 55 For more information on Norton, see Axton, ‘Norton, Thomas’. For more information on William Davison, see S. Adams, ‘Davison, William (d. 1608)’, in ODNB. 56 Collinson, ‘Puritans, men of business’, pp. 72–3. 57 Collinson, ‘Puritans, men of business’, pp. 70, 65. 58 LMA, COL/AC/23/0971(a), Letter Book &c., fo. 128v. 59 LMA, COL/AC/23/0971(a), Letter Book &c., fo. 128v.

87

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 60 LMA, COL/AC/23/0971(a), Letter Book &c., fo. 128v. 61 Roger Manners to Edward Manners, 3rd Earl of Rutland, 5 December 1581 in The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland, 4 vols (London: HMC, 1888–1905), I, p. 130. 62 I. W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 44. 63 T. Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth from the Year 1581 till her Death, 2 vols (London: A. Millar, 1754), II, pp. 100–1. 64 For a discussion of Norton as Burghley’s man, see Graves, ‘Management’, 18 and 21. For further information on Norton, see M. A. R. Graves, Thomas Norton, the Parliament Man (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). 65 Axton, ‘Norton, Thomas’. See also William Richardson, ‘Topcliffe, Richard (1531–1604)’, in ODNB. 66 ‘Privy Council to Henry Killigrew, Robert Beale, Giles Fletcher, Richard Topcliffe’, 10 January 1591, printed in John Roche Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council, XX (London: HMSO, 1900), p. 204. 67 P. Holmes, ‘Beesley, George (1562–1591)’, in ODNB. 68 ‘Privy Council to Giles Fletcher, Richard Brainthwayte, Richard Topliffe, and Richard Young’, in John Roche Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council, XXII (London: HMSO, 1901), pp. 39–40. 69 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 21–2. 70 Archer, Pursuit of Stability, p. 4, see also pp. 131–40. 71 Berry attributes this action to the summer of 1596, but in fact it occurred in 1597, see Munro, ‘Fletcher, Giles’. 72 See I. Donaldson, ‘Jonson, Benjamin (1572–1637)’, in ODNB. 73 R. A. Mason, ‘Scotland, Elizabethan England and the idea of Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 14 (2004), 290. See also J. Lock, ‘Randolph, Thomas (1525/6–1590)’, in ODNB. 74 For a discussion of Elizabethan ambassadorial apprenticeships and training, see G. M. Bell, ‘Elizabethan diplomacy: the subtle revolution’, in M. R. Thorp and A. J. Slavin (eds), Politics, Religion and Diplomacy in Early Modern England: Essays in Honor of De Lamar Jensen (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994), pp. 267–88. 75 G. D. Ramsay, ‘The settlement of the Merchants Adventurers at Stade, 1587–1611’, in E. I. Kouri and T. Scott (eds), Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 452–72. 76 I. W. Archer, ‘Saltonstall, Sir Richard (1521?–1601)’, in ODNB. 77 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 22–3. 78 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 23–4.

88

A commonwealths-man in Russia 79 TNA, SP 82/2, State Papers Foreign, Hamburg and Hanse Towns, no. 81. Also printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 362–5. 80 Ramsay, ‘Settlement of the Merchants Adventurers’, pp. 460–2. See also Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 20–5. 81 See Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 107–30. 82 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 25. 83 For another example of the dual role played by ambassadors to other countries, see C. Woodhead, ‘Harborne, William (c. 1542–1617)’, in ODNB. 84 Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, pp. 136–7. 85 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 158r. 86 Fletcher, RCW, p. 79v. 87 Fletcher, RCW, p. 80r. 88 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 26, 28. 89 Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, pp. i–v and 132–40. 90 Fletcher, RCW, p. 80r, and Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 158r, respectively. 91 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fos 157v–158v. 92 Fletcher, RCW, p. 80r. 93 Fletcher, RCW, p. 80r. 94 There are two extant reports by Fletcher on his Russian mission: Fletcher, ‘SN’ and Giles Fletcher, ‘Means of Decay & remedies for the Russe trade’, BL Lansdowne MS 52, no. 37(b), fos 104v–105r (hereafter Fletcher, ‘MD’). In the British Library Lansdowne manuscripts the ‘Means of Decay & remedies for the Russe trade’ is dated on the manuscript itself in a later hand as 1587. However, 1589 is a more likely date for its composition: see Willan, Early History, pp. 205–6. 95 On the term ‘stateinyi spisok’, see N. I. Prokof’ev, ‘Literatura puteshestvii XVI–XVII vekov’, in N. I. Prokof’ev and L. I. Alekhina (eds), Zapiski russkikh puteshestvennikov XVI–XVII vv. (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1988), p. 6. 96 The Russian account of Fletcher’s embassy can be found in ‘Stateinyi spisok priezda i prebyvaniia v Rossii angliiskago posla Elizara Fletchera’, printed in Vremenik Imperatoskago Moskovskago Obshchestva istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh (Annals of the Imperial Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities), VIII (Moscow: University Printer, 1850), part II, pp. 1–96. 97 There is a brief account of the outcome of Fletcher’s embassy in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 502–3 (first state), pp. 498–9 (second state). There are two states of the 1589 edition of Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations with differing pagination following p. 491, as a result of later copies of The Principall Navigations including a shorter account of Sir Jerome Bowes’s embassy to Russia. See also Fletcher, ‘SN’ and Fletcher, ‘MD’. 98 Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 502 (first state), p. 498 (second state). 99 Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, p. 109. 100 Willan, Early History, pp. 196–9.

89

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 101 Willan, Early History, pp. 196–9. See also Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’. 102 Willan, Early History, p. 197. 103 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 111. 104 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 111. See also Fletcher, ‘SN’, Fletcher, ‘MD’ and Fletcher, RCW, p. 19v. 105 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 157r. 106 Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 502–3 (first state), pp. 498–9 (second state). 107 Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 503 (first state), p. 499 (second state). 108 Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 503 (first state), p. 499 (second state), and Fletcher, ‘SN’, fos 158v–159r. See also Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 28, and Palmer, Writing Russia, pp. 106–7. 109 Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 502–3 (first state), pp. 498–9 (second state). 110 Unkovskaya, ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations’, p. 139. 111 ‘Stateinyi spisok’, pp. 1–96. Other Russian documents relating to the Anthony Marsh affair are printed in SIRIO, XXXVIII, pp. 186–226. See also Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’. 112 See Fletcher, ‘SN’, fos 158v–159v, and Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 502–3 (first state), pp. 498–9 (second state). See also Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 112–15. 113 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 159r. 114 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 116–17. 115 Cf. Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 502–3 (first state), pp. 498–9 (second state), Fletcher ‘SN’, fos 158v–159v, and ‘Stateinyi spisok’, pp. 8–13. 116 ‘Stateinyi spisok’, pp. 8–13. 117 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 112–13. 118 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 114–15. 119 ‘Stateinyi spisok’, pp. 20–32. See also Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 116. 120 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 116, 127. 121 ‘Stateinyi spisok’, pp. 59–69. 122 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 126. 123 ‘Q. Elizabeth to the noble prince the L. Boris Feodorowich’, 15 January 1589, printed in Yu. Tolstoi (ed.), The First Forty Years of Intercourse between England and Russia, 1553–1593 (St Petersburg: A. Travshelya, 1875), p. 327. 124 ‘Stateinyi spisok’, pp. 53–4, 68–72. See also Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 126. 125 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 127. 126 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 126. 127 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 127. 128 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, pp. 127, 129.

90

A commonwealths-man in Russia 129 Fletcher, ‘SN’, 157r. 130 Baron, ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow’, p. 108. 131 Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 502 (first state), p. 498 (second state). 132 Fletcher, ‘SN’ and Fletcher, ‘MD’. 133 This was written, according to Berry, between August and November of 1589: see Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 135–6. Berry also suggests that it is highly likely that Fletcher used Jerome Horsey’s notes and experience to write Of the Russe Common Wealth since Fletcher had been charged to accompany Horsey back to England, see Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 146–8. 134 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 157r. 135 For examples, see Richard Chancellor’s account of Russia, written by Clement Adams and printed by Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 280–92, especially p. 284; Anthony Jenkinson, ‘The Description of Russia with the customes and maners of the Inhabitants’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 339–47; George Turberville, ‘Certaine letters in verse writ out of Moscovia by George Turbervil, Secretarie to M. Randolfe, touching the state of the country and manners of the people’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 408–13. 136 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 137 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 138 Fletcher, RCW, p. 29v. 139 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 104v. 140 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fos 158r–v. 141 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 157v. 142 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 157r. 143 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 157r. 144 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fos 157r–v. 145 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fo. 157r. 146 S. von Herberstein, Notes Upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country, entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, by the Baron Sigismund Von Herberstein, trans. and ed. R. H. Major, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1851–2), II, pp. 120–1. For more discussion of being held captive in Russia, see M. T. Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 43–9. 147 D. P. von Buchau, Moscoviae ortus progressus (Neisse in Schlesian, 1688), p. 51, written in 1578, quoted in Poe, ‘People Born to Slavery’, p. 45. 148 T. Randolph, ‘Embassy Report’, reprinted in E. D. Morgan and C. H. Coote (eds), Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1886), II, p. 247. 149 J. Bowes, ‘The Discourse of the Ambassage of Sir Jerome Bowes to the forsayd Emperour’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 499 (first state).

91

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 150 Paul of Aleppo, The Travels of Macarius Patriarch of Antioch. Written by his Attendant Archdeacon, Paul of Aleppo, 1653, trans. F. C. Belfour, 2 vols (London: Oriental Translation Committee, 1829–36), I, p. 359. 151 Fletcher, RCW, p. 46r. 152 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fos 104v–105r. 153 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fos 104v–105r. 154 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fos 104v–105r. 155 Fletcher, ‘SN’, fos 157v, 159r. 156 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 104v. 157 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 104v. 158 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 104v. 159 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 104v. 160 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 161 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 162 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 104v. 163 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 164 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 165 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 166 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r. 167 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fo. 105r.

92

Chapter 3

Creating a feigned commonwealth Fletcher’s response to Russia

He that can feign a commonwealth (which is the poet) can govern it with counsels, strengthen it with laws, correct it with judgements, inform it with religion, and morals. Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries (1640)

Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591), which appeared first in manuscript and later in print, was a wide-ranging study of the land, government, society and policies of Russia and her colonies. Fletcher’s contemporary Jerome Horsey praised the account for recording ‘more scholastically – the originall natur and disposicion of the Russ people, the laws, languages, government, discipline for their church and commonwealth, reveynes, comodities, climatt and sittuacion, wherof it most consists, and with whom they have most leag and comers – with all I did furnish him’.1 The content ranged from ‘the cosmographie of the Countrie’ to ‘their warlike provisions’; from ‘the ordering of their State’ to their ‘privat behaviour’, commenting on their religion, rituals, law and surrounding peoples. Fletcher’s treatise was also a theorising of Russian tyrannical government; a thinking through of what the government of a tyrant looked like and what the consequences were for the people suffering under such heavy layers of tyranny. In this latter sense, it was a ‘feigned’ or invented commonwealth that served the multiple purposes of educating his audience on the cosmography of Russia, providing important mercantile and diplomatic information on this unfamiliar land and using the description of the land as a vehicle for the outworking of his civil philosophy, by theorising on the effects of tyrannical government in Russia. The main body of the text was most likely created during Fletcher’s visit to Russia and on his journey back to England, as he explained in the preface to his printed edition, ‘having reduced the same into some order, by the way as I returned, I have presumed to offer it in this smal Booke to your most excellent Majestie’.2 In his writing of Russia, Fletcher adopted once more the role

93

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth of the humanist poet to counsel and guide, this time through the example of ‘feigning’ or inventing a commonwealth that he had experienced at first hand. A glance at Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poetry reminds us that ‘the poetic’ in the sixteenth century was defined by its content and inventive didacticism, rather than its form or style: ‘[I]‌t is not riming and versing that maketh a Poet … But it is that fayning notable images of vertues, vices or what els, with that delightfull teaching which must be the right describing note to know a Poet by.’3 Much like Sidney’s imaginative approach to poetry and counsel, Fletcher was concerned to see the outworking of his own civil philosophy performed in his duty to counsel and participate in the good working of the commonwealth through the medium of poetry. For according to Sidney: [T]‌he Phylosophers of Greece, durst not a long time appeare to the worlde but under the masks of Poets. So Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides, sange their naturall Phylosophie in verses: so did Pythagoras and Phocilides their morral counsels … or rather, they beeing Poets, dyd exercise their delightful vaine in those points of highest knowledge, which before them lay hid to the world.4

Fletcher’s treatise on Russia expressed the performance of these poetic, humanist principles.5 Fletcher’s works – his early religious eclogues, his diplomatic reports, his account of Russia and his later sonnets6 – are connected by a desire to fulfill the duty of the poet to use the skills of invention to feign a narrative, a commonwealth or a series of events and extract didactic advice and foresight from such representations. His ambition in the early 1590s to write a Latin history of the queen’s reign may also have been guided by a deep-seated belief in the role of the poet to counsel the monarch and commonwealth.7 Fletcher’s account of Russia was not a ‘feigning’ of a commonwealth in the way that More had created the realm of Utopia or Spenser had woven so intricately the allegory of ‘Faerye land’, for Russia was indeed a very real, if unfamiliar, place. Yet the way in which he constructed his account of Russia functioned as a feigning. The picture that Fletcher created in his Russe Common Wealth from firsthand experience of Russia was an act of invention for the purpose of giving counsel and sharing information. CONSTRUCTING THE RUSSE COMMON WEALTH Fletcher’s act of invention can be seen most explicitly in the development of his treatise of Russia through three extant manuscript versions of the text Of the Russe Common Wealth. Lloyd E. Berry has pursued extensive and admirable research on these manuscript versions of the text to argue the case for three clear stages of revision in Fletcher’s construction of The Russe Common Wealth before it was published in 1591.8 However, his findings require further

94

Creating a feigned commonwealth examination and analysis, as do the texts themselves, in order to interpret the relationship between these differing manuscripts and the political, cultural and personal considerations that came into play when Fletcher was revising his text. According to Berry, the earliest manuscript is the one now held at Queens’ College, Cambridge, thought to be a scribal copy of Fletcher’s original notes and papers.9 This is followed by the University College, Oxford manuscript, which appears to be a scribal copy of a corrected version of the original.10 Berry goes on to suggest that the James Ford Bell Collection (University of Minnesota) manuscript indicates a final stage of revision,11 although extensive additions and corrections were made before the publication of the text in 1591.12 Berry ascertains through a very detailed comparison of agreements and disagreements between texts and a collation of all three extant manuscripts and the final printed version that the relation between the texts is one of subsequent revisions, indicating how the text developed through several stages of correction. While Berry argued for the revision of the text over time, beginning with the Cambridge manuscript, followed by the Oxford manuscript, then the James Ford Bell manuscript and finally the printed edition, Richard Pipes maintains that the Queens’ College, Cambridge manuscript, being the one closest (in time) to the original version produced by Fletcher, is thus the most important and he uses this in his collation and in comparison with the printed text of 1591.13 Pipes, however, misses the crucial point that exploration of the development of the text over the period 1589–91, through the three extant manuscripts and printed edition, can provide insights into Fletcher’s changing attitude towards his work and his intended audiences. The Cambridge manuscript is written in a relatively neat secretary hand, and, as Berry points out, there are three different scribes. The epistle dedicatory is written in Fletcher’s hand.14 The main text is written by two different hands, folios 1–12 in one and the rest of the text in another.15 The Oxford manuscript is written in a neater secretary hand.16 The differences between the Cambridge and the Oxford manuscript are few in number compared to those between other manuscripts and the printed edition. They appear to be either errors in spelling, misreading of words or extension of sentences with several more explanatory words to aid in the reading of the text. This does seem to suggest, in support of Berry’s close reading, that the Cambridge manuscript was written before the Oxford manuscript and that the Oxford manuscript is a revised copy made not long after the Cambridge manuscript was composed. Both Berry and Pipes suggest that the Cambridge version was a neat scribal copy of a text which had been put together from the original field notes made by Fletcher.17 The Cambridge copy also has the royal coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth at the front of the bound manuscript. This coat of arms block, Berry tells us, may have been specifically cut for this manuscript, as it is a fairly

95

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth elaborate and uncommon piece.18 Both these factors point to the Cambridge manuscript as a presentation copy intended for the queen, for the purposes of informing her about the land of Russia. Two further elements of the Cambridge manuscript indicate that it was indeed intended for Elizabeth and that it was a neat copy of a text that had been created from Fletcher’s notes. The first is the existence of an epistle dedicatory to Queen Elizabeth in the Cambridge manuscript – and this is significant not just for establishing the Cambridge manuscript as the closest copy to the original, but in comparing the purposes and intended audience of all three manuscripts. The act of writing a dedicatory epistle was usually the final stage of production, after the main part of a text was fully revised for presentation. This would suggest that the Cambridge manuscript was in a finished state for its specific purpose of informing the queen of ‘the state of that common wealth, and their manner of Government’ through the intelligence that Fletcher had gained while ‘being employed in your Highness service in the country of Russia’.19 Secondly, the Cambridge and Oxford manuscripts refer to a journal that is apparently included at the end of the text. In discussing the length of the country of Russia, the Cambridge manuscript reads ‘it reacheth in length aboute 4260. Verse or Myles, as may appeare by the Journall sett downe in the end of this booke’.20 The journal itself does not appear to be extant and it is not appended to either the Cambridge or Oxford manuscripts. Additionally, the journal is not mentioned in the James Ford Bell manuscript or the printed edition. We could speculate that the journal had originally formed part of Fletcher’s offering to Elizabeth of intelligence on Russia and that it may have been accepted and used by the government. This might explain why no mention of the journal appears in the James Ford Bell manuscript or the printed edition. These three factors combined imply that Fletcher was presenting all of his information on Russia to the queen in a scribal copy of a text from his original notes. The coat of arms and the epistle dedicatory together with the journal suggest that Fletcher’s first intention was to present his ‘intelligence’ on Russia to the queen in a neat, revised form. The Oxford manuscript may represent another copy of this text for the purpose of selective scribal circulation. The manuscript of Fletcher’s treatise in the James Ford Bell Collection is significantly different from the Cambridge and Oxford manuscripts and to all intents and purposes looks as if it is a precursor, a draft copy of the printed edition of The Russe Common Wealth. It is written in a very neat italic hand and includes the marginal reference notes that can be found in the later printed edition. Although the printed edition includes significantly more information than this manuscript, the similarity between the printed text and the way in which the James Ford Bell manuscript is structured and visually presented suggests that Fletcher at some point decided to prepare his text for print (rather than scribal) publication. In summary, then, the Cambridge manuscript was

96

Creating a feigned commonwealth a revised ‘final stage’, presentation copy of Fletcher’s original notes intended for Elizabeth and the court. The Oxford manuscript was a corrected version of this text, not for the queen, but possibly for scribal publication, to be circulated among friends and patrons.21 The James Ford Bell manuscript, however, represented a change in tack on Fletcher’s part, as a copy that was being prepared for print. This was revealed in the creation of marginal notes – a common practice in early modern print publications, using para-textual apparatus to signpost key points in the main text – and, more importantly, by the fact that these para-textual signposts were almost identical to those found in the printed version of 1591. The absence of a reference to the missing journal in the James Ford Bell manuscript further suggests a different publication strategy and a different intended audience.22 The 1591 printed edition stands out as the text with the most unique readings and information. This can be seen in the briefest examination of all four versions of the text, as all the manuscript versions have only twenty-four chapters, whereas the 1591 printed edition has twenty-eight.23 The newly incorporated chapters in the printed edition discussed ‘The chiefe cities of Russia’, ‘The house or stocke of the Russe Emperour’, ‘The maner of inauguration of the Russe Emperours’ and ‘Of the Permians, Samoites, and Lappes’.24 In this respect, it represents the final text, revised for the purposes of printing and intended for a public audience to be a form of ‘counsel for commonwealth’, as well as offering travel narrative and trade information. The differences between the other manuscripts, in terms of the information they include or omit, suggests that they represent earlier stages in the revision process, but with different audiences and objectives in mind. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FLETCHER’S PREFATORY MATERIAL The Cambridge manuscript is the only one that has a dedication to the queen; the other manuscripts have no dedication or preface, implying no specific audience for the text at that particular stage of revision. The 1591 printed edition, however, includes an epistle dedicatory to Elizabeth, which is similar in content to that of the Queens’ College, Cambridge manuscript, but with notable and important differences. The difference between the two dedications is demonstrated in Fletcher’s description of his work. In the epistle to the Cambridge manuscript, Fletcher explained to Elizabeth his intentions, that ‘beeing employed in your Highnes service in the Countrey of Russia, I did what I could to learn the state of that common wealth, and their manner of Government’.25 He explained, ‘having gott soom good and true intelligence, I have reduced the same into order, and presumed to offer it to your Highnes, if it please yow to be troubled with the sight of it’.26 What Fletcher

97

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth presented to Elizabeth in this manuscript was ‘true intelligence’. The term ‘intelligence’ was often used in connection with the work of spies, special agents and ambassadors in communicating information. The term was likewise used to express a certain degree of knowledge of events and expertise, gained from others or personal experience, as Purchas employed the term in his Purchas his Pilgrimes, ‘I suspend [belief ] till some eye-intelligence of some of our parts have testified the truth.’27 In this sense, the epistle from the Cambridge manuscript expressed Fletcher’s objective of supplying classified and expert information for a specific and exclusive audience – the queen and privy council. In fulfilment of his role as commissioned royal ambassador, Fletcher reported back with ‘true intelligence’ on Russia in order to inform English foreign policy.28 Further, as Fletcher had also been employed and funded by the Muscovy Company, it was part of his role to bring back political intelligence and knowledge of the land and its customs in order to furnish the governors and investors of the Muscovy Company, some of whom sat on the privy council, with strategic information about English trade and diplomatic relations with Russia.29 In contrast, the dedication for the printed edition suggests more of a sense of open-access information – for through the act of printing, Fletcher’s audience was deliberately broadened beyond royalty and nobility – available to anyone who could afford to buy the work. In the dedication to the printed edition in 1591, Fletcher explained that ‘I observed the State, and manners of that Countrey. And having reduced the same into some order, by the way as I returned, I have presumed to offer it in this small Booke to your most excellent Majestie.’30 The subtle change in language revealed the shift in Fletcher’s intentions. The phrase ‘true intelligence’ is omitted from the 1591 edition and Fletcher added to the printed preface for the wider audience an explanation of his purpose, ‘my meaning was to note thinges for mine owne experience, of more importaunce then delight, and rather true then strange’, a critical allusion to the fantastic travellers’ tales that were so prolific in this period, as well as an explicit claim to truth-telling and correcting the errors of the ancients with an eye-witness account.31 As interest in long-distance travel and far-away lands increased, a literature instructing the potential traveller or the interested reader on how to travel and how to write about their travels to other countries burgeoned. Robert Dallington’s popular A View of France (1604), for instance, was republished as a general guidebook to the art of travel, A Method for Travell (1605).32 The work gave instructions on the nature of travel and how to record travel experiences, providing a model to be emulated by aspiring adventurers and authors: [F]‌rom day to day he shall set downe, the divers Provinces he passseth, with their commodities, the townes, with their manner of buildings, the names, & benefit of

98

Creating a feigned commonwealth the rivers, the distance of places, the condition of the soile, manners of the people, and what else his eye meeteth by the way remarqueable.33

These were exactly the kinds of details Fletcher added and elaborated upon during the course of revising his text for the wider audience of print publication in order to produce a hybrid work of intelligence, counsel, travel information and cosmographical reference. Fletcher’s decision to print represented a departure from the role of ambassador and intelligencer. It revealed more of Fletcher’s literary and humanist ambitions to write not only his adventures, but to provide didactic material with the potential to counsel the monarch and commonwealth through the feigned image of Russia, as well as furnishing his readers with a better grasp of the geography and culture of lands to the far north-east of Europe. FLETCHER’S HISTORICAL ADDITIONS In his analysis of Fletcher’s texts, Berry highlighted the textual differences between the manuscripts and printed work, commenting on ‘examples of factual correction’ and additions ‘of explanatory nature’, and suggesting sources for their origin, rather than analysing the reasons for Fletcher’s editorial practice, his revisions and the additions to the text over time.34 He did not fully explore the intentions or logic behind the changes, alterations and additions to the text of The Russe Common Wealth. An examination of these revisions and a consideration of why Fletcher may have revised his text over the period 1589–91 sheds more light on the contemporary socio-political context of late Elizabethan England and on Fletcher himself. The most obvious changes to the text as it developed over the period 1589–91 are represented by the additions of geographical and historical information. Fletcher inserted large chunks of historical information into his later versions, the James Ford Bell manuscript and the printed edition. Berry postulates that ‘most additions of this type … indicate that, after the original version had been written, Fletcher read certain accounts, especially of Turkey, and then, before the 1591 edition was published, expanded the sections which dealt with the neighbors of Russia’.35 Pipes, in comparing only the Cambridge manuscript and the printed edition, makes the point that all the historical information and references to historical sources found in the printed edition are missing from the Cambridge manuscript, suggesting that ‘Fletcher did the bulk of his research on Russia after he had returned to England, during the interval which elapsed between the writing of the Cambridge manuscript and the publication of his book.’36 The historical research that went into Fletcher’s text in later revisions may not have been included in his original text on purpose, for this version

99

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth was intended primarily for Elizabeth and the privy council. The contextual history that Fletcher included in his later version of The Russe Common Wealth may have been added for the purposes of the printed, public access edition only, to attract an audience of arm-chair travellers and interested humanists, as well as promoters and investors. Perhaps, then, Fletcher was acutely aware of the literary style of the popular generic mode of cosmography, taking works like Richard Eden’s translation of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera’s Decades of the Newe World (1555), Ramusio’s Delle navigationi et viaggi (1555–9) and Hakluyt’s The Principall navigations (1589) as inspiration. The term ‘cosmography’ in its contemporary meaning conjured up the idea of ‘the description … of heaven and earth, and all that is contained therein’,37 as it were ‘the measure of the worlde’.38 In tandem with the cultural and literary modes of the time, Fletcher may have recognised the need for printed work on travel and unfamiliar lands to engage with the accounts of others, with the array of cosmographies and geographies newly available and to add to and correct, from his own eye-witness experience, the great store of knowledge already compiled by the ancients and more recent adventurers into unknown lands. In the first chapter of the 1591 printed edition, for instance, Fletcher added a new section on the origins of Russia, analysing traditional accounts of the subject: As for the conjecture which I find in some Cosmographers, that the Russe nation borrowed the name of the people called Roxellani, and were the very same nation with them, it is without all good probabilitie: both in respect of the etymologie of the word (which is very far set) and especially for the seat and dwelling of that people, which was betwixt the two rivers of Tanais and Boristhenes, (as Strabo reporteth) quite an other way from the countrey of Russia.39

A printed marginal note appears next to this section in the text; it reads ‘Strabo in his 7. booke of Geogr.’, disclosing the source that Fletcher was prepared to share with his reader.40 What Fletcher did not reveal was that this newly inserted information bore a very close resemblance to content found in Martin Cromer’s De Origine et Rebus Gestis Polonorum (1568).41 Cromer had also cited Ptolemy, Pliny and Tacitus, alongside Strabo, to argue that the Russians did not descend from the Roxolani.42 However, an opposing account of Russia appended to Richard Eden’s translation of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera’s Decades cited these same authors in support of the idea that the Russians were in fact the Roxolani. Fletcher may have been attempting to correct the ‘conjecture’ of cosmographers such as those found in Eden’s Decades, using the work of Cromer to bolster his own ideas.43 A document of foreign intelligence and counsel for monarch and privy council did not require such legitimating information as firsthand experience or cosmographical references that challenged the received historical

100

Creating a feigned commonwealth and geographical knowledge of the ancients. Popular travel and trade publications, on the other hand, did. Albrecht Meyer’s Certaine briefe, and speciall Instructions for Gentlemen, merchants, students, souldiers, marriners, &c. Employed in services abrode (1589) and William Bourne’s A Regiment for the Sea, conteining very necessary matters, for all sorts of Sea-men and Travailers, as Masters of ships, Pilots, Mariners & Marchaunts (1580) provide just two examples of the popularity and prevalence of travel and trade publications in the Elizabethan period. These publications emphasised the importance of instructing gentlemen and merchants alike in cosmography and travel information, whether they were arm-chair travellers, investors or intrepid explorers. During the editing process, Fletcher consulted historical sources and classical authorities and inserted their ideas and information into his text as points of reference and examples of ancient wisdom to be corrected. Thus he modified his original text of cosmographical, diplomatic and mercantile intelligence for queen and privy council into a text of travel narrative, trade information and political theory. It was a transformative act; intelligence and counsel for the queen became didactic information for commonwealth once the audience was opened up through print publication by creating a multi-generic text that would appeal to a broader readership including aspiring humanists, merchants, mariners and investors. ELABORATING ON THE TARTARS: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Another significant difference between the printed edition of 1591 and the earlier manuscript versions of the text was Fletcher’s treatment of the subject of the Tartars, the nomadic tribes on Russia’s borders. In the later printed edition Fletcher’s information about the Tartars was significantly expanded, presenting a more complex depiction of the peoples on Russia’s peripheries and their role in his invention of the Russian commonwealth. Fletcher elaborated on the domestic and religious life of the Tartars with additional ethnographical information, noting how Tartar spirituality differed from the religion of the Turks (rather than Russian religious practices) and was overwhelmed with superstition and witchcraft ‘for they have certeine idoles puppets made of silke or like stuffe … They are much given to witchcraft, & ominous conjectures, upon every accident which they heare, or see.’44 Concerning marriage, ‘they have no regard of alliance or consanguinitie. Onely with his mother, sister, and daughter a man may not marrie … and hee accounteth her not for his wife, till he have a childe by her.’45 The newly added descriptions of the Tartars’ physical features found in the printed edition shed further light on the ambiguous but important place that the Tartars occupied in Fletcher’s cosmography and their role

101

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth in his arguments as a whole. Fletcher would write a treatise on the Tartars just before he died in 1611 (although it was not printed until 1677), arguing that the Tartars were the ten lost tribes of Israel.46 In 1591, however, Fletcher focused on the appearance of Tartars, describing them as having ‘broad and flatte visages, of a tanned colour into yellowe and blacke’. They had ‘fearse and cruell lookes’ yet they were ‘light and nimble bodied, with short legges, as if they were made naturally for horsemen’.47 He presented their lifestyle as barbaric and their spoken language as savage, ‘their speech is very suddaine and loude … when they sing you woulde thinke a kowe lowed, or some great bandogge howled’.48 He also linked the Tartars directly to the classical representatives of ‘savages’ in the ancient world, the Scythians: ‘They are the very same that sometimes were called Scythae Nomades, or the Scythian Shepheards, by the Greeks and Latines.’49 Fletcher’s contemporaries were drawing similar parallels between classical images of the ancient Scythians and their own borderers, the Irish, the Scots (who were themselves originally Irish) and the Picts. William Warner, in his Albion’s England (1586), explained that ‘the pichtes were fearce and Scythian like: much like the Irish’, and in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) the Scots were ‘the most Scithian-like and barbarous nation, and longest without letters’.50 Fletcher also expanded on the warfare of the Tartars, celebrating their skill and competence in this area. In his 1591 edition, he used Laonicus Chalcondyles’s ‘Turkish storie’ which recounted how, with their strategy and subtle wit, the Tartars ‘had welnigh surprised the great and huge armie of Tamerlan, but that hee retyred with all speede hee coulde … not without great losse of his men, and carriages’.51 Laonicus Chalcondyles (1423–90) was a fifteenth-century Byzantine historian. His most famous work focused on the final 150 years of Byzantine history, detailing the rise of the Ottoman Empire and comparing the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the fall of Troy.52 Fletcher also included a relation of the Tartar wars against the Hungarians and their skilful tactics in warfare, demonstrating a greater degree of expertise and understanding than was expected of nomadic and thus ‘savage’ Tartar tribesmen, ‘Yet their subtiltie is more then may seeme to agree with their barbarous condition … they are very pregnant and ready witted to devise stratageams upon the suddaine for their better advantage.’53 To reinforce his argument, Fletcher added a comparison of the Tartar, Turkish and Russian soldiers, in which the Tartars outstripped the others in terms of courage and valour: ‘They contemne death so much, as that they chuse rather to die then to yeeld to their enimie, and are seene when they are slaine to bite the very weapon, when they are past striking.’54 The Russians and Turks, on the other hand, were very different from the Tartar ‘in his desperate courage’.55 The ‘Russe soldier … putteth all his safetie in his speedie flight’

102

Creating a feigned commonwealth and failing that, ‘if once he be taken by his enimie, he neyther defendeth himselfe, nor intreateth for his life, as reckoning straight to die’.56 Shunning the Russians’ resignation to death and not brave enough to contemn death like the Tartar, ‘the Turke commonly when he is past hope of escaping … offereth both his handes, as it were to be tyed: hoping to save his life, by offering himselfe bondslave’.57 Fletcher’s original manuscript encapsulates this fundamental image of the Tartar as a positive comparative ‘other’, against which the barbaric Russian could be judged as even more depraved than the descendants of the classical epitome of savagery – the Scythians. This binary opposition between Russian and Tartar was enhanced further in the printed edition by Fletcher providing more details of the differences and complexities in the Tartar peoples and their varying degrees of barbarity. Beginning with the ‘Chircasses’, Fletcher divided the Tartars into several subgroups based on a sliding scale of civility. He depicted the Chircasses as a Tartar people ‘that border Southwest, towardes Lituania’. The crucial distinction between the Chircasses and the other Tartar peoples was that they were ‘farre more civil then the rest of the Tartars, of a comely person, and of a stately behaviour, as applying themselves to the fashion of the Polonian’.58 The Chircasses were the most civil, almost European in their imitation of the civility of the Polish, whereas the Mordwit Tartar was ‘the most rude & barbarous … that hath many self-fashions & strange kinds of behaviour, differing from the rest’.59 The Russians, in contrast, received no such acknowledgement of their regional or cultural differences. Fletcher’s Russians were all uncivilised, cruel, drunk and tyrannical, no matter what their status: For as themselves are verie hardlie and cruellie dealte withall by their chiefe Magistrates, and other superiours, so are they as cruell one against an other, specially over their inferious, and such as are under them. So that the basest & wretchedest Christianoe (as they call him) that stoupeth and croucheth like a dogge to the Gentleman … is an intollerable tyrant, where he hath the advantage.60

This increased complexity and differentiation of Tartar peoples served to highlight Fletcher’s argument that despite the wild savagery of the most barbaric Tartars, they were still more honest (and therefore civil) than the corrupt Russians, ‘They are saide to be just & true in their dealings’, like the noble savages depicted in ancient geographies and ‘discovered’ in the New World. This was in contrast to the rude and uncivil Russians, lacking in honestas, ‘whom they account to be double, & false in all their dealing’ – a result of being corrupted by tyrannical government.61 The nomadic and ungoverned Tartars, depicted in their diversity, served the purpose of exemplifying a fundamental theme of Fletcher’s work: a corrupt, tyrannical commonwealth was far worse than honest savagery with no government at all.

103

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth REVISING AND PRUNING FOR PRINT PUBLICATION There are many examples, strewn throughout all four extant versions of the text, of Fletcher’s meticulous editing and revising of a word here and a phrase there. Some sentences have been progressively revised over the course of the writing period, displayed in the three manuscript texts and the final printed edition. These small revisions appear to be aesthetic, rather than ideologically or politically driven; for instance, in the Cambridge manuscript version of Fletcher’s text he describes the Russian emperor’s divide and rule policy ‘Whearein he made his advantage of their malice and accusations the on[e]‌ againste the other, for secreate practize and conspiracies to be intended againste himself and suchelike.’62 The later James Ford Bell manuscript version reads: ‘Whear hee made his advantage of their malice & contentions theon against the other, by receiving divised matters & accusations for secreat practice & conspiracies to bee intended against his person, state &c.’63 The printed edition follows these revisions closely, revealing more of the structure of the stages of revision identified by Berry: ‘Where he made his advanntage of their malice and contentions, the one against the other, by receiving devised matter, and accusations of secrete practise and conspiracies to be intended against his person, and state.’64 Some one-word revisions may also have been changes made consciously or unwittingly by scribes or typesetters.65 In the Cambridge manuscript, for instance, Fletcher notes that Vologda ‘lieth about 700 verse from the Port of S. Nicholas’.66 In the printed edition, however, Vologda is ‘almost 1700. verst from the porte of S. Nicholas’.67 The number ‘7’ as it appears in the James Ford Bell manuscript could have been mistaken for ‘17’, which may account for the dramatic alteration in distance.68 Berry and Crummey calculate that Vologda to Moscow was about 420 versts; a verst was a Russian measure of length corresponding to 3,500 English feet or about two-thirds (0.66) of an English mile, or 1.067 kilometres.69 So Fletcher’s original measurement appears more accurate and this revision seems most likely to be a typesetter’s mistake. Other changes reflect corrections of increased accuracy, for instance the alterations to latitudinal information made over the course of various drafts of the text. In the Cambridge manuscript ‘The pole at Mosko is 44. Degres. At the port of S. Nicholas towards the north 71. Degres.35. minutes.’70 In the Oxford manuscript the co-ordinates are significantly different: ‘the Pole at Mosko is 55 degrees. at the port of S. Nicholas towards the North 63. Degrees, 50 minutes.’71 The James Ford Bell manuscript is different again, but only marginally: ‘The Pole at Mosko is 55. Degrees, 10 minutes. At the port of S. Nicholas towards the North 63. Degrees & 50 minutes.’72 There were also more textually significant changes, including the moving of sentences and paragraphs to different places in the text. For instance, a description of the soil and climate of

104

Creating a feigned commonwealth the north of Russia that appears near the beginning of ­chapter 2 in the printed text was originally included at the end of c­ hapter 1 in all three manuscript versions. Additionally, a sentence from the section that was moved to chapter two is omitted from the final printed text; the omitted section reads: ‘The Countrey hath manie deserts & wast grounds within it, specially betwixt perm, & Siberia, & on the North side betwixt Cargapolia, & Cola.’73 Berry maintains that the most interesting type of revision is the toning down of passages that are critical of Russia. He provides an example of Fletcher omitting from the printed edition of The Russe Common Wealth a description of the Russian Orthodox Church as similar to the Roman Catholic Church, complaining that as well as dead idols, in the form of saints, the Russians worshipped living idols in the form of their patriarch, metropolites and archbishops.74 This is indeed an interesting omission and by no means the only example of biting invective against the Roman Catholic Church that has been expurgated from the text during the editing process.75 The Cambridge and Oxford manuscripts discuss the effects of the Russian Orthodox Church subjecting itself to the authority of the pope, explaining that ‘the Emperours of Russia have learned the inconvenience that would grow to their state, by letting in that Beast’.76 In the James Ford Bell manuscript, however, this derogatory title for the pope, ‘the Beast’, a reference to the beast described in the Book of Revelation, associated with the Antichrist,77 is omitted and the sentence altered to ‘the Emperours of Russia know well inough by the example of other Christian Princes what inconvenience would growe hearby to their state’.78 The 1591 printed edition is further revised to make it less overtly offensive, reading ‘the Emperours of Russia know well enough, by the example of other christian Princes, what inconvenience would grow to their state & countrie, by subjecting themselves to the Romish sea’.79 The inflammatory title of the Beast, linking the pope directly with the Antichrist, is omitted by Fletcher, yet the danger of political subjection to Rome is left securely in place with the inclusion of the term ‘the Romish Sea’. Significantly, certain information found in the earlier manuscripts was later omitted from the printed edition. In the process of making the text suitable for a broader audience, Fletcher seems to have been conscientious in his editorial revisions and excisions. Regarding Boris Godunov, Feodor I’s right-hand man and in reality the de facto regent of Russia, the Cambridge and Oxford manuscripts describe him as ‘beeing the Emperour’s brother-in-law his protectour for direction, for authoritie Emperor of Russia himself, and for riches and revenue in Land passing all the rest’.80 In the James Ford Bell manuscript the nuance of the sentence is altered slightly by the insertion of the word ‘but’, placing more emphasis on Boris’s absolute power, ‘being the Emperour’s brother-in-lawe, his protectour for direction but for authoritie Emperor of Russia, & for ritches & revenue farr passing all the rest’.81 In the

105

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth printed edition, however, the word ‘but’ has been omitted and the following sentence on Boris’s wealth surpassing all others’ removed. Thus it reads simply: ‘being the Emperors brother in law, his protectour for direction, for commaund and authority Emperour of Russia’.82 Why Fletcher may have omitted this sentence from his printed edition is not entirely clear. Godunov was, however, the Muscovy Company’s most active and sympathetic supporter in Russia, so it is possible that Fletcher may have been attempting to limit his criticism of this nobleman, or at least tone down his depiction of the reach of his power and revenue. Fletcher’s discussion of the religious politics of Russia provides the most significant examples of editorial cuts or alterations in information during the course of revising the text for print publication. The Cambridge and Oxford manuscript versions present a scornful response to the Russian Church receiving the See of Constantinople, offered to them by the exiled Patriarch of Constantinople, who had been ‘banished (as some said) by the Turke, as some other reported by the Greeke clergie deprived’.83 In these early manuscript versions, Fletcher questioned the validity of the translation of the See of Constantinople and the assumption of the Russians that they now had authority over all the churches in Christendom previously under Constantinople, ‘or at the least they must suppose it to be soe, except they will graunt that they have made a badd bargain, and bought that of the Greek, that him self had not right to sell’.84 In the James Ford Bell manuscript and printed edition, however, Fletcher put a more diplomatic spin on the translation of the See of Constantinople to the seat of Moscow. These later versions explained that following the translation of the see to Moscow the ‘Russe Patriarch imagineth himself to have the same authoritie’ as the previous Patriarch of Constantinople.85 Fletcher had evidently toned down his criticism of the Russian church’s attempt to gain ecclesiastical power by buying out the Patriarchship of Constantinople from a disgraced, runaway priest. There is also a large section of text on the revenue accrued by patriarchs, metropolites, archbishops and bishops that appears in all three manuscript versions, in slightly varying forms, but is discarded for the printed edition. All versions of the text, printed and manuscript, begin by detailing the ‘somewhat large’ revenues produced by rents from ecclesiastical lands, providing estimates of what each position in the ecclesiastical hierarchy collected annually in roubles. The patriarchs received around 3,000 roubles a year, the metropolites and archbishops about 2,500 a year and the bishops between 500 and 1,000 roubles a year.86 However, the manuscript versions go on to explain: But the Emperours of late have well abated their revenues, which notwithstanding wear very large still if they received it clear, & had it all at their owne disposition to spend as they listed. But their Steward is of the Emperours appointing & hath a

106

Creating a feigned commonwealth Commision both to receive all their rents & to expend what is necessary about their housholld provision. If any thing bee left at the years end hee giveth account of it to the Emperours officers. The Patriarch, Metropolites, Archbishops, & Bishops ar allowed only to their privat purse for the expenses of their persons about 200 or 300 rubbles a piece by the year.87

Again, the reason Fletcher may have omitted this section from the printed edition can only be a matter of speculation. He may have wanted to emphasise the wealth of the ecclesiastical authorities by omitting discussion of their recent suppression by the emperor. Highlighting the excessive wealth, as well as the ignorance and corruption, of the ecclesiastical authorities may have served Fletcher’s purposes of presenting a financially and spiritually corrupt church that supported and perpetuated the tyrannical regime found in Russia. CONTINUITY IN FLETCHER’S TEXTS A final point to emphasise regarding the editing and revision process involved in the creation of Fletcher’s text is the continuity of the ideas and underlying message found in the various stages of revised texts. All the key themes of political theory that appear in Fletcher’s earliest extant manuscript are still prevalent in the final printed edition. In all three manuscript revisions and the printed edition, Fletcher depicted the disastrous effects of tyrannical government on an otherwise fertile and fruitful land and a capable, potentially civil and ostensibly Christian people.88 He highlighted the risks of undermining and destroying the virtuous and ancient nobility – the very lifeblood of the commonwealth.89 He warned about the destructive effects of tyrannical economic policies and the danger of encouraging monopolies, which did not protect the common good.90 He teased out the consequences of decay to the land and people if God’s providence in the country went unexploited and if his blessing of power to the emperor was abused, ‘by this meanes the whole Countrie is filled with rapine and murder’ and ‘this wicked pollicy & tyrannous practice … hath so troubled that countrey’.91 He stated categorically in all versions of his text how difficult it was to alter the government of a land thus ruled and abused by tyrannical power and that a people living under such tyranny would long for deliverance from a foreign power.92 In conclusion, the fundamental arguments of Fletcher’s treatise did not change during his revision of the text, except to develop the comparative role of the Tartars as more savage in lifestyle, but less immoral and decayed in character, to the result of not being servile to a corrupt and tyrannical government, as the Russians were. This is significant in interpreting the designs of the author, the reception of the text and the text’s afterlife, as we shall see in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

107

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth RICHARD HAKLUYT’S THE PRINCIPALL ­NAVIGATIONS (1589) AND FLETCHER’S OF THE RUSSE COMMON WEALTH (1591) Fletcher’s text proves all the more interesting because of its complex publication history.93 A copy of one of Fletcher’s manuscript versions, or at least some detailed information about Fletcher’s text, clearly came into the hands of Richard Hakluyt very soon after Fletcher’s return to England in the early autumn of 1589. This is evidenced by the inclusion in Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations (1589) of a brief summary of Fletcher’s embassy to Russia in 1588, the privileges that he had gained on behalf of the Muscovy Company and the queen and a note stating that ‘the said Ambassador Master Giles Fletcher as I understand, hath drawen a booke, intituled, Of the Russe Common Wealth’.94 This was followed by a list, or contents page, of the chapters in Fletcher’s text, bearing some resemblance to the table of contents found in the Cambridge manuscript. A comparison of the list of chapter titles included by Hakluyt in The Principall Navigations and the table of contents found in the Cambridge manu­ script, the earliest extant version of Fletcher’s text, reveals a good degree of similarity between the two. There are, however, two major differences. Firstly, in the Cambridge and subsequent manuscripts, the two separate chapters found in Hakluyt’s version of the contents page regarding the liturgy of the Russian church and the sacraments of the Russian church respectively have been consolidated into one chapter. Secondly, the manuscript versions and the printed edition include a further chapter not found in Hakluyt’s version of the contents page, entitled ‘The Emperours domestique or privat behaviour’.95 Pipes surmises that Hakluyt must have had access to an early draft of Fletcher’s text, which was still in the process of being created when Hakluyt was collating his work for publication in the autumn of 1589.96 The actual text of the treatise was not printed in the 1589 edition of The Principall navigations, for as Hakluyt informed his audience, ‘The booke itself he [Fletcher] thought not good, for divers considerations to make publike at this time.’97 Fletcher had arrived back in England in late August or early September of 1589. The prefatory dedication to The Principall Navigations was dated 17 November 1589. Reference to Fletcher’s embassy appears in the correct order in the table of contents of The Principall Navigations, as opposed to Jerome Horsey’s account of the coronation of Feodor I, which does not appear with the rest of the material on Russia and seems to have been tucked in at the end of the work, at the last minute before going to press.98 This suggests that Hakluyt would have had the time to include Fletcher’s ‘booke’ in his edition had he been able to do so, pointing to some concern perhaps on the part of the author or editor, or indeed both, which prevented the work from being printed

108

Creating a feigned commonwealth in Hakluyt’s collection. Hakluyt claimed that it was the author’s desire that publication of the work be postponed, but it is important to consider whether it was Fletcher who wished to avoid immediate publication, or whether in fact Hakluyt, or other interested parties, may have had some influence in persuading against such action and why this might have been so. Pipes argues that the Muscovy Company must have put pressure on Fletcher and/or Hakluyt not to publish the full text as it was so offensive to the Russians, suggesting that Hakluyt went for the option of simply printing the list of privileges and table of contents instead.99 This is possible, but Pipes’s contention is based only on a consideration of what happened after Fletcher’s text was published in its own right in 1591, at which point the Muscovy Company voiced their disapprobation.100 Pipes’s argument is also based on the assumption that members of the Muscovy Company would have had access to Fletcher’s text at this very early stage in its composition – a point that would be difficult to prove either way. There are various other possible, and perhaps more plausible, reasons why Fletcher’s ‘booke’ did not appear in this first edition of The Principall navigations. It may simply have been that Fletcher did not think his text was ready for publication at the time Hakluyt went to press and it may also have been possible that his manuscript had not yet been presented to Elizabeth at this stage. Equally, Fletcher may have wanted his Of the Russe Common Wealth to be printed in its own right, rather than appearing among many other authors in Hakluyt’s paean to English exploration. Another possibility is that Hakluyt himself had reservations about including the text in The Principall navigations because of its content. Alternatively, it may have been Francis Walsingham’s agent, one Doctor James, who could have raised issue with Fletcher’s text. James had been appointed to inspect the entirety of The Principall navigations before it was published, and as Hakluyt informed the reader, the whole work ‘hath passed the sight, and partly also the censure of the learned phisitian M. Doctor James’.101 There were other accounts of Russia in Hakluyt’s compilation that proved problematic for Hakluyt in some way. Sir Jerome Bowes, for instance, wrote a rather arrogant, long-winded and belligerent account of his embassy that appears in only some copies of the 1589 edition of Hakluyt’s The Principall navigations.102 This account was withdrawn from The Principall navigations shortly after its publication in late 1589 or early 1590 and a second anonymous, uncontroversial and third-person account was substituted.103 Robert Croskey speculates that Hakluyt himself may have had to put together at short notice the new and politically expedient version of Bowes’s embassy so as not to hold up the printing of later copies of the work.104 Bowes did not present a favourable picture of either himself, the English in Russia or the Russians in his original, first-person account. The substituted anonymous version, on the

109

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth other hand, presented the state of the Anglo-Russian relationship in 1584 in a more positive light and suppressed any account of the unsuccessful elements of Bowes’s embassy. It also omitted any discussion of the ineffective, secretive negotiations over a political alliance between Elizabeth I and Ivan IV. The substitution of Bowes’s account for a more politically expedient and diplomatically convenient one that made no mention of negotiations over a secret alliance can be interpreted as an attempt to appease the Muscovy Company and/ or privy council and to appeal to a specific audience of prospective investors, without revealing damaging details about the real state of affairs between Russia and England.105 It further suggests that anything controversial in the treatment of Russia was unattractive to Hakluyt and/or the patrons, supporters and promoters of his work, perhaps hinting at a politic reason why Fletcher’s text might not have been welcome in Hakluyt’s work in 1589. More discussion will be given over to the relationship between Fletcher’s text, other accounts of Russia and both the 1589 and the 1598 editions of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations in Chapter 6. WRITING THE MONARCH: FLETCHER’S LITERARY AMBITIONS After his return to England in late 1589, the years 1590 and 1591 were a particularly precarious period in Fletcher’s career and life. In the summer of 1590, one of Fletcher’s daughters died and Walsingham and Randolph, Fletcher’s patrons, also died during this year, which meant that Fletcher needed to find new sources of patronage. On 7 November 1590, just over a year after his return from Russia and before the publication of his Of the Russe Common Wealth, Fletcher petitioned Lord Burghley to allow and support him to write a Latin history of Elizabeth’s reign that would also include brief histories of her predecessors, Mary Tudor, Edward VI and Henry VIII. He asked Burghley for access to documents relating to the queen’s history and reign, but the outcome of the request remains unknown.106 Certainly, there is no Latin history of Elizabeth written by Fletcher extant, and a posthumous history of Elizabeth’s reign was later produced by William Camden, but only the first part was printed while he was alive, and he himself asked that the second part should not be published in his lifetime and that it should not be published in English.107 It may be, as Palmer suggests, that Burghley was wary of handing over information and giving support for such a sensitive and delicate pursuit to one who had been so easily led into defaming the provost of King’s College some fourteen years earlier.108 It has been suggested by both Berry and Pipes that Fletcher turned his energies towards revising and publishing Of the Russe Common Wealth at this point because his hopes of writing the Latin history could not be realised.109 There is, however, nothing to suggest that Fletcher

110

Creating a feigned commonwealth turned to print publication of The Russe Common Wealth simply because his proposed history of Elizabeth may have been rejected. It is clear from the form of his letter to Burghley, the language used in it and the outline he included of a structure for the history, that it was already a work in progress.110 It may be that Fletcher did not receive the information (and patronage) he needed from Burghley to finish the Latin history. This does not mean, however, that the two projects – the Latin history of Elizabeth and the revising of The Russe Common Wealth – were mutually exclusive. As Fletcher was preparing his Russian text for a public audience, it seems likely that he worked on it over the period of a couple of years, between 1589 and 1591, in order to put together his historical additions and expand its content. In fact, as Berry points out, in the printed version of Fletcher’s text, the date of Ivan’s loss of territory in Lithuania is given as ‘eight or nine yeares past’, whereas in the manuscripts it is recorded as ‘7. yeares since’. In 1582, after heavy defeats in the Livonian War, Ivan agreed to a truce that would mean surrendering all Livonian land held by Russia and the city of Dorpat in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This time frame would tally with the ‘7 yeares since’ of the manuscript versions and with Fletcher’s editing period over the years 1590–1, by which time the loss of land in Lithuania would have been eight or nine years ago.111 It is possible, therefore, that he was working on the Latin history and The Russe Common Wealth concurrently. A publication of both in the early 1590s would perhaps have presented a more potent expression of counsel for queen and commonwealth, given the themes of Fletcher’s text on Russia, depicting the dangers of evil counsel, the reducing of the ancient nobility, economic oppression, succession crises and resistance to tyranny. However, such a combination of a history of Elizabeth’s reign and a treatise on Russian tyranny, if published simultaneously, could have been more controversial if his message was to highlight the risks of tyranny inherent in the wielding of monarchical power. As it was, only Of The Russe Common Wealth was finished and printed, and in a climate particularly sensitive to the issues raised in Fletcher’s text, as we shall see in Chapter 5. Fletcher’s various works regarding Anglo-Russian relations – his diplomatic reports, his trouble-shooting trade appraisal and his poetic counsel-cum-cosmography – and English and Russian society, government and culture reflect an attempt to use the unfamiliar site of Muscovy to grapple with the changing political and cultural profiles of England, Russia and of the globe. His work aimed to expose all the facets of tyrannical rule, and to question contemporary ideas of the civil, Christian humanist self and the safeguarding of the civil commonwealth through writing about his own experiences in an unknown, potentially civil and lucrative land. His writings provide a rich and illuminating source of information on the complex representations and construction of English identity when faced with strange

111

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth and seemingly barbaric lands. The following chapter opens up the content of Fletcher’s text by examining in more depth his detailed description of Russia. NOTES 1 J. Horsey, ‘A Relacion or Memorial abstracted owt of Sir Jerom Horsey His Travells, Imploiments, Services and Negociacions, observed and written with his owne hand; wherin he spent the most part of eighten years tyme’, printed in E. A. Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1856), p. 256. 2 Fletcher, RCW, epistle dedicatory, sig. A3. 3 P. Sidney, The Defence of Poesie (London, 1595), sig. C4r. 4 Sidney, Defence of Poesie, sig. B2v. 5 See E. Heale, ‘Travailing abroad: the poet as adventurer’, in M. Pincombe (ed.), Travels and Translations in the Sixteenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 3–18. See also A. Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press, 2003), pp. 102–11. 6 Fletcher’s later love poetry will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6. 7 See Blair Worden’s discussion of the poet as counsellor in B. Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 3–22. 8 L. E. Berry (ed.), The English Works of Giles Fletcher, the Elder (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp. 160–6. 9 G. Fletcher, ‘Of the Russe Common Wealth’, Queens’ College, Cambridge MS 25 (hereafter Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam). 10 G. Fletcher, ‘Of the Russe Common Wealth’, University College, Oxford MS 144 (hereafter Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Oxf). 11 G. Fletcher, ‘Of the Russe Common Wealth’, James Ford Bell Collection, University of Minnesota MS (hereafter Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min). 12 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 136. 13 R. Pipes, ‘Introduction’, in G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, Facsimile Edition with Variants, ed. R. Pipes and J. V. A. Fine, Jr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 19, n. 29. 14 For examples of Fletcher’s hand, see Fletcher, ‘MD’ and Fletcher, ‘SN’. 15 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 161. 16 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 161. 17 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 136, and Pipes ‘Introduction’, p. 19. 18 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 161. 19 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., epistle dedicatory. 20 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 1, lines 47–9. See also Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Oxf., p. 2r, for this quotation.

112

Creating a feigned commonwealth 21 On scribal publication, see H. Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 22 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min. 23 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 164–5. 24 Fletcher, RCW, table of contents. 25 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., epistle dedicatory. 26 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., epistle dedicatory. 27 S. Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage (London, 1614), p. 830. 28 For continental examples of the importance placed on cosmographical, mercantile and diplomatic information, see ‘Relazioni of Venetian and other ambassadors, &c., circ. 1555–1586’, BL MS Royal 14 A XIII and ‘Relazioni of ambassadors of Italian states, &c., circ. 1546–1595’, BL MS Royal 14 A XV. See also T. Beverley, ‘Venetian ambassadors, 1454–1494: an Italian elite’ (PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1999), especially ch. 3. 29 Burghley and Walsingham, for instance, were both privy counsellors and investors in the Muscovy Company. 30 Fletcher, RCW, sig. A3. 31 Fletcher, RCW, sig. A3. For examples of fantastic travel accounts, see E. Webbe, The Rare and most wonderfull things which Edw. Webbe an Englishman borne, hath seene and passed in his troublesome travailes (London, 1590) and J. Hortop, The travailes of an Englishman (London, 1591). 32 A. Hadfield (ed.), Amazons, Savages and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550–1630. An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 46. 33 R. Dallington, A Method for Travell (London, 1605), sig. Cv. 34 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 137–44. 35 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 137. 36 Pipes, ‘Introduction’, p. 20. 37 T. Blundeville, M. Blundevile his exercises containing sixe treatises (London, 1594), p. 134r. 38 H. C. Agrippa, Of the vanitie and uncertaintie of artes and sciences, trans. J. Sanford (London, 1569), p. 37b. 39 Fletcher, RCW, p. 1v. 40 See Strabo, Geography, VII.3.17. 41 M. Cromer, De Origine et Rebus Gestis Polonorum (Basel, 1568), pp. 16–19. 42 Cromer, De Origine, pp. 16–19. See also Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 427. 43 R. Eden, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India (London, 1555), p. 256r. See also Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 427. 44 Fletcher, RCW, p. 69v. 45 Fletcher, RCW, p. 70r.

113

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 46 See S. Lee, Israel Redux: or the Restauration of Israel, exhibited in two short treatises (London, 1677). Fletcher’s text, ‘The Tartars or Ten Tribes’, is reprinted in Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 307–31. For more discussion, see R. W. Cogley, ‘ “The most vile and barbarous nation of all the world”: Giles Fletcher the elder’s “The Tartars Or, Ten Tribes” (ca. 1610)’, Renaissance Quarterly, 58:3 (2005), 781–814. 47 Fletcher, RCW, p. 72r. 48 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 72r–v. 49 Fletcher, RCW, p. 72v. 50 W. Warner, Albion’s England (London, 1586), Bk 3, ch. XV, p. 61; R. Holinshed, The first and second volumes of Chronicles (London, 1587), Bk 1, p. 5. For further reading on this subject, see A. Hadfield, ‘Briton and Scythian: Tudor representations of Irish origins’, Irish Historical Studies, 28 (1993), 390–408, and D. Cavanagh, ‘Uncivil monarchy: Scotland, England and the reputation of James IV’, in J. Richards (ed.), Early Modern Civil Discourses (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 146–61. 51 Fletcher, RCW, p. 71v. 52 See M. Philippides and W. K. Hanak, The Siege and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453: Historiography, Topography and Military Studies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 201–2. 53 Fletcher, RCW, p. 67v. 54 Fletcher, RCW, p. 68v. This sentence can also be found in Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 16, lines 112–17; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 16, p. 62v; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 16, p. 44v. 55 Fletcher, RCW, p. 68v. 56 Fletcher, RCW, p. 68v. 57 Fletcher, RCW, p. 68v. 58 Fletcher, RCW, p. 73v. 59 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 73v–4r. 60 Fletcher, RCW, p. 116r; see also ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 4, lines 225–33; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 24, p. 109; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 24, pp. 69v–70r. 61 Fletcher, RCW, p. 73v; see also ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 16, lines 260–64; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 16, p. 65v; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 16, p. 46v. 62 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 6, lines 31–5. Cf. ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 6, p. 16r. 63 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 6, p. 13r. 64 Fletcher, RCW, p. 25r. 65 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 139. 66 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 2, line 8. 67 Fletcher, RCW, p. 3v. 68 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 2, p. 2v. 69 L. E. Berry and R. O. Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyages (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 113, n. 2.

114

Creating a feigned commonwealth 70 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 2, lines 110–12. 71 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 2, p. 5r. 72 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 2, p. 4v. 73 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 1, lines 62–5; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 1, p. 2r; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 1, p. 2r. 74 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 142–3. See also Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 17, lines 329–36; ‘RCW’, Oxf., pp. 73v–4r; ‘RCW’, Min., p. 51v; RCW, p. 84v. 75 Berry’s extensive textual notes and collation of the extant texts demonstrates where passages have been revised, corrected or omitted, see Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 488–519. 76 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 17, lines 190–2 and ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 17, pp. 70v–71r. See also Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 508–9. 77 Revelation 3, The. Holie Bible conteynyng the olde Testament and the newe (London, 1568). For a discussion of the identification of the Antichrist with the pope, see P. Lake ‘The significance of the Elizabethan identification of the Pope as Antichrist’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31:2 (1980), 161–78. 78 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 17, p. 49v. See also Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 508–9. 79 Fletcher, RCW, p. 82r. 80 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 6, lines 74–7; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 6, p. 20v. 81 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 6, p. 15r. 82 Fletcher, RCW, p. 28r. 83 Fletcher, RCW, p. 79v. 84 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 21, lines 202–9; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 21, p. 71r. 85 Fletcher, RCW, p. 84v; see also ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 21, p. 50r. 86 Fletcher, RCW, p. 84r; see also ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 21, lines 274–82; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 21, pp. 72v– 3r; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 21, pp. 50v–51r. 87 Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 21, p. 51r. The other manuscript versions are very similar, cf. Fletcher, ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 21, lines 283–96; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 21, p. 73r. 88 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 115v–116v, cf. ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 24, lines 205–60; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 24, pp. 108v–189v; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 24, pp. 69v–70v. 89 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 24v–29v, 33v–34r, cf. ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 6 and ch. 7, lines 183–234; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 6, pp. 15v–20r, ch. 7, pp. 25r–26r; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 6, pp. 12v–16v, ch. 7, pp. 19v–20v. 90 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 37r–45r, cf. ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 9; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 9, pp. 28r–38v; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 9, pp. 22–9. 91 Fletcher, RCW, p. 26r, cf. ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 6, lines 80–4; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 6, p. 18; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 6, p. 13v. 92 Fletcher, RCW, p. 34v, cf. ‘RCW’, Cam., ch. 7, lines 231–5; ‘RCW’, Oxf., ch. 7, p. 26; ‘RCW’, Min., ch. 7, p. 20v.

115

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 93 See R. O. Lindsay, ‘Richard Hakluyt and Of the Russe Common Wealth’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 57:3 (1963), 312–27. 94 Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 503 (first state), p. 499 (second state). 95 Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 503–4 (first state), pp. 499–500 (second state). 96 Pipes, ‘Introduction’, p. 19. 97 Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 504 (first state), p. 500 (second state). See also Lindsay, ‘Richard Hakluyt’, 312–27. 98 Hakluyt, PN (1589), epistle dedicatory, sig. *3 and table of contents. 99 Pipes, ‘Introduction’, pp. 18–19. 100 The censorship of Fletcher’s Of the Russe Commonwealth in 1591 will be discussed in more depth in Chapter 6. 101 Hakluyt, PN (1589), epistle dedicatory, sig. *3. For a very brief discussion on the role of Dr James, see R. M. Croskey, ‘Hakluyt’s accounts of Sir Jerome Bowes’ embassy to Ivan IV’, Slavonic and East European Review, 61:4 (1983), 550. 102 ‘The Ambassage of Sir Hierome Bowes to the Emperour of Moscovie, 1583’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 491–500. 103 ‘A briefe discourse of the voyage of Sir Jerome Bowes knight, her Majesties ambassador to the Emperour of Muscovia, in the yeere 1582: and printed this second time, according to the true copie I recieved of a gentleman that went in the same voyage, for the correction of the errours in the former impression’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 491–6. See also Croskey, ‘Hakluyt’s accounts’, 547. 104 Croskey, ‘Hakluyt’s accounts’, 561–2. 105 Croskey, ‘Hakluyt’s accounts’, 564. 106 ‘Fletcher to Lord Burghley’, 7 November 1590, BL Landsowne MS 65, no. 59. Also printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 383–8. 107 The first three books of the history of Elizabeth were published in 1615, see W. Camden, Annales rerum Anglicarum, et Hibernicarum, regnante Elizabetha (London, 1615). The fourth book was not printed until after Camden’s death. It appeared in Latin in 1625 in Leiden and in London in 1627. In 1624 an English translation of the first three books of Camden’s history was published in London and in 1629 the fourth book was translated into English and published in London, see W. H. Herendeen, ‘Camden, William (1551–1623)’, in ODNB. 108 D. W. Palmer, Writing Russia in the Age of Shakespeare (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 137. 109 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 31, and Pipes, ‘Introduction’, p. 19. 110 ‘Fletcher to Lord Burghley’, BL Lansdowne MS 65, no. 59. 111 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 136.

116

Chapter 4

A corrupted commonwealth Fletcher’s representation of Russia

Above all things I would have you understand the manner of government of the place where you are, where the sovereignty is in one, as in a monarchy, in a few, or in the people; or if it be mixed, to which of these forms it most inclines. Next, what ministers of state and subalternate governors as council and magistrates. Thirdly by what laws or customs it is governed. And lastly, what is the exception of justice in peace, and their discipline in war. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex to Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland (1595?)

Giles Fletcher’s various writings on Russia crossed the boundaries between diplomatic and mercantile literature and the more descriptive travel narrative of unfamiliar lands, as well as encompassing political theory and poetic counsel. His writing of Russia reveals some of the shared Elizabethan images of the land on Christendom’s periphery and more fundamentally how Russia was used as a site to reflect on themes of cultural development, tyranny, commonwealth, trade and colonisation. These ideas are considered in more detail in this and the following chapters through the discussion of Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591).1 With the establishment of a regular (and privileged) trade with Russia, there emerged various written accounts incorporating trade and travel information, describing the strangeness of the land, climate, people and culture of this new trading destination. Many of the written accounts of English interactions with Russia were printed in Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations. His collection of travel accounts was designed specifically to highlight and celebrate English seafaring successes and it includes a wide variety of documents providing detailed information on unknown lands and new worlds. The first edition of 1589 is divided into three parts: voyages made to the south, voyages made to the north and north-east, and voyages made to the west, south-west and north-west regions. The second edition, which was published in 1598–1600,

117

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth is divided into three separate volumes, and voyages made to the north and north-east become the subject of the first volume, followed by voyages to the south and south-east in the second volume and the third volume is concerned with voyages to the west, north-west and south-west. Within these three divisions, there is a diverse literature that covers journeys of exploration and observations on unfamiliar cultures, as well as diplomatic letters, trading privileges, Acts of Parliament, promotional treatises and letters patent for new discoveries of various parts of the globe. English accounts of Russia also appeared in Richard Eden’s Decades of the Newe Worlde (1555), George Turberville’s Tragicall Tales (1587), Edward Webbe’s The Rare and most wonderfull things which Edw. Webbe an Englishman borne, hath seene and passed in his troublesome travailes (1590) and Job Hortop’s The Travailes of an Englishman (1591).2 In The Principal Navigations, documents relating to Russia cover topics ranging from ‘The voyage of Richard Chanceller, Pilote major, the first discoverer by sea of the kingdome of Moscovia’ and ‘A briefe treatise of the Emperour of Moscovia his genealogie’, to ‘The distances of divers places in Russia’ and ‘The strange discourse of Richard Johnson concerning the Samoeds’.3 Hakluyt’s work provides examples of where these various modes of writing about the unfamiliar subject collide and combine, suggesting a certain fluidity in the representation of unknown lands and drawing attention to the interaction, exchange and debt owed to inter-linking narratives of travel, trade and diplomacy. In both editions of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, we see the land of Russia repeatedly represented as cold and barbaric, yet full of gold and providing access to the luxuries of the East and Persia. The accounts of Elizabeth’s ambassadors and their secretaries, such as Anthony Jenkinson, Richard Chancellor, Thomas Randolph and George Turberville, depicted Muscovy as savage and unintelligible. In Turberville’s opinion ‘The Country is too colde, the people beastly bee.’ He was ‘loath, among such lowts so long a time to dwell / … In such a savage soile, where laws do beare no sway’.4 According to Jenkinson, ‘one common rule is amongst them, if the woman be not beaten with the whip once a weeke, she will not be good, and therefore they look for it orderly’.5 Randolph described how their buildings were ‘all of wood … The people are rude in maners, and in apparell homely’6 and Chancellor condemned the Russians’ craving for slavery: ‘[T]‌here are some among them, that use willingly to make themselves, their wives, and children bondslaves unto rich men … so little accompt do they make of libertie.’7 Fletcher’s writing of Russia reveals a fascination similar to that of other Western European commentators captivated by this imperfectly known land on the eastern edges of European civility. He mimicked, for instance, Baron Sigismund von Herberstein in observing the extreme cold, the barbarity of the Russians and the cruelty of their government.8 Herberstein, in his Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii (1549), had described how ‘the cold is sometimes

118

A corrupted commonwealth so intense there that … water thrown into the air, or saliva spit from the mouth, freezes before it reaches the ground’.9 Fletcher related how many ‘lose their noses, the tippes of their eares, and the bals of their cheeks’ from travelling in the winter.10 As Herberstein detailed how the Russian emperor ‘uses his authority as much over ecclesiastics as laymen, and holds unlimited control over the lives and property of all his subjects’,11 so Fletcher described the tyranny of the Russian emperors ‘as applying all to the behoofe of the Prince, and that after a most open and barbarous manner’.12 There has been a tendency in recent scholarship on early modern travel narratives to search for similarities between accounts of foreign lands and to see early modern ‘ethnographers’ as sharing a common language of describing unfamiliar places.13 In the Russian case there are certainly significant resemblances between many of the accounts written during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Samuel Baron has examined the similarities between Herberstein’s Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii and Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth.14 Lloyd E. Berry has explored the influence of Fletcher’s account of Russia on John Milton’s Brief History of Moscovia (1682).15 Berry also asserted in the introduction to his reprint of George Turberville’s ‘Letters in Verse’ in Tragicall Tales (1587) that the poems reflected ‘an embryonic version of Fletcher’s argument that bad morals are the direct result of a false religion’.16 Fletcher’s points of fascination, however, diverge in some ways from other English accounts of Russia found in printed and manuscript literature, revealing a distinctive approach towards his subject, as much as any shared language of resemblances. The imagery and structure that Fletcher chose to use in this work expressed the attraction and the simultaneous repulsion that he experienced during his time in Russia; such mixed feelings were articulated in a similar vein by Edmund Spenser towards the Irish in A View of the Present State of Ireland (1633).17 Fletcher’s work also articulated a broader, fundamental argument about the seemingly unbounded potential of Russia, juxtaposed with its current failure to realise this potential as a supposedly Christian, and therefore civil, land. This ideological schema is conveyed in the structure of Fletcher’s text. The work is divided into three major sections that are then subdivided into chapters that elaborate on the wider theme of each section (see Figure 1).18 The first major section discusses the cosmography of the country, subdivided into chapters on the breadth and length of the land, its fertility and climate, commodities and natural resources and finally its chief cities. The second major section covers what Fletcher called the ‘Pollicy’ of Russia, which was subdivided into four subsections entitled ‘1.The ordering of their State’, ‘2.Their judiciall proceeding’, ‘3. Their warlike provisions’ and ‘4. Their Ecclesiastical State’. The various chapters under these subsections discuss topics ranging from the ancestral stock of the emperor, his manner of public government and the Russian parliament, to martial discipline, Russian colonies

119

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth

Figure 1  Table of contents from Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Common Wealth (London, 1591).

and the doctrine of the ‘Russe Church’. The final major section deals with the ‘Oeconomie or privat behaviour’ of the emperor and manners of the Russian people.19 Fletcher’s table of contents demonstrated the internal logic of his fundamental argument. In his text, he proceeded from the natural potential of the land in the first section, through an account of its misgovernment in the

120

A corrupted commonwealth second section, to the corruption of its people and the waste of its resources in the final section. In this sense, Fletcher’s perspective followed an Aristotelian precedent, namely that mismatched government corrupts and decays both a people and a land and that nothing is so deplorable and detrimental as a tyranny.20 As Marshall Poe observes ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth was ready made for Aristotelian political analysis’.21 Fletcher’s visual elucidation of the content of his three-part analytical scheme for discussing Russia first appeared in the Cambridge manuscript version of the text. This illustrative format is not common in texts of the early 1590s, but a similar form of tabulation appears in Robert Dallington’s table (see Figure 2), found in the prefatory material of his A Method for travel. Shewed by taking the view of Fraunce. As it stoode in the yeare of our Lord 1598 (1605). His table displays the ‘double care requisite in a traveller’ when abroad, namely ‘Preservation of himselfe’ and ‘Observations’ of various aspects of the cosmography and government of foreign lands.22 This format was also used to tabulate genealogies or information, such as in Meredith Hanmer’s genealogical tabulation of the ‘Alliance of the Chiefe Conquerors of Ireland’ in his The Chronicle of Ireland (1633) or in tables of contents and synopses of seventeenth-century works, such as Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).23 Fletcher’s account focuses less on the gold, the cold and the strange marvels of Russia, as other English accounts did, and more on the manipulation, corruption and oppression so pervasive in Russian society. He considered in some detail the providential fruitfulness of the land despite its corruption, analysing the structure of its government, the state of its religion, its colonies and borderers and finally the condition and nature of the people of Russia. In this sense, Fletcher’s account went beneath the surface of what other accounts recorded. He presented explanations for the rude and uncivil state of Russia and its people in a way that earlier English commentators had not done. In addition, he offered an analysis of Russia that had the potential to be read in a variety of ways with multiple meanings that could allude to the situation of England’s borders and colonies, Scotland and Ireland, to the new world context and, more fundamentally, to the contemporary Elizabethan context.24 Fletcher analysed every aspect of Russian society in order to show the extent of the degradation of the land under tyrannical government. His argument was clinched by asserting that even the Tartars – Scythians by descent, nomadic savages, with no government whatsoever – were more virtuous than the Russians, and yet they had been completely dissuaded from Christianity (and thus civility) because of their hatred of Russian falsehood and corruption, pointing to Fletcher’s last (and fundamental) word: no government at all is better than the corruption and decay of a tyranny.25

121

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth

Figure 2  ‘A double care requisite in a traveller’, summary table from Robert Dallington, A Method for travel (London, 1605), sig. A3.

God’s providence in Russia In contrast to the popular images used to represent Russia as idolatrous or spiritually barren by Western Europeans in this period, Fletcher’s assertion of God’s providence at work in the country sheds a different light on Russia’s

122

A corrupted commonwealth situation. No other commentator reflects so positively on the work of God in Russia. If and when God was mentioned in other English accounts it was in reference to God’s protection over his faithful (English) servants, ‘Doe you observe good order in your dayly service, and pray unto God, so shall you prosper the better’;26 or in the form of instructions to the English journeying to Russia to stay godly, ‘that no blaspheming of God, or detestable swearing be used in any ship, or communication of ribaldrie, filthy tales, or ungodly talke to be suffred in the company of any ship’.27 ‘God’ or ‘gods’ were also mentioned derisively in discussions of the Russian religion and the Russians themselves: ‘[I]‌f one aske them how many gods there be, they wil say a great many, meaning that every image which they have is a god.’28 George Turberville, secretary to Randolph, during his embassy in 1568–9, was particularly disparaging of the Russians’ attitude towards God and their idolatry, ‘Sith with the hatchet and the hand, their chiefest gods be made. / Their Idolles have their hearts, on God they never call.’29 Fletcher, however, identified several ways in which God’s purposes, God’s blessing and God’s concern for Russia and the Russian people were revealed: ‘First, furres of all sortes. Wherein the providence of God is to be noted, that provideth a naturall remedie for them, to helpe the naturall inconvenience of their countrie by the colde of the Clymate.’30 Fletcher also attributed to God’s providential design the particular geography of Russia: ‘[T]‌he countrie throughout is very well watred with springs, rivers, and ozeracs, or lakes. Wherein the providence of God is to bee noted, for that much of the countrie being so farre inland, as some part lieth a 1000. miles and more every way from any sea, yet it is served with faire rivers.’31 In the primitive building of their houses with wood (not stone), even there God had provided Russia with enough trees to do this cheaply, ‘wherof the providence of God hath given them such store, as that you may build a faire house for twentie or thirtie rubbels’.32 The providential blessings bestowed on Russia were depicted by Fletcher in his extensive description of the land: firstly in his thorough detailing of the soil, produce and resources of Russia and secondly in the positive tone and familiar language he used in his descriptions of the Russian countryside. For instance, his portrayal of Russia in the summertime bore much resemblance to the season in England: [T]‌he woods (for the most part which are all of fir and birch) so fresh and so sweet, the pastures and medowes so greene and well growen, (and that upon the sudden) such varietie of flowres, such noyse of birdes (specially of Nightingales, that seeme to be more lowde and of a more variable note then in other countries) that a man shall not lightly travell in a more pleasant countrie.33

Such a positive depiction, deliberately noting the existence of flora and fauna common to the English environment, served the purpose of familiarising the

123

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth unfamiliar, suggesting that Russia was in fact a land which could be a glorious reflection of God’s bounty and magnificence, as England was, and an abundant, fertile country for its ruler and people, or indeed any prospective coloniser. Not only was the land pleasant (in summertime, at least), but it also had endless economic potential. Fletcher’s account of the produce and commodities of Russia was both promising and overwhelming; a landscape of bountiful fruits and fertile soil. Fletcher resisted repeating the fabulous stock images found in other accounts of Russia, such as Herberstein’s narrative of a marvellous plant that ‘groweth a frute or a plante very lyke a lambe … for it hathe the headde, eyes, eares, and all other partes like unto a lambe … with also a very thynne skynne wherewith dyvers of thinhabitauntes of those regions are accustomed to line theyr cappes and hattes’.34 Instead, he listed all the real fruit of Russia, ‘For kindes of fruites, they have Appels, Peares, plummes, cheries, redde and blacke … a deene like a muske millian, but more sweete and pleasant, cucumbers and gourds … rasps, strawberies, and hurtilberies, with many other bearies in great quantitie in every wood and hedge.’35 His account stood in glaring contrast to Johann Fabri’s account, translated into English in Eden’s collection of information on Moscovia and the north-east in his Decades (1555), in which Fabri observed that there were not ‘any other trees that bere any apples or frutes of very plesant or swete savour or taste … for as much as all tender frutes & trees are burnte of the coulde blastes of the North wynde’.36 According to Fletcher, the Russians produced all kinds of grain, wheat, rye, barley and oats, pointing to a similarity between what the Russian land provided and the familiar produce common to English soil.37 The providential blessings of commodities specific to the country were furs of many kinds, wax in great quantities, honey and tallow, much of which was exported, leather, train oil, caviar, hemp, salt, tar, fish and ribazuba, or ‘fish tooth’, which was the tusk of the walrus, thought to be a useful antidote to poison when powdered, much like the unicorn’s horn.38 Fletcher’s aim in detailing the commodities of Russia was to point to the familiarity and abundance of their produce, and more fundamentally the potential gains to the country that this produce could bring. For each commodity that Fletcher described, he also commented on the amount that was exported annually, emphasising the surplus produced and the profit made by exporting such surplus, with enough left over for use in the country itself. This was an uncomfortably pertinent observation given the dire state of England’s export markets, as well as the disastrous harvests only recently suffered in England in 1587–8.39 Indeed only the ‘discovery’ of Russia had provided relief in the form of new and much-needed markets for England’s floundering cloth economy, as well as providing England with essential naval supplies and helping to combat mercantile decrease.40

124

A corrupted commonwealth Russia, in comparison to England, had not been wanting in surplus produce, nor was it lacking in export markets, ‘the native commodities of the countrie (wherewith they serve both their owne turnes, and sende much abroad to the great enriching of the Emperour, and his people) are many and substantiall’.41 However, as Fletcher’s repetitive comments make clear the surplus generated by Russia had, in the past, far exceeded what was now being produced and exported: [O]‌f wax, whereof hath bene shipped into forraine countries (as I have heard it reported by those that best know it) the summe of 50000. pood yearlie, every pood conteyening 40. pound, but now about 10000. pood a yeare … Of tallow there hath bene shipped out of the realme a fewe yeares since about 100000. pood yearely, now not past 30000. or thereabouts.42

The dramatic fall in Russia’s exports, despite the fertility of the land, exposed the economic consequences of a lamentably degraded and degenerate people suffering under a tyrant, and a government that was not exploiting the providential bounties they had been given, despite their Christian profession. Fletcher explained the process: ‘[A]‌nd hereof it commeth that the commodities of Russia (as was said before) as wax, tallow, hydes, flaxe, hempe, &c. grow and goe abroad in farre lesse plenty then they were woont to doo: because the people being oppressed and spoiled of their gettings, are discouraged from their laboures.’43 Despite his distinctively positive outlook on the fertility of Russia, Fletcher was realistic in his depiction of their winter, and in this he was closer to other accounts written by the English at this time. Richard Chancellor observed that ‘the north parts of the Countrey are reported to be so cold, that the very ice or water which distilleth out of the moist wood which they lay upon the fire is presently congealed and frozen … that in one and the selfe same firebrand, a man shall see both fire and ice’.44 He went on to relate how the mariners ‘in their going up onely from their cabins to the hatches, had their breath oftentimes so suddenly taken away that they eftsoones fell downe as men very neere dead, so great is the sharpenesse of that colde climate’.45 In a similar vein, Fletcher observed of the Russian climate that ‘it would breede a frost in a man to looke abroad at that time, and see the winter face of that countrie’. Reproducing almost word for word Herberstein’s sentiments, Fletcher declared that ‘the sharpnesse of the ayre you may judge of by this: for that water dropped downe or cast up into the ayre, congealeth into Ise before it come to the ground’.46 Fletcher did, however, offset the extremities of the cold in winter with the wonders of the Russian summer and marvelled at the strange alteration in the land over the changing seasons: ‘The whole countrie differeth very much from it selfe, by reason of the yeare: so that a man would mervaile to see the great

125

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth alteration and difference betwixte the winter, and the sommer Russia.’ Indeed Fletcher claimed that the huge blanket of snow covering the Russian landscape during the winter actually served to increase its summer fruitfulness: And this fresh and speedy grouth of the spring there, seemeth to proceede from the benefite of the snow: which all the winter time being spred over the whole countrie as a white robe … in the spring time … doth so throughly drench and soake the ground … that it draweth the herbes and plants forth in great plenty and varietie in a short time.47

Again God’s providence had allowed for the extreme pinchings of winter to serve a greater purpose that benefited the Russian land and potentially the Russian people. Fletcher also noted how God’s judgement was apparent in the fate of the infamous emperor, Ivan the Terrible, who, in a fit of rage, killed his first-born son and heir with a blow to the head, ‘wherein may be marked the justice of God, that punished his delight in shedding bloud with this murder of his sonne by his owne hand’, for he ‘ended his dayes and tyrannie together, with the murdering of himself by extreame griefe, for this his unhappie and unnaturall fact’.48 Ivan’s tragic end – self-murder through grief – was the result of his own tyranny against his very flesh and blood. Through Fletcher’s Protestant lens this was God’s punishment and proof that he was watching over Russia, despite the tyranny of its rulers, the heresy of its religion and the degradation of its people. His depiction of the fate of Ivan also chimed with the renaissance appetite for tragedy, represented in the Elizabethan Senecan dramatic tradition, preoccupied with the moral character of tyrants, their mental and emotional anguish, the horrors inflicted on members of the same family and the unquenchable desire for revenge, apparent in plays such as Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. For Fletcher, God’s providence was, however, most fundamentally revealed in the fate of the potentially godly few in Russia, revealing a distinct Calvinist strain in his worldview. He asserted that some Russians, against all the odds of a corrupt government and ignorant clergy, no true preaching or learning and a fundamentally heretical religion, which we will return to below, were predestined for everlasting life and would be present in the final heavenly roll-call. For, according to Fletcher, ‘having the word of God in some sort (though without the ordinarie meanes to attaine to a true sense and understanding of it) God hath also his number among them’.49 Corruptions of the Russe commonwealth For Fletcher’s purposes, Russia was ‘a very fruitfull and pleasant countrie, yeelding pasture, and corne, with woods and waters in very great plentie’ and

126

A corrupted commonwealth it had ‘a very fruitful and pleasant soile’.50 Such a description paralleled ideas circulating in England at the time about the fertile and unexploited site of Ireland so near at hand, and the rich and virgin lands open to exploitation further afield in the new world of the Americas.51 The fundamental problem with Russia (and similarly with Ireland) was that a providentially blessed land was not being cultivated, nor reaching its full economic, social or cultural potential because the commonwealth and its people were decaying under tyrannical government. Fletcher was explicit about the nature of Russian rule: ‘The manner of their government is much after the Turkish fashion: which they seeme to imitate as neare as the countrie, and reach of their capacities in pollitique affayres will give them leave to doo.’52 Just as in contemporary representations of the government of the Turk, in Fletcher’s eyes the Russian government was ‘plaine tyrannical’.53 Within his text, Fletcher depicted two distinct types of tyranny. The first was the aggressive tyranny of ‘Ivan the Terrible’ – an epithet that in early modern Russia conveyed an awe-inspiring sense of formidable power.54 Ivan’s tyranny, as described by Fletcher and others, was that of the active, aggressive tyrant: a man prone to outbursts of rage, violence and despotic power and allowing no justice or law but his own word.55 Fletcher provided a chilling example of the extent of Ivan’s absolute power over his people: To shewe his Soveraintie over the lives of his subjects, the late Emperour Ivan Vasilowich in his walkes or progresses, if hee had misliked the face or person of any man whom hee met by the way, or that looked upon him, would command his head to be strook off. Which was presently done, and the head cast before him.56

Jerome Horsey’s account of his time in Russia provided similar examples, described in the most colourful language, of how Ivan had consolidated his power over his nobility and commons through cruelty and violence, ‘his most cruell slautteringe, murtheringe, and incessant massacring, ­robbinge, and puttinge to death of his nobillitie’.57 Ivan’s treatment of his ­colonies and neighbours was no different: ‘[He] sett a thowsand gunors in the night to robb and take the spoill of them [Livonians]; stripped them naked, most barbarously ravished and deflowred both yonge and old weomen without respects, carienge divers of the yongest and fairest maieds to serve their wicked lusts awaye with them.’58 In stark contrast to the tyranny of Ivan, the reign of his son and heir, Feodor I, was presented by Fletcher as one of resignation and passivity, the result of a certain incapacity to rule as he was ‘simple and slowe witted, but verie gentle, and of an easie nature, quiet, mercifull, of no martial disposition, nor greatly apt for matter of policie’.59 According to Fletcher, Feodor, who succeeded Ivan in 1584, allowed Russia to be ruled in his name by a power-hungry and ambitious courtier, Boris Godunov, who was also Feodor’s brother-in-law.

127

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth ‘The Emperour that now is … referreth al such matters perteyning to the State, wholly to the ordering of his wives brother, the Lord Boris Federowish Godonoe.’60 Feodor’s tyranny, as presented by Fletcher, was one of weakness and submission: a puppet-rule dominated by evil counsel. Fletcher identified two key issues in the mismanagement of the decaying Russian commonwealth: firstly its tyranny – demonstrated by lack of good counsel in government, the absence of a virtuous nobility, no written law or justice and economic oppression – and secondly the imposition of corrupt religion. These were the cardinal evils which led to the degradation of the Russian people and their failure to enjoy God’s blessings. In order to highlight the corrupt nature of Russian government, Fletcher set aside a whole chapter, entitled ‘Their Parliamentes and manner of holding them’, to demonstrate the mockery made of representative participation in the government in Russia. The existence of a parliament should have implied some degree of civility, for it was only uncivil peoples who were ruled over by an absolute tyrant with no counsel or representative assembly. Edmund Tremayne’s damning indictment of Irish society and government, for instance, detailed how ‘[H]‌e that hath showed himself most mischievous in murdering, spoiling and burning doth soonest attain to the government … not only as an absolute king but as a tyrant or a lord over bondmen … the Irish rule is such a government as the mightiest do what they list against the inferiors.’61 The Russian parliament, however, existed, like everything else in the emperor’s realm, purely to reinforce the tyrannical power that the emperor wielded over his people, under the thin guise of civil ‘commonwealth’. Of equal importance to Fletcher was an analysis of the role of counsel in the Russian commonwealth. His scathing account of the practice of counsel in government revealed not only the corrupt state of affairs in the façade of the Russian ‘commonwealth’, but also demonstrated the importance of a king-in-counsel form of government in Fletcher’s worldview: ‘The emperours of Russia give the name of counsellour to divers of their chiefe Nobilitie, rather for honors sake, then for any use they make of them about their matters of state … for they are seldome or never called to any publique consultation.’62 Those of the emperor’s chief counsellors who were called to consult on such matters ‘are accounted to bee of greater birth then wisedome taken in (as may seem) for that ende, rather to furnish the place with their honours and presence, then with their advise or counsell’.63 Even among the emperor’s ‘speciall and privie Counsell … but fewe of them are called to any consultation, for that all matters are advised and determined upon by Borris Federowich Godonoe, brother to the Empresse’.64 Boris Godunov, chief adviser to Feodor I, later took the Russian throne, following the death of Feodor in 1598. As the ‘courtier who made it’, Fletcher’s representation of Boris Godunov fitted neatly into the

128

A corrupted commonwealth Machiavellian ‘evil counsellor’ model so prevalent in renaissance humanist counsel literature.65 A recurring theme in Fletcher’s treatise was the servile condition of the nobility, for the Russian emperor did ‘endeavour by al meanes to cut of, or keepe downe all of the best and auncientest Nobilitie’.66 Fletcher accused the tsar of systematically contriving to reduce the status of the nobility ‘to bring it downe to a lesser proportion: till in the end he made them not onely his vassals, but his kolophey, that is his very villains or bondslaves’.67 The emperor used various means to keep the nobility servile and powerless. One was to forcibly confine the heirs of noble families in monasteries and convents so that their line could not be continued: ‘[T]‌hey have also many Nunneries, whereof some may admitte none but Noblemens widowes, and daughters, when the Emperour meaneth to keepe them unmarried, from continuing the blood or stocke, which he would have extinguished.’68 A more extreme example of Ivan’s tyranny over the nobility was his establishment of the ‘Oprichnina’, a unique political experiment in which Muscovy was divided into two parts along political lines. The emperor’s chosen and protected part of the realm was named the Oprichnina, anyone in his favour was kept inside the Oprichnina under Ivan’s arbitrary, absolute government, with the seat of power at Aleksandrova Sloboda, about 120km north-east of Moscow.69 The rest of Russia’s people and territory were left outside the remit of the emperor’s protection, and the people left to their own devices, nominally ruled by the boyar council. All of the emperor’s opposition were either purged from the inside, as the Oprichnina took over the wealthy financial areas of the state in the north-east of Russia, or left to die in the lawless lands outside the protection of the Oprichnina. In either case, ‘there was no amendes to bee sought for by way of publike justice … And this libertie of the one part to spoyle and kill the other without anie helpe of Magistrate, or lawe’, was a perfect strategy for eradicating Ivan’s enemies.70 Fletcher asserted that within one week 300 gentlemen and nobility had been killed in Moscow: ‘This tyrannicall practise of making a general Schisme, and publike division among the subjects of his whole Realme, proceeded (as should seeme) from an extreame doubt, and desperate feare, which hee had conceived of most of his Nobilitie, and Gentlemen of his Realme.’71 The influence of Aristotelian thought on Fletcher’s conception of government and politics is particularly apparent in his discussion of the Oprichnina. He represented Russian rule as a tyranny, based on the Aristotelian argument that in a good government a king’s friends or counsel provided security for the king, whereas in a tyranny the king’s friends were those with most opportunity and power to effect the overthrow of the king and therefore a threat to his security.72 Fletcher made a point of listing the names of the oldest noble families of Russia, poignantly highlighting the decreased estate of these ancient

129

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth families under a tyranny: ‘These are the names of the chiefe families called Vdelney Knazey: that in effect have lost all now, save the very name it selfe, and favour of the people, which is like one day to restore them againe, if any be left.’73 Although Fletcher lamented the fall of the chief noble families as a result of the tyranny of the emperor, he also hoped for their restoration. In this, he emphasised the important role of the common people by implying that it would be the commoners’ favour that would restore a strong and virtuous nobility to Russia once more. In his discussion of the dual nature of tyranny – both weak and strong – Fletcher described not only the contemporary status quo of Russia’s tyrannical government, but also pointed to the origins of Russia’s tyranny. Fletcher identified how Ivan had established the absolute tyranny of Russian emperors over their commons and nobility: ‘[T]‌he late Emperour Ivan Vasilowich father to this prince, being a man of high spirit, and subtill in his kind, meaning to reduce his government into a more strickt forme beganne by degrees to clip of their greatnes.’74 Fletcher also explained the centralising of power in Russia and the reducing of its nobility as a result of Ivan’s desire for total control over all his subjects, ‘so that now they holde their authorities, landes, lives and all at the Emperours pleasure, as the rest doe’.75 By elucidating on the origins of Russian tyranny, Fletcher reflected English fears garnered from historical and contemporary continental examples that a civil commonwealth could all too easily descend into a tyranny. The Netherlands, for instance, had experienced at first hand the transition from self-governing independence based on traditional laws and liberties to the imposition of Spanish tyranny. The French had similarly suffered decades of tyrannical rule, dominated by the Guise faction and the Catholic League.76 Walsingham advised a young King James VI of Scotland that when rulers ‘transgress the bounds and limits of the law … they leave to be kings and become tyrants’.77 For the English, a mere glance back at the last century of their dynastic history provided a litany of examples of outright tyranny, good kingship’s decline into tyrannical rule and weak tyranny dominated by evil counsel, from Richard III through to Mary Tudor. Fletcher’s description of Ivan as the architect of Russian tyrannical government fitted into a pervasive conception of tyranny, influenced by renaissance fascinations with Senecan tragedy and Ciceronian resistance, that warned of the almost inevitable slide from good kingship into tyranny, both strong and weak, and appropriate responses to such a descent into malign government. Late sixteenth-century humanists often lamented that the characteristics of good kingship were seldom displayed by monarchs of the time, as well as those of times gone by – that a good king was a rare sight, and even those kings who appeared initially to fit the mould of good kingship could easily succumb to the corrupting effects of power.78

130

A corrupted commonwealth Fletcher’s portrayal of the origins of Russian tyranny also tapped into an earlier fear in the Leicester and Sidney circles and more broadly, especially during the queen’s marriage negotiations with the Duke of Anjou in the late 1570s and early 1580s, that England was as susceptible as France, Scotland and the Netherlands to monarchies that became tyrannies, either as a result of a monarch’s ominous attraction to absolute power or of a weakness for evil counsellors who cared nothing for the commonwealth and everything for their own political advancement.79 Perhaps one of the more telling divergences between Fletcher’s text and other accounts of Russia was his discussion of the emperor’s fiscal policies. Fletcher detailed at length the tsar’s peculiar revenue-raising practices, in a fashion not matched by any other commentator on Russia. While other foreign ambassadors were marvelling at the amount of gold, silver and jewels in the Russian court, Fletcher analysed the repressive taxations of the Russian ruler, draining the wealth of his land dry. The chapter entitled ‘The Emperours Customes and other Revenues, and what they amount unto, with the Sophismes practised for the encrease of them’ is solely concerned with describing and calculating the income of the emperor and his means of acquiring wealth. Fletcher even set out a table to show ‘The summe that groweth to the Emperoures treasurie in money onely, for everie yeere’.80 The text is suffused with allusions to the emperor’s despotic control over the commerce, trade, resources and commodities of Russia, as well as Fletcher’s ten ‘Sophismata or counterfeit pollicies’ used by Ivan to fleece his people.81 These ‘Sophismata’ included allowing the nobility to oppress the commons constantly with extortions, exactions and bribery and then making a public example of the offending nobility, which saw all of their acquisitions run straight into the emperor’s treasury. The emperor was also known ‘to make an open shew of want, when anie great taxe or imposition is towards’, as well as encouraging the people to give generously to the monasteries, which he used as his own storehouse for treasures.82 Such tactics as forcing his courtiers to feign themselves robbed and then exacting the city for their compensation, as well as monopolising certain commodities and raising prices for his own benefit, were also employed by the tsar.83 The strangest ‘cavillation’ used by Ivan was to demand of certain regions a commodity that was impossible to supply or produce there, such as sending ‘into Permia for certaine loads of Cedar Wood, whereof hee knew that none grew’ or demanding ‘the citie of Mosko to provide for him a Colpack, or measure full of live fleas for a medicine’ which proved impossible ‘for if they could get them, yet they could not measure them for leaping out’.84 In the event of the said region not providing the requested goods, the tsar exacted money from them for recompense. Fletcher went to great lengths to describe the motives behind these corrupt practices of getting money into the emperor’s treasury:

131

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Besides other their extraordinary impositions, and exactions … not for any apparent necessity or use of the Prince, or common wealth, but of will and custome … put in practise by the Emperours of Russia, all tending to this end to robbe their people, and to inrich their treasurie.85

For Fletcher the fiscal policies of the tsars were an acute manifestation of the tyrannical rule that the nobility and commons suffered under. As a result, the common people were ‘very much discouraged by many heavy and intollerable exactions that of late time hath bin imposed upon them … and therefore regard not to lay up any thing, or to have it before hand, for that it causeth them many times to be fleesed and spoiled not only to their goods, but also of their lives’.86 Other accounts of Russia, in contrast, placed greater emphasis on the gold and riches of the land, revealing how important a factor this was in their reflections upon their new discovery. Anthony Jenkinson, for instance, provided an extensive description of the gold in the Russian court: I cam into the Emperors presence, and kissed his hand, who sate aloft in a goodly chaire of estate, having on his heade a crowne most richly decked, and a staffe of golde, and garnished with precious stones. Then sate his nobilitie round about him richly apparelled with golde and stone … and my table served all in gold and silver, and so likewise on other tables, there were set bowles of gold, set with stone, worth by my estimation 400 pounds sterling one cup, besides the plate which served the tables.87

Jerome Horsey, in his description of the coronation of Feodor I, similarly described how ‘The three out roomes being very great and large were beset with plate of golde and silver round, from the ground up to the vauts one upon the other; among which plate were many barrels of silver and golde.’88 Fletcher’s discussion of gold was minimal in comparison to other accounts of newly discovered lands, which heralded the luxuries, precious metals and exotic goods to be found in terra incognita. He referred to precious metals only in passing, as gifts or part of the apparel of members of the Russian court.89 Perhaps Fletcher deliberately did not dwell on gold because of its association with Spanish and Portuguese greed in the new world to the west. Hakluyt, with reference to Frobisher’s voyages to find a north-western passage, bemoaned the fact that these explorations had of late turned into a hunt for riches rather than godly missions to discover lands where Christian civility could be planted and cultivated: I trust that now being taught by their manifold losses, our men will take a more godly course, and use some part of their goodes to his glory: if not, he will turne even ther covetousness to serve him, as he hath done the pride and avarice of the Spaniards and Portingales, who pretending in glorious words that they made ther

132

A corrupted commonwealth discoveries chiefly to convert infidelles to our most holy faith (as they say) in deed and truth sought not them, but their goods and riches.90

Fletcher’s lack of interest in the characteristic ‘new world’ obsession with gold reflects significantly different concerns from those of other commentators on Russia and those promoting exploration and trade further afield in East Asia, Africa and the Americas. Further, it underlines a certain essentialisation in the historiography of early modern travel narratives in the focus on the importance of gold in accounts of unknown lands.91 The subject of Russian revenue-raising practices, used to sustain a tyrannical regime, was evidently more important to Fletcher in revealing the character of the tsar and the condition of the Russian people and land. Fletcher was concerned to write of Russia in order to illuminate different forms of government, how such governments were sustained and the ensuing questions raised about a people’s identity and status within a fluid, but still prescriptive scale of civility and barbarity. It also raises the question of why Fletcher was so concerned at this point in time to analyse tyranny as a model of bad government, and the potential for good government in a commonwealth. Fletcher’s eschewal of Russia as a source of gold, riches and luxuries suggests he was seeking not the audience of potential investors but rather the politically aware, humanist reader; a reader who would be interested in an analysis of a ‘commonwealth’ where a potentially civilised, Christian people remained servile, in an ‘under proportion’ and oppressed without any skill, art or learning and without any desire to develop or better themselves because of the tyranny that they suffered under. From Fletcher’s point of view, one of the most appalling consequences of tyrannical government was corrupt or non-existent justice. In the Russian provinces, the governors described by Fletcher were oppressive and tyrannous (like the emperor), ‘they racke and spoile them [the common people] without all regard of justice, or conscience’.92 The chief officers over these provincial governors made ‘an advantage of their injustice and oppression over the poore people’ by seizing the purloined goods of the provincial governors ‘when they call them to account’. The emperor then, himself, appropriated the chief officers’ goods, resulting in the provincial governors’ practice to ‘furnish themselves with all the spoile they can for the time of their government, that they may have for both turnes, aswel for the Emperour, and Lord of the Chetfird, as to reserve some good part for themselves’.93 The injustices apparent in the structuring of Russian society and the exercise of power were compounded by the absence of a written law to protect the people from such arbitrary and extortionate government. The Russian commons, in particular, found themselves in a situation where ‘They have no written law … Their onely lawe is their Speaking Law, that is, the pleasure of the Prince, and of his Magistrates and officers.’ Thus the poor people were ‘forced

133

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth to have them for their law, and direction of justice, against whose injustice, and extreame oppression, they had neede to be armed with many good, and strong lawes’.94 The fundamental injustice of not having any written law to protect the individual, especially from the tyranny of local governors, resonated with contemporary descriptions of the state of Ireland: And as this Irish tyranny is general so is it grievous and insupportable where the lords be greatest for with more safety may a man dwell in England in the displeasure of the prince then there in the displeasure of a great lord of a country. Here a man is not touched in life land nor goods be the indignation never so great but by the law.95

The law of the land, be it written or acknowledged as common law, assented to by ancient customs or the people themselves, held intrinsic value for the protection of subjects and the good ordering of the commonwealth. Corrupt government, characterised by the arbitrary, spoken law of a tyrant, such as the emperor of Russia, or the provincial lords in Ireland, led only to chaos, the decay of the land and the decrease of the people. Fletcher’s chapter on ‘The manner of governing their Provinces or Shires’ clearly expressed how the corrupt nature of tyrannical rule played out in the local institutions of government.96 In his discussion of the practice of provincial government, Fletcher presented three important, inter-related arguments. Firstly, he emphasised the potential of the organisation of provincial government in Russia if it were focused towards civil ends: [T]‌his manner of government of their Provinces and townes, if it were aswell set for the giving of justice indiferently to al sorts, as it is to prevent innovations, by keeping of the Nobilitie within order, and the commons in subjection, it might seeme in that kinde to bee no bad, nor unpollitique way, for conteyning of so large a Commonwealth.97

Fletcher’s second concern was to raise the question of why a people, particularly the nobility, living in such slavery continued to suffer the tyranny of their emperor: ‘[A]‌man would marvell how the Nobilitie and people should suffer themselves to bee brought under it, while they had any means to avoid and repulse it.’98 Fletcher explained that the emperor placed men of no noble standing as lords of tetrarchies over the land so they would remain loyal. These were ‘but men of a titular dignitie’ and were removed every year so they had ‘not so much for any care to doo [the commons] right and justice, as to keepe them under a miserable subjection, and to fliece from them’.99 Thus the poor ‘besides their want of armour and practise of warre (which they are kept from of purpose) … are robbed continually both of their harts and mony’ sometimes by a pretence of some service to the common good, sometimes without any justification whatsoever.100 Bringing these two points to some conclusion,

134

A corrupted commonwealth Fletcher surmised that ‘it appeareth how harde a matter it were to alter the state of the Russe government’ because the nobility displayed no true virtue, authority or strength and the commons remained in a servile condition.101 As a result, ‘there is no meanes either for Nobilitie, or people to attempt any innovation’, against the tyranny of the emperor’s government.102 Consequently, further degradation of the commons and the commonwealth ensued: ‘[T]‌he great oppression over the poore Commons, maketh them to have no courage in following their trades: for that the more they have, the more daunger they are in, not onely of their goods, but of their lives also.’103 The unfortunate consequence of not following their trades and being oppressed by the nobility was to ‘maketh the people (though otherwise hardened to beare any toile) to give themselves to idlenes and drinking: as passing for no more, then from hand to mouth’.104 As for the nobility, ‘having no farther rewarde nor preferment, whereunto they may bend their endevours, and imploy themselves to advaunce their estate’, they had no incentive ‘to advaunce any virtue, or to breed any rare excellent qualitie’, but rather languished in their servile subjection, in order to avoid ‘procuring more danger to themselves, the more they excell in any noble or principall qualitie’.105 The Russian commons and nobility were locked into a vicious cycle of subservience and decay, making any alteration to their state seem impossible. In fact, Fletcher argued that ‘[T]his desperate state of things at home, maketh the people for the most part to wishe for some forreine invasion, which they suppose to bee the onely meanes, to rid them of the heavy yoke of this tyrannous government.’106 Through his discussion of provincial government, Fletcher posed the fundamental question of ‘how the Emperours themselves can be content to practise the same, with so open injustice and oppression of their subjects, being themselves of a Christian profession’.107 This question had implications for contemporary interpretations of Russia’s identity as an ostensibly Christian land and where to place Russia in a renaissance humanist view of the cosmos, in response to the variety of newly discovered worlds of the sixteenth century. Russia could not be represented as a civil, Christian state, despite its few, if dubious, indicators of religious and political civil status. Its tyrannical form of government, the servility of the nobles and the commons, the widespread and open injustice of the tsar’s regime and the unexploited fruitfulness of the land precluded it from such civil Christian status. Earlier European commentators on Russia, such as the Livonian Christian Bomhover, King Sigismund of Poland and an Italian diplomat of Maximilian I, Francesco da Collo, had represented the land as decidedly un-Christian, cruel and barbaric, Asian as opposed to European, and some even suggested that the Russians were in league with the Turks and Tartars to destroy Christendom.108 Fletcher, however, recognised the unique ambiguity of Russia in the European civil and religious imaginary, demonstrated by its own hydrography, with the Tanais [now

135

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Don] river, ‘the auncient bounder betwixt Europe and Asia’ running straight through the land.109 Russia’s corrupt Christianity Fletcher presented a convincing case for Russia’s corrupt and heretical religion through his discussion of their sacraments, doctrines and priesthood. He drew explicit parallels between the Russian religion and the ‘popish church’ in his discussion of their ceremonies, for instance, the blessing of water: ‘they have holie water in like use, and estimation, as the Popish Church hath. But herein they exceede them’.110 Fletcher explained in an irreverent tone that they even made their horses drink the blessed water, ‘when the men have done, they bring their horse to the river, to drinke of the sanctified water: and so make them as holie as a horse’.111 Along with the majority of other commentators on Russia, Fletcher also made much of the Russians’ idolatry, ‘they fall downe and knock their heads to their idoles, which must be an hundred and seventie times, just through the whole night’.112 The tsar’s practice of worshipping images was given special attention: ‘This he placeth among the rest of his image gods, wherewithall his chamber is decked, as thicke almost as the wall can beare, with lamps and waxe candles burning before them … bowing himself prostrate unto them with knocking of his head to the verie ground. Thus he continueth the space of a quarter of an houre.’113 The Russian ritual of baptism was similarly depicted as bearing some likeness to the Roman Catholic tradition, for ‘when the childe is baptiszed, the Priest laieth oile and salt tempred together upon the forehead, and both sides of his face, and then uppon his mouth, drawing it along with his finger over the childes lippes (as did the Popish priestes)’.114 More alarmingly, ‘about the office of Christ, they holde many fowle errours, and the same almost as doth the Popish church: namely that he is the sole mediatour of redemption, but not of intercession’, and thus intercessors between sinners and God were necessary ‘wherein they give speciall preferment to … the blessed Virgin whom they call Precheste, or undefiled, and S. Nicolas, whom they call Scora pomosnick, or the Speedy helper’.115 They also ‘agree with the Papists, that it is not by faith only’, but by works that a sinner is saved and that a man’s salvation is uncertain.116 These foul errors in doctrine and practice were the result of a lack of learning in the Russian Orthodox Church and consequently, as Fletcher highlighted in his epistle dedicatory to Queen Elizabeth, the Russians had no true knowledge of God. The clergy were described by Fletcher (and others) as ignorant, godless and ineffectual: ‘[A]‌s for preaching the worde of God, or any teaching or exhorting such as are under them, they neyther use it, nor have any skill of it: the whole Cleargie being utterly unlearned bothe

136

A corrupted commonwealth for other knowledge, and in the word of God.’117 Randolph had similarly described the Russian clergy as ‘much given to drunkenness; unlearned, write they can; preach they never do, ceremonious in their church, and long in their prayers’.118 Such condemnation of the Russian priests not only drew comparison with the Catholic Church, but also paralleled the sorts of criticisms directed against Anglican non-preaching ministers from puritan circles. These critics of the supposedly ‘reformed’ English church claimed that it still harboured ‘blinde watchmen, and ignoraunt dumbe Dogges, and idle greedie Curres and unlearned sheepheardes that serve for nothing, but to fill their owne purses, or their paunches, by the testimonie of God his spirite’.119 In a similar vein, Fletcher accused the Russian clergy of perpetuating ignorance in their flock in order to maintain their position: ‘[A]ll this mischief commeth from the clergie, who being ignorant and godlesse themselves, are very warie to keepe the people likewise in their ignorance and blindnesse, for their living and bellies sake.’120 In Russia, the ignorance of the clergy served to keep the people in a servile condition, to avoid innovation and thus to avoid becoming any threat to the authority of the emperor. Ivan, apparently, structured the religion of his land to achieve the best foundation for his tyrannical rule, ‘which the Emperours (whom it specially behoveth) list not to have chaunged by any innovation, but to retaine that religion that best agreeth with it’.121 On the one hand, Fletcher attributed the ignorance and godlessness of the clergy to the emperor’s deliberate policy of keeping everyone in the commonwealth submissive and enslaved. On the other hand, however, Fletcher found the clergy guilty of complicity in the emperor’s conspiracy to keep his people in a servile condition: [A]‌s themselves are voyde of all manner of learning so are they warie to keepe out all meanes that might bring any in … To that purpose they have perswaded the Emperours, that it would breed innovation, and so danger to their state, to have anie noveltie or learning come within the Realme. Wherein they say but trueth, for that a man of spirit and understanding, helped by learning and liberal education, can hardly endure a tyrannicall government.122

Ultimately, Fletcher asserted, the corrupt and unlearned church existed to serve and support the emperor’s tyrannical government, through keeping the commons ignorant and prohibiting the movement of ideas and ‘innovations’ that could potentially challenge the present state of Russian tyranny and cause its servile population to rebel. It also served the clergy to keep the commons in an inferior condition, thus developing the self-serving, reciprocal relationship between tyrannical government and corrupt religion. ‘Many other vaine and superstitious ceremonies they have, which were long and tedious to report’, continued Fletcher, ‘by these it may

137

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth appeare, how farre they are fallen from the true knowledge and practise of Christian religion: having exchanged the worde of God, for their vaine traditions, and brought al to external, and ridiculous ceremonies, without any regard of spirite and trueth, which God requireth in his true worship.’123 Fletcher’s words echoed the criticism of the apostle Paul against mankind in general and the Romans in particular, who had ‘chaunged His trueth for a lye, and worshipped and served the creature, more then the creator’.124 Fletcher’s censorious tone implied that by English reformation standards the Russians could not claim to be anything more than heretics or heathens, for they were not ‘the true worshippers, [who] shall worshippe the father in spirite, and in the trueth’.125 Through his critique of the Russian church, Fletcher expressed the core reformation concerns over a corrupt and degraded religion, saturated with superstition, idolatry and the absence of a learned ministry.126 On a more sinister note, Fletcher highlighted the potential danger and degradation to the Russian people brought about by the similarity of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Roman Catholic Church. In the language of anti-popery so prevalent in late sixteenth-century English political culture, the Antichrist was epitomised by the pope and found at work in the Catholic Church. Accordingly the resemblance of Russian Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism could mean only one thing: Antichrist was at work in the land of Russia too, which was correspondingly borne out in the political and social tyranny, under which the Russian people suffered. The consequences of tyrannical government in the Russian commonwealth In his De republica Anglorum, first published in 1583, Sir Thomas Smith asserted that ‘according to the nature of the people, so the commonwealth is to it fit and proper’.127 Edmund Spenser echoed that sentiment in more prescriptive tones in his A View of the State of Ireland: ‘For lawes ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people, to whom they are meant, and not to be imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right, for then (as I said) in stead of good they may worke ill, and pervert justice to extreame injustice.’128 Fletcher’s work appears to engage with this idea that the ‘common wealth or policie must be according to the nature of the people’.129 However, in contrast to Smith’s discussion of the positive effects of good government and Spenser’s desire to establish civil government in Ireland, Fletcher detailed the detrimental effects of what happened, in Smith’s words, if a contrary forme be given to a contrary maner of people … so the free people of nature tyrannized or ruled by one against their willes, were he never so good, either

138

A corrupted commonwealth faile of corage and wexe servile, or never rest untill they either destroie thir king … or be destroyed themselves.130

Fletcher’s Russia embodied the former state in which a people failed of courage and became irrevocably enslaved under a tyrannical ruler. Fletcher’s writing of Russia highlighted the plight of such a state where the people lived in servility rather than civility. In his discussion of justice, he not only drew attention to the fact that the Russians had no written law as a signifier of their brutish and corrupt society, but also outlined the abject consequences of not having such a written law. The oppression of the poor was exacerbated by the fact that they had no recourse to justice, ‘which sheweth the miserable condition of this poore people’, living in a state of extreme poverty and servility, which encouraged idleness, drunkenness, whoredom and brutality.131 Fletcher displayed a degree of compassion for the poor commons of Russia not found in other Western European accounts of the land. He also saw possible salvation for the degraded condition of the commons of Russia in some form of alteration of their government, either through resistance or foreign invasion. Although he represented the Russian commoners as indolent, debauched and sinful, Fletcher also wrote of the people, ‘as touching their behaviour, and quality otherwise, they are of reasonable capacities, if they had those means that some other nations have to traine up their wittes in good nurture, and learning’.132 Through his discussion of the state of the commons, Fletcher both raised and answered a question that had puzzled commentators in the past and continued to interest the later sixteenth-century writers regarding cultural development, the increase of civility and its connection to forms of government, in this case Russian tyrannical government. Herberstein had posed the question most explicitly in his Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii: ‘It is a matter of doubt whether the brutality of the people has made the prince a tyrant, or whether the people themselves have become thus brutal and cruel through the tyranny of their prince.’133 Fletcher’s text implicitly answered this question by placing blame for the brutality of the people squarely on the emperor and his arbitrary, tyrannical government, supported and perpetuated by a chronically corrupt religion. Civil Tartars and barbarous Russians With a discernible glance at the classical idea of the noble savage, Fletcher presented the Tartar peoples as true, the Russians as false, having become degraded and brutish as a result of tyrannical government, despite their greater degree of development and their recognisable, if heretical, Christian religion. In a similar vein, the behaviour of the English in Russia, without civil

139

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth discipline, order, familial structures and religious instruction, disintegrated into corruption, brutality and profane, ‘popish’ practices. The conduct of Jerome Horsey, although aberrant, was a case in point. Likewise, the Muscovy Company servants complained that the corrupting effects of working in Russia made them unfit for any employment elsewhere.134 The English were becoming (or at least Fletcher feared that they were becoming) as barbaric and sinful as the Russians, thanks to their proximity to Russian tyrannical government and corrupt religion and their dislocation from the familiar structures and controls of the Elizabethan ‘civil’ commonwealth. Fletcher stated on the last page of his treatise that the ‘false’ qualities of the Russians ‘make them very odious to all their neighbours, specially to the Tartars, that account themselves to be honest and just, in comparison of the Russe’.135 The final thought that he left his audience with, alluding to the true nature of the Tartars, was neither incidental nor insignificant for, as we have seen, Fletcher organised the information in his work very thoroughly and went through various stages of revision and rewriting. He intended to close his in-depth political and cultural analysis of the unfamiliar land of Russia with this comment on the Russo-Tartarian relationship: It is supposed by some that doe well consider of the state of both countries that the offence [the Tartars] take at the Russe government, and their manner of behaviour, hath beene a great cause to keepe the Tartar still Heathenish, and to mislike (as he doeth) of the Christian profession.136

Not only did the tyranny of the Russian government cause oppression, idleness, drunkenness, poverty, degradation, heresy, idolatry and a lack of civility in the Russian people, but also – and far worse in terms of eternal consequence – the tyranny and ultimate falsity of the Russians had discouraged a heathen, as yet unsaved people from wanting to join the true church. Given the Tartars’ Scythian ancestry, linking them directly to the nomadic, savage people of classical literature, the very epitome of barbarism itself, it would have been easy for Fletcher to deliver a commonplace depiction of Tartar savagery. Yet Fletcher praised the Tartars, descendants of the Scythians, as true and brave, in comparison to the Russians. Fletcher’s positive depiction of the Tartars and his suggestion that they were antagonistic towards the Russian religion because of Russian corruption reveals an underlying axiom of his treatise. Fletcher’s criticism was undoubtedly levelled at corrupt forms of government and religion that had the capacity to be civil, but brought only depravity. Such an argument had relevance not only as a discussion of Russia, of course. The following chapter examines the resonances between Fletcher’s Russe Common Wealth and the domestic and foreign milieux of the late Elizabethan regime and considers why the print publication of Fletcher’s text may have been controversial in the immediate context of 1591.

140

A corrupted commonwealth NOTES 1 Parts of this chapter have been excerpted by permission of the publishers from F. Stout, ‘ “The strange and wonderfull discoverie of Russia”: Hakluyt and censorship’, in D. Carey and C. Jowitt (eds), Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 153–63. Copyright © 2012. 2 See G. Turberville, Tragicall Tales (London, 1587); E. Webbe, The rare and most wonderfull things which Edw. Webbe an Englishman borne, hath seene and passed in his troublesome travailes (London, 1591); J. Hortop, The Travailes of an Englishman (London, 1591). Richard Willes’s second and expanded edition of R. Eden, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India (London, 1555) includes accounts of Russia: see R. Willes, The History of Travayle in the West and East Indies, and other countreys lying ether way (London, 1577), pp. 254–324. The travel account of Sir Jerome Horsey was published for the first time in 1856, see J. Horsey, ‘A Relacion or Memorial abstracted owt of Sir Jerom Horsey His Travells, Imploiments, Services and Negociacions, observed and written with his owne hand; wherin he spent the most part of eighten years tyme’, printed in E. A. Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1856). See also S. Konovalov (ed.), ‘John Tradescant’s diary of a voyage to Russia, June–September 1618’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, 2 (1951), 130–41. 3 Hakluyt, PN (1589), table of contents. 4 G. Turberville, ‘Certaine letters in verse writ out of Moscovia by George Turbervil, Secretarie to M. Randolphe, touching the state of the countrey and manners of the people’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 411–12. 5 A. Jenkinson, ‘The voyage of Anthony Jenkinson into Russia, wherin Osep Napea first ambassador from the Emperor of Moscovia to Q. Marie was transported into his countrie. An. 1557’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 346. 6 T. Randolph, ‘The ambassage of the right worshipfull M. Thomas Randolph esquire, to the Emperour of Russia in the yeere 1568’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 400. 7 C. Adams, ‘The newe navigation and discoverie of the kingdome of Moscovia, by the Northeast in the yeere 1553’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 290. 8 See S. von Herberstein, Notes Upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country, entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, by the Baron Sigismund Von Herberstein, trans. and ed. R. H. Major, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1851–2). 9 Herberstein, Notes Upon Russia, II, p. 2. 10 Fletcher, RCW, p. 4v. 11 Herberstein, Notes Upon Russia, I, p. 32. 12 Fletcher, RCW, p. 20r. See also M. T. Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 58–61. 13 For discussion of the early modern ethnographer, see Poe, ‘People Born to Slavery’, pp. 56–8. 14 See S. H. Baron, ‘The influence in sixteenth-century England of Herberstein’s Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii’, in Explorations in Muscovite History (Farnham: Variorum, 1991), chapter XV. See also S. H. Baron, ‘Herberstein’s image of Russia and its

141

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth transmission through later writers’, in Explorations, chapter XIII, and ‘Herberstein and the English “Discovery” of Muscovy’, in Explorations, chapter XIV. 15 L. E. Berry, ‘Giles Fletcher, the elder, and Milton’s A Brief History of Moscovia’, Review of English Studies, 11:42 (1960), 150–6. 16 L. E. Berry and R. O. Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 73. 17 Spenser’s work was probably composed in 1596, but not printed until 1633 by Sir James Ware in The Historie of Ireland. See note 51, below. 18 Marshall Poe offers a slightly different analysis of Fletcher’s structural template, see Poe, ‘People Born to Slavery’, p. 58. 19 Fletcher, RCW, table of contents. 20 Aristotle, The Politics, 1284b35–1288b5. 21 Poe, ‘People Born to Slavery’, p. 177. 22 R. Dallington, A Method for travel (London, 1605), first table. 23 M. Hanmer’s The Chronicle of Ireland was written some time before his death in 1604, but was not published until 1633 in Ware, Historie of Ireland, p. 138. See also R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (London, 1621), sigs f–f4v. 24 For further discussion of early modern reading practices, see R. Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); L. Jardine and A. Grafton, ‘ “Studied for action”: how Gabriel Harvey read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129 (1990), 30–78; A. Gajda, ‘Political culture in the 1590s: the “second reign of Elizabeth” ’, History Compass, 8:1 (2010), 93–100. See also M. de Certeau, ‘Reading as poaching’, in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 169–76. 25 Fletcher, RCW, p. 116v. 26 ‘Commission given by sir Rowland Hayward knight and George Barne, Aldermen and Governors of the company of English Merchants, for the discovery of new trades, unto Arthur Pet, and Charles Jackman, for a voyage by them to be made, for discovery of Cathay, 1580’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 455. 27 ‘The excellent orders and instructions of Sebastian Cabot given to Sir Hugh Willoughby and his fleete in their voyage intended for Cathay’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 260. 28 ‘The voyage, wherin Osep Napea the Moscovite ambassadour, returned home into his countrey, with his entertainment at his arrival, at Colmogro: and a large description of the maners of the Countrey’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 344. 29 Turberville, Tragicall Tales, p. 184v. 30 Fletcher, RCW, p. 7r. 31 Fletcher, RCW, p. 5r. 32 Fletcher, RCW, p. 14v.

142

A corrupted commonwealth 33 Fletcher, RCW, p. 4v. For a comparable description of England, see R. Holinshed, The first and second volumes of Chronicles (London, 1587), pp. 109–10. 34 Eden, Decades, p. 302. 35 Fletcher, RCW, p. 6v. 36 Eden, Decades, p. 260. 37 See Holinshed, Chronicles, pp. 110–12. 38 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 7v–12r. 39 E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871, A Reconstruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 672. 40 T. S. Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), pp. 53, 185. 41 Fletcher, RCW, p. 7r. 42 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 7v–8r. 43 Fletcher, RCW, p. 47r. 44 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 285. 45 Adams, ‘The newe navigation’, p. 285. 46 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 4r–v. 47 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 4v–5r. 48 Fletcher, RCW, p. 16r. 49 Fletcher, RCW, p. 99v. 50 Fletcher, RCW, p. 3v. 51 See E. Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, in J. Ware, The Historie of Ireland (London and Dublin, 1633); J. Derricke, The Image of Irelande (London, 1588); B. Rich, A Short Survey of Ireland (London, 1609). On the New World, see The Whole and True Discoverye of Terra Florida (London, 1563), esp. sigs Biii–Biiii, Ciii; Willes, History of Travayle, esp. pp 195, 228; R. Hakluyt, Divers voyages touching the discoverie of America (London, 1582); T. Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found land of Virginia (London, 1588); T. Gates, A Discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called the Ile of Divels (London, 1610), esp. p. 10. 52 Fletcher, RCW, p. 20r. Cf. The Policy of the Turkish Empire (London, 1597). For discussion of English renaissance perceptions of the Turk, see N. Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 53 Fletcher, RCW, p. 20r. 54 See A. Pavlov and M. Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (Harlow: Routledge, 2003), p. 57. 55 Fletcher, RCW, p. 16r. 56 Fletcher, RCW, p. 21v. 57 Horsey, ‘A Relacion’, p. 159. 58 Horsey, ‘A Relacion’, pp. 194–5.

143

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 59 Fletcher, RCW, p. 110r. 60 Fletcher, RCW, p. 21r. 61 See ‘Edmund Tremayne’s description of Irish governance, December 1573’, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA (hereafter HEH), EL 1701, fos 1r–4v (transcript provided by Mike Braddick). 62 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 34v–35r. 63 Fletcher, RCW, p. 35r. 64 Fletcher, RCW, p. 35v. 65 On Boris Fedorowich’s takeover of the throne, see N. V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 5th edn (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 160–2. 66 Fletcher, RCW, p. 27r. 67 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 20r, 25r. 68 Fletcher, RCW, p. 89v. 69 See ‘Thomas Barnester and G[eoffrey] Ducket, to the Council; concerning their proceedings in Persia towards procuring freedom of trade. Valaday, June 25, 1569’, BL Cotton MS Nero B XI, fo. 333. For discussion of the Oprichnina, see Riasanovsky, History of Russia, pp. 150–1 and R. O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613 (New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 161–4, 170–2. For more recent scholarship on Ivan’s Oprichnina, see Pavlov and Perrie, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 107–68. 70 Fletcher, RCW, p. 25v. 71 Fletcher, RCW, p. 26r. 72 Aristotle, Politics, 1284b35–1288b5 and 1310a40–1316b30. See also J. Guy, ‘Tudor monarchy and its critiques’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Tudor Monarchy (London and New York: Arnold, 1997), p. 81. 73 Fletcher, RCW, p. 27v. 74 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 24v–25r. 75 Fletcher, RCW, p. 25r. 76 See B. Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 286–7. 77 Sir Francis Walsingham to James VI, quoted in C. Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), II, p. 218. 78 See Worden, Sound of Virtue, pp. 214–17. 79 Worden, Sound of Virtue, pp. 240–3, 279. 80 Fletcher, RCW, p. 40v. 81 Fletcher, RCW, p. 41r. 82 Fletcher, RCW, p. 42v. 83 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 41v–45r. 84 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 44v–45r.

144

A corrupted commonwealth 85 Fletcher, RCW, p. 41v. 86 Fletcher, RCW, p. 9v–10r. 87 A. Jenkinson, ‘The first voyage made by Master Anthony Jenkinson, from the Citie of London, toward the land of Russia, begonne the twelfth daye of Maye in the yeere, 1557’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 336. 88 J. Horsey, ‘The most solemne and magnificent coronation of Pheodore Ivanowiche, 1584’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 821. 89 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 81v, 84r, 93r, 114r–v. 90 Hakluyt, Divers Voyages, epistle dedicatory, sig. 2v. This can also be found in E. G. R. Taylor (ed.), The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1935), I, p. 178. 91 See M. C. Fuller, ‘Making something of it: questions of value in the early English travel compilation’, Journal of Early Modern History, 10:1–2 (2006), 11–38; J. Parker, Books to Build an Empire: A Bibliographical History of English Overseas Interests to 1620 (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1965). 92 Fletcher, RCW, p. 32r. 93 Fletcher, RCW, p. 32r. 94 Fletcher, RCW, p. 53r. 95 Tremayne, HEH, EL MS 1701, fos 1r–4v. 96 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 29v–34v. 97 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 33r–v. 98 Fletcher, RCW, p. 33v. 99 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 33v–34r. 100 Fletcher, RCW, p. 34r. 101 Fletcher, RCW, p. 33v. 102 Fletcher, RCW, p. 34r. 103 Fletcher, RCW, p. 46v. 104 Fletcher, RCW, p. 47r. 105 Fletcher, RCW, p. 49r. 106 Fletcher, RCW, p. 34v. 107 Fletcher, RCW, p. 33v. 108 Poe, ‘People Born to Slavery’, pp. 18–22. 109 Fletcher, RCW, p. 5v. 110 Fletcher, RCW, p. 103v. 111 Fletcher, RCW, p. 104v. 112 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 105v–106r. 113 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 107r–v.

145

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 114 Fletcher, RCW, p. 94r. 115 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 97r–v. 116 Fletcher, RCW, p. 98r. 117 Fletcher, RCW, p. 84v. 118 Randolph, ‘The ambassage’, p. 376; Jenkinson, ‘The voyage of Anthony Jenkinson into Russia’, p. 344. 119 D. Fenner, A briefe and plaine declaration, concerning the desires of all those faithfull ministers, that have and do seeke for the discipline and reformation of the Church of Englande (London, 1584), p. 45. 120 Fletcher, RCW, p. 99r. 121 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 99r–v. 122 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 85r–v. 123 Fletcher, RCW, p. 106v. 124 Romans 1:25, The Holie Bible conteynyng the olde Testament and the newe (London, 1568). 125 John 4:23, The Holie Bible. 126 P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religion and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 94–126; E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 127 T. Smith, De Republica Anglorum: A Discourse on the Commonwealth of England, ed. L. Alston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), p. 28. 128 E. Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland: From the First Printed Edition (1633), ed. A. Hadfield and W. Maley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 20. 129 Smith, De Republica Anglorum, p. 28. 130 Smith, De Republica Anglorum, p. 28. 131 Fletcher, RCW, p. 53r. 132 Fletcher, RCW, p. 115v. 133 Herberstein, Notes Upon Russia, I, p. 32. 134 Fletcher, ‘MD’, fos 104v–105r. 135 Fletcher, RCW, p. 116v. 136 Fletcher, RCW, p. 116v.

146

Chapter 5

A commonwealth counselled

Russia’s resonances in late Elizabethan England

That king that is not tied to the laws is a king of slaves. I have been in employments abroad. For the propriety of goods and of liberty, see the mischief of the contrary in other nations. In Muscovy one English mariner with a sword will beat five Muscovites that are likely to eat him. Sir Dudley Digges, Commons debates, 1628

Of the Russe Common Wealth presented the betrayal of God’s providence in Russia as a result of tyrannical government and false religion, rendering the Russians worse than Tartars and vulnerable to the blandishments of Rome. These arguments had some valence for contemporary discussions of English politics in the 1580s and 1590s, inflected with the anxieties arising from the French religious wars and Spanish ‘tyranny’ on the continent. The resonances of these arguments help to explain the public reception of Fletcher’s work on Russia and reflect Fletcher’s own political and religious alignments in the late Elizabethan regime. This chapter considers Fletcher’s key arguments in relation to discussions of late Elizabethan politics, suggesting that Fletcher’s text resonated with popular representations of tyranny – whether Spanish, French, Scottish or even English tyranny (as viewed from a disaffected Catholic perspective). An eye-witness of the political and religious upheavals of England over the previous decades and of the devastation of war-torn continental Europe, Fletcher engaged with these contemporary ideas of tyranny, even as he described the Russian ‘commonwealth’. Thus his was a politically charged text; indeed it was a text imbued with the promise of ‘common wealth’, as the title suggested, but in content described rather its renaissance opposite – a tyranny. In discussing sixteenth-century understandings of the term ‘commonwealth’, Patrick Collinson has argued that the word ‘ “commonwealth” may be a neutral term, as in Giles Fletcher’s description of Muscovy, Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591)’.1 This chapter, however, demonstrates that the term

147

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth ‘common wealth’ was, in Fletcher’s case at least, far from neutral and could have been read with both irony and political intent, in view of the parallels that the tyrannical government of Russia held with other representations and perceived realities of tyranny in late sixteenth-century continental and English politics. Although in his preface Fletcher emphasised his desire to present a true picture of Russia (rather than strange fables or fantastic travellers’ tales), he also revealed that the way in which Russia was governed could not be described as anything other than ‘a true and strange face of a Tyrannical state, (most unlike to your own) without true knowledge of GOD, without written Lawe, without common justice’.2 Fletcher’s rhetorical device of denial – ‘most unlike to your own’ – served to flatter the queen, but also provided the opportunity for the reader to meditate on his depiction of Russian tyranny, and how it might (or might not) be different from Elizabeth’s form of government. It also mirrored the doublespeak of his title, for Of the Russe Common Wealth in fact depicted an archetypal representation of tyranny, embodying both its strong and weak faces. If we take the view of Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton that ‘a single text could give rise to a variety of goal-directed readings’, it is possible that Fletcher’s preface could be read as an invitation to interpret Russian tyranny as an allusion to examples of tyranny on the continent, or even to Elizabeth’s state, or what Elizabeth’s might become if she did not heed the warning of her willing counsellor-subject. Paulina Kewes argues that a similar device was used in the ‘Preface to the Reader’ appearing at the beginning of Henry Savile’s translation of Tacitus – The ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba (1591) – by one ‘A. B.’. In this case, the history of Rome was presented as that of a ‘declining state: The Empire usurped; the Princes murthered; the people wavering; the souldiers tumultuous; nothing unlawfull to him that hath power’ in contrast to ‘our owne happie government, and thanke god for her, under whom England enjoyes as manie benefites, as ever Rome did miseries under the greatest Tyrant’.3 Kewes points to the ‘sharp contrast between imperial Rome and Elizabethan England’ portrayed by ‘A. B.’ that ‘must give us pause’ to consider the ‘hints that similar evils might ensue at home unless measures were taken to prevent them’.4 A. B.’s exhortation to the reader to ‘digest and apply the lessons of the work carefully’, while ignoring the reality of England’s war with Spain and the opportunities for treason within the realm, provides more evidence to support her speculation about A. B.’s hints at preventive counsel through meditating on the outcomes of historical examples.5 On Kewes’s view, then, perhaps we can see the potential for the Elizabethan reader to interpret Fletcher’s prefatory comment as pointing to the possible dangers much closer to home of sliding into tyrannical government.

148

A commonwealth counselled MODELS OF TYRANNY AND THE LATE ELIZABETHAN REGIME As we have seen in Chapter 4, the dynastic history of Russia lent itself to an exposition of two types of tyranny that were popular in renaissance political thought, profoundly influenced by Aristotle’s model of tyrants and kingship and the Senecan dramatic tradition. Ivan IV was Fletcher’s active, strong tyrant; his son, Feodor I, represented the passive and weak-minded monarch – what Fulke Greville would call the ‘unactive’ tyrant – ruled over by the Machiavellian Boris Godunov. The boon of Fletcher’s treatise was its dual depiction of tyranny, representing both weak and strong tyranny in a single state, even connecting the two types of tyranny causally and chronologically, the one following the other. In the first instance, the image of Ivan’s active tyranny may have resonated with contemporary Elizabethan depictions of Spanish tyranny. Philip II’s outrageously conceited motto, non sufficit orbis, epitomised this tyranny, and the king was represented by English and French Protestants as a cruel and rapacious ruler, intent on the pursuit of empire at all costs and ambitious for universal domination, the conquest of England and its reversion to Catholicism.6 Philip’s cruelty was epitomised by the imprisonment of his first-born son, Don Carlos, having incarcerated him in January 1568 for his mental instability. His son’s sudden death in July 1568 was rapidly exploited by critics of the Spanish regime and offered further evidence of Philip’s tyranny through the murder of his own heir.7 Ivan was similarly accused of murdering his heir, Ivan Ivanovich, with a blow to the head in 1581 during a quarrel between the two after Ivan had attacked his son’s pregnant wife.8 Although Fletcher represented the event as accidental, there was some suspicion that it was intentional: ‘[H]‌e died of a blowe given him by his father upon the head in his furie with his walking staffe, or (as some say) of a thrust with the prong of it driven deepe into his head.’9 Much of the discussion of tyranny in the English and continental context was shaped by sectarian and polemical literature that appeared as an outgrowth of Spanish domination on the continent and the French wars of religion.10 The widespread fear of militant Tridentine Catholicism overpowering English reformation religion and politics was articulated in pervasive representations of Spanish tyranny. The idea that active tyrants or the evil favourites who surrounded weak rulers sought to wield absolute power over their subjects was becoming a commonplace in this literature. Dutch propaganda levelled the charge against Philip II and the Duke of Alba,11 Huguenot propaganda did so against the Catholic League.12 Some readers might also have connected Fletcher’s Russian tyranny with arguments about the tyranny of Irish and Old English lords over their tenants.13

149

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Going hand in hand with English Protestant anxiety over tyrannical conquest by Spain were fears of a failure of the Protestant succession and subsequent civil war as a result. These fears were being played out to a horrific extent in the French civil wars of religion, news of which flooded into England via newsletters, pamphlets and books.14 ‘These publications’, as Lisa Ferraro Parmelee points out ‘struck a chilling chord with English readers … As their “virgin queen” steadfastly refused to name her successor even as she advanced into old age, the fear that had haunted the English monarchy since the Wars of the Roses was becoming all too real again: the succession would be disputed; the country would descend into civil war’.15 Fletcher addressed the succession question of the contemporary Russian royal line, the house of Beala, as a cause for concern in Russia’s uncertain future, drawing a disquieting comparison between the Russian situation and that of other powers in Europe: ‘For the continuance of the race, this house of Beala at this present is in like case as are many of the greatest houses of Christendome vz. the whole stocke and race concluded in one, two or some fewe of the bloud.’16 The Russian succession was precarious: ‘[T]‌he Emperour that now is, who hath no childe (neither is like ever to have for ought that may be conjectured by the constitution of his body, and the barennesse of his wife after so many yeares marriage).’17 There was only one other male heir in the royal line, ‘a child of sixe or seven yeares old, in whom resteth all the hope of succession … yet not safe (as I have heard) from attempts of making away by practice of some that aspire to the succession, if this Emperour die without any issue’.18 Apparently, a food-taster had died after eating some meat placed before the Russian heir apparent. The succession crisis in Russia had been caused by the tyranny of Ivan killing his first-born, rightful heir. As a result the crown had been inherited by Feodor I, a simple and incompetent ruler, who was easily manipulated by his brother-inlaw, his wife and their family, resulting in the weak tyranny now dominated by Boris Godunov. There was also a female claim to the Muscovite throne – Maria Vladimirovna, the widow of Magnus, Duke of Holstein, who was, according to Fletcher, ‘sister to the old Emperour [Ivan IV] and aunt to this man [Feodor I]’, and her daughter, Eudoxia Oldernburg, cousin to Feodor. Maria and Eudoxia had been living in Courland until the death of Magnus in 1583, but had been ‘allured again into Russia, by some that love the succession better than her selfe … [and] as soone as they were returned into Russia were thrust into a Nunnerie, where hir daughter died this last yeare while I was in the countrie, of no naturall disesase as was supposed’.19 Elizabeth, of course, was childless and now too old to produce an heir. Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s cousin once removed, had a direct claim to the English throne. She had sought refuge in England in 1568 and had subsequently been imprisoned by the Elizabethan regime as a threat to the English throne. If not intentional, then it is a strange coincidence that

150

A commonwealth counselled Fletcher’s representation of the Russian succession crisis bore some resemblance to the matter of succession in England. In a context where it was prohibited to openly discuss the fate of the Elizabethan succession, Fletcher’s explanation of the crisis in the Russian royal line may have given an English audience pause for thought, especially given the recent execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587 at the hands of the ever-zealous custodians of the ‘monarchical republic’.20 If Fletcher’s comments on the Russian succession crisis were unintentionally analogous to the English situation, they were nonetheless vulnerable to being ill-received by the regime, both for their oblique discussion, by comparison, of the succession crises in ‘many of the greatest houses of Christendome’ and for their unfortunate similarity to recent developments in the English situation. Any discussion of succession crises, foreign or otherwise, was susceptible to being read as analogous to the English context and thus contentious, especially when it implied that the course of events was being dictated ‘by some that love the succession better than her selfe’.21 Although Fletcher could not have known Russia’s fate, he suggested that Ivan’s tyrannical government had caused both a crisis in the succession and prepared the ground for a future civil war that would devastate the land.22 English readers had only to glance across the channel to recognise the resonances between Fletcher’s Russia and the events unfolding in France. They had also only to put two and two together to fuel their own fears of what England’s potential future might look like if the Spanish tyrant, Philip II, was not stopped in his tracks and if the question of Elizabeth’s successor was not resolved. There was severe punishment for those who infringed the prohibition regarding open discussion of the succession – Peter Wentworth, who was imprisoned until his death for urging the queen to settle the succession question, could testify to that.23 However, rumination on the fear of what might happen if the issue was not resolved, through the discussion of examples from foreign lands and classical histories, could not be controlled so easily by the regime. EVIL COUNSEL IN THE COMMONWEALTH As we know, Fletcher provided his audience with much information on the role of counsel in Russian government: he devoted a whole chapter to the manner of the Russian parliament, and another to examining the emperor’s privy council. The space given over to the discussion of counsel in Of the Russe Common Wealth revealed that in Fletcher’s view counsel was vital to the wellbeing of a civil and godly government and that it was severely lacking in Russia, for counsellors were merely ornamental: ‘[I]‌f they come, they are rather to heare, then to give counsel, and doo so demeane themselves.’24 Not simply the existence of ‘counsel’, but the right kind of counsel, was necessary

151

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth for a civil commonwealth, and yet in Russia Fletcher could find only a decorative but powerless ‘privy counsel’, a monarch dominated by an over-weening and ambitious courtier and a mock parliament, which was, ostensibly, ‘their highest Court of publike consultation for matter of state’.25 Throughout Fletcher’s text, it was Boris Godunov who directed Feodor’s government. He was ruler of Russia in reality if not in name, ‘the lorde Borris Federowich Godenoe is not to be reckoned, that is like a Transendent … for commaund and authority Emperour of Russia’.26 His sister, the empress, also played her part in the Godunov faction, ‘giving out pardon … in her owne name, by open proclamation, without any mention at all of the Emperour’.27 Boris’s male kin formed his supportive bloc in the emperor’s household, in the privy council and in the broader political infrastructure of Feodor’s government. Boris was the chief officer of the emperor’s household, holding the position of Master of the Horse; Gregory Vasilovich Godunov was Feodor’s lord steward; Stepan Vasilovich Godunov his treasurer; Ivan Vasilowich Godunov his taster; and all four plus another Godunov, Dmitri Ivanovich, sat on the privy council.28 The Godunovs controlled great tracts of land to the extent that ‘almost the whole countrie is managed at this time, by the Godonoes and their clients’.29 Fletcher further described how the schemes of Ivan to ‘keepe downe these [noble] houses from rising againe’ were continued and ‘are still practised by the Godonoes, who being advaunced by the marriage of the Empresse their kinsewoman, rule both the Emperour, and his Realme’.30 The Godunovs had even persuaded Feodor to order the clergy not to pray for the heir apparent, his younger brother, ‘as their manner is otherwise for the Princes bloud’.31 The reason for this, explained Fletcher, was to ‘make [Feodor] believe that it is a good pollicie to turne away the liking of the people from the next successour’.32 At one level, through his description of the passive tyranny of Feodor, Fletcher provided foreign intelligence to Elizabeth and the privy council about the contemporary politics of succession and government in Russia. On another level, however, his description of Feodor’s weak tyranny dictated by the Godunovs resonated rather disturbingly with other English works of great notoriety that saw such weak government, dominated by evil counsel, in the rule of Elizabeth herself. The ‘evil counsel’ model of tyranny was a theme not unfamiliar, nor uncontentious, to a late Elizabethan audience. The anonymous A Treatise of Treasons (1572), for instance, had depicted William Cecil and Sir Nicholas Bacon as these two Macchiavelles [who] for their owne private advauncement have practised, and do daily contrive, not only the wresting & diverting of your Croune from that course, race, and line, in which the Lawes of your Countrey (concurring with all lawes of Nature and Nations) have established and settled it, but also for the same private Avarice & Ambition of their owne.33

152

A commonwealth counselled In doing so they have circumvented your Queene, indangered her State, steined her honour, oppressed her people, impoverished the Realme, and procured infinite perils to depende over the same, if they be not in time prevented, for preference only of their owne private policie.34

In a similar vein, ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ (1584) presented an equally outrageous and scurrilous account relating in detail how Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester was vying for power and had his eye on the crown of England; a base-born courtier aiming above his station whose evil counsel and dubious morality was bringing the Elizabethan regime to its knees, through his Machiavellian machinations.35 Printed on the continent in 1584, the tract essentially argued that Elizabeth’s rule was one of a weak tyranny dominated by evil counsel. The tract deliberately described this as a ‘commonwealth’, indeed as ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’, implying both Leicester’s ambitions for the crown and his transcendence in his domination of the queen’s affections and power.36 The authorship is generally thought to originate from disaffected English Catholics in exile in France.37 Fletcher’s representation of the ambitious Godunovs, who according to Fletcher dominated Feodor and his government and had already ‘taken away [those] whom they thought likeliest to make head against them and hinder their purpose’,38 could have brought to mind such Catholic accusations against the ‘evil counsellors’ of the regime for those readers who were familiar either with the texts themselves or with an outline of the conspiracy theory that they espoused and the scandal that these publications caused.39 This is not to suggest, of course, that Fletcher had any sympathy with the writers of ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ or A Treatise of Treasons. Similar accusations of ‘evil counsel’ were being brought against the Guise faction in France, for instance.40 French pamphlets brought over and translated into English expounded on ‘the Tiranni of the house of Guise, robbers of the Kinges and Queenes libertie’, contributing to a pervasive discourse of ‘evil counsel’ and weak tyranny, and explaining that ‘whereas they covered themselves with thaucthoritie of the Kynge Queene and Courte of parliamente, it was apparent inough to al the world, that thei ruled the same by force even as they lusted’.41 Closer to home, Scots nobles like the Earl of Angus made a similar charge against the court faction of Arran under James VI. Arran was described by members of the Ruthven faction, who had seized Stirling castle in the spring of 1584 in an attempt to regain power, as ‘that godlesse atheist, bloodie Haman and seditious Catiline, James Stuart, called Erle of Arran, the onlie disturber and unquietter of the whole countrie’.42 Nevertheless, it was the notoriety of texts such as ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ that made the discussion of passive tyranny ruled by evil counsel a very sensitive one in the English context.

153

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ was promptly suppressed on its distribution in England, followed by a strong proclamation against such ‘seditious books’, denouncing ‘their most shamefull, infamous, and detestable libelles, [in which] they goe about to reproche, dishonour and touch with abominable lyes … not onely many of her most trustie and faithfull Counsellers, but also her Highnesse Judges and ministers of the lawe’.43 The proclamation demonstrated that Elizabeth and her privy council deemed such a work not only offensive, but subversive. If Fletcher had any intention of offering a veiled critique of the Elizabethan regime, with a didactic purpose to counsel the commonwealth to view the queen as a (potential) weak tyrant at the mercy of evil counsel, this would represent a relatively early, although not unique, Protestant example of associating Elizabeth’s reign and court with one of ‘weak’ tyranny. While the discourse of ‘evil counsel’ was most prominently represented in Catholic texts in the 1570s and 1580s, it was evident in some Protestant and puritan critiques of the regime before the 1590s. John Stubbs’s provocative Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf (1579), for instance, openly criticised Elizabeth’s marriage negotiations with the Duke of Anjou, arguing that such an alliance with the rapacious French Catholic – ‘the old serpent in shape of a man’ – who had been implicated in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, would bring about the overthrow of Protestantism in England, and ultimately a return to Catholicism.44 Stubbs warned that ‘England is like to be swallowed by another French mariage’, that ‘the verye foundations of our common weall [are] dangerously digged at by the french’ and that both the English queen and the English crown would be overtaken by the tyranny of a stranger.45 More worryingly, however, Stubbs claimed that Elizabeth was being seduced into the marriage alliance with Anjou by a dangerous faction of politiques at her own court, ‘some English mouthes professing Christ are also perswaders of the same’ that would lead ‘our deere Queene Elizabeth (I shake to speake) … blyndfold as a poore Lambe to the slaughter’.46 Stubbs had his hand struck off for such criticism and insinuation.47 Protestant fears of evil counsel and the detrimental effects of flattery within the Elizabethan regime were also expressed using a telling historical shorthand that invoked the image of Richard II’s court. E. K. Chambers tells us, for instance, that Sir Francis Knollys wrote to Elizabeth in 1578 with uncomfortable counsel, but excused his behaviour with his political conscience, that he would not ‘play the partes of King Richard the Second’s men’.48 At some point before 1588, Henry Lord Hunsdon also claimed that ‘I never was one of Richard II’s men’ at court.49 Blair Worden similarly argues that the fear of weak tyranny in Elizabeth’s regime was obliquely expressed by Sir Philip Sidney in the various incarnations of his Arcadia during the late 1570s and early 1580s.50 In this sense, Fletcher was not alone

154

A commonwealth counselled in voicing concern over the susceptibilities of princes to the machinations of power-hungry and ambitious courtiers. With both Catholic ‘evil counsel’ conspiracy tracts and forward Protestant fears of weak tyranny in the near foreground, it was more than conceivable for an educated audience to read the mixed fortunes of the Tudor dynasty’s recent history onto the doomed and slavish state of the Russian commonwealth, with Ivan the Terrible as a mirror for Henry VIII and the weak Feodor I, the ‘bell-ringer’, as any one of Henry’s offspring. The suggestion that Fletcher may have been consciously or deliberately invoking a discourse of tyranny, pointing to the English context, while describing the beleaguered Russian state can only be inferred. We cannot know exactly what Fletcher’s personal politics and public intentions were. What can be argued with more certainty, however, is that Fletcher’s text contributed to widespread contemporary discussions of tyranny both at home and abroad, prompted by fears of the threat of an international Catholic conspiracy and conquest in England, and the horrors of a contested or violent succession followed by civil war, as illustrated in the experiences of France and the Netherlands. Furthermore, Fletcher’s work had the potential to be interpreted by his readers as controversial because of its discussion of Russian succession problems and its depictions of tyrannical government that, by accident or by design, resonated rather too closely with the types of tyrannical regime that dissident Catholic exiles, as well as forward Protestants, were attempting to foist onto the workings of Elizabethan counsel and government in the 1570s and 1580s. The Russian parliament and the English commonwealth Fletcher’s depiction of Russia’s parliament provided further explication of how corrupt forms of counsel detrimentally affected the commonwealth. According to Fletcher, the Russian parliament was made up of the clergy and the nobility of the land and ‘as for the Burghers or other to represent the communaltie, they have no place there: the people being of no better account with them then as servants or bond slaves that are to obey, not to make lawes, nor to knowe any thing of publike matters before they are concluded’.51 In terms of the way in which laws and bills were decided upon, the Russian parliament was merely a performance acted out by the clergy and nobility for the justification of the tsar’s tyranny, where all members automatically flattered the tsar and agreed with the laws and bills that had been propounded by him. This was the accepted ritual for law-making through ‘parliament’ in Russia, ‘for as touching any lawe or publique order of the realme, it is ever determined of before any publique assemblie or parliament bee summoned’.52

155

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Rarely in his text did Fletcher compare England with Russia. His discussion of the Russian parliament, however, is one of the few and most direct exceptions. Regarding the bills and actions of the Russian parliament, Fletcher drew an unambiguous comparison between the Russian and English styles of parliament, reporting that ‘to propound bils what every man thinketh good for the publike benefite (as the maner is in England) the Russe parliament alloweth no such custome, nor libertie to subjects’.53 Fletcher’s positive depiction of the English parliament, in direct contrast with its negative Russian counterpart, was revealed in the briefest of comments. His pithy précis of an ideal of English parliament situated him quite distinctly within an ideological understanding of government that emphasised a ‘mixed-estate’ theory of rule, identified in the trinity of monarch, privy council and parliament. Fletcher’s criticism of the absolute hegemony of the Russian emperor over the performance of parliament reflected a deeply held belief in the vein of Sir Thomas Smith and Christopher St German that parliament was supposed to be the place where the laws of England were debated and made, as opposed to being dictated by an absolute monarch, and that the commonwealth’s sovereignty was embodied in the king-in-parliament.54 Parliament represented the limit on a monarch’s prerogative to make legislation in his or her own right.55 Fletcher’s Russian brand of parliament not only highlighted the extent of the tsar’s tyranny over the façade of representative government, but may also have resonated more subtly with fears about the increasingly unmixed tenor of Elizabeth’s regime in the last decade of her life.56 Fletcher’s discussion of parliament displays parallels with Sir Thomas Smith’s De republica Anglorum.57 Like Sir Thomas More before him and Fletcher after him, Smith conceived and composed his work while serving as a royal ambassador in a foreign land. More was Henry VIII’s ambassador in Bruges in 1515 when he began to work on Utopia, and Fletcher, of course, was in Russia when he put together the notes that later became Of the Russe Common Wealth.58 Although written in 1565, significantly Smith’s work was not published until 1583, with another edition in 1584, the very period of time when Fletcher was becoming more involved in politics and government service, being elected to the parliament of 1584 as the representative for Winchelsea.59 As discussed in Chapter 2, during this parliament Fletcher played an active role in the parliamentary committee for further reformation of the church. This was also the year in which the Elizabethan exclusion crisis was at its height, as fears regarding the safety of the queen and the possibility of her assassination raged and the Bond of Association was formed, the parliament of 1584 following in its wake.60 A brief look at the contents of both Smith’s and Fletcher’s works reveals the correspondence in topics covered. Fletcher’s discussion of the roles of the monarch, nobility, parliament and the commons echoes Smith’s explication

156

A commonwealth counselled of the state of the English commonwealth at the time of writing. The similarity in the titles of both texts also suggests a context-specific connection with Smith’s work through a discussion of Russia; Smith’s De republica Anglorum was reprinted in 1589 as The common-wealth of England and maner of government thereof and Fletcher’s work was printed in 1591 as Of the Russe Common Wealth or maner of government by the Russe Emperour.61 Smith’s treatise clearly set out an English form of parliament that in theory justly represented all elements of the commonwealth with equity: [T]‌he parliament of Englande, which representeth and hath the power of the whole realme both the head and the bodie. For everie Englishman is entended to bee there present, either in person or by procuration and attornies, of what preheminence, state, dignitie, or qualitie soever he be, from the Prince (be he King or Queene) to the lowest person of Englande. And the consent of the parliament is taken to be everie mans consent.62

For Fletcher the Russian parliament was a profound expression of the emperor’s tyranny over his subjects because it did not represent the voice of all the worthy subjects of the land, nor did it allow members to propose bills either for the good of the commonwealth or for private interests. More fundamentally it was, in reality, a mere performance of parliament, as all the bills were proposed and agreed upon by the emperor and his close counsellors prior to the parliament being assembled. Fletcher’s representation of the Russian parliament – as a mockery of what ‘parliament’ was supposed to look like – was in clear opposition to the ostensibly representative parliament of England, or the ideal, at least, that Smith had presented. The revisionist works of the 1980s, such as those of G. R. Elton and Michael Graves, have found compelling evidence to suggest that Tudor parliament was in theory and practice bicameral and a mixed entity, comprising three parts: the monarch, the House of Lords and the House of Commons.63 Recent study of Smith’s treatise, however, points to a more nuanced understanding of parliament projected in De republica Anglorum. The discussions of both Anne McLaren and Dale Hoak flag up the seemingly ambiguous description of government found in Smith’s ‘English Commonwealth’ that was both an absolute monarchy and ‘a society or common doing of a multitude of freemen collected together and united by common accord and covenauntes among themselves, for the conservation of themselves in peace as in warre’.64 In Smith’s ambiguous ideal, ‘the most high and absolute power of the realme of England consisteth in the parliament’ and yet ‘the prince is the life, the head and the authoritie of all things that be doone in the realme of England’.65 Certainly the tireless political agitation in parliament by Peter Wentworth suggests that at least some, if only a minority, were concerned about the ambiguities surrounding a practice of parliament in which MPs felt constrained

157

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth to respond in predetermined ways and where the freedom to speak their own mind was curtailed by rumours and pressure to toe the monarchical line, by direct interventions into parliamentary business by the queen, or by the strategic manoeuvres of privy councillors and their men-of-business.66 Wentworth had been thrown in the Tower of London once before for being so directly outspoken about the liberties of parliament, as well as attempting to hijack the proceedings of the House of Commons in order to remind his fellow members of the importance of every man’s voice.67 In the context of publications such as Smith’s and premeditated parliamentary outbursts such as Wentworth’s, Fletcher’s discussion of parliament could have been read as a pertinent analysis of what a corrupt public assembly looked like, and the dangers of disregarding the role of parliament at the behest of imperium. In the later 1580s and early 1590s, it was difficult to discuss the concept and workings of parliament in any kind of politically neutral way, as unfolding events on the continent and at home had a significant impact on what ideas of monarchical rule and government were both acceptable and necessary. During the 1580s a toxic combination of external factors threatened the safety of the queen and commonwealth, putting greater pressure on the security of Protestant England. Spain’s increasing presence in France, the death of the Duke of Anjou, the assassination of William of Orange and Elizabeth’s eventual intervention in the Netherlands precipitated full-scale war with Spain.68 The internal security issues raised by the Throckmorton and Babington plots of 1582–3 and 1586, as well as the influx of Jesuit seminary priests attempting to convert waverers back to Catholicism, also served to escalate the fear of Catholic conquest in England. This context provided a climate ripe for an increasingly dominant view of monarchy to emerge, which was more absolutist in its conception and tone, and was promoted as necessary in the face of the perceived ‘popish’ threat.69 Additionally, the ageing of the queen, the deaths of several key and very experienced counsellors, the appointment of new, more conservative members of the privy council, such as Lords Cobham and Buckhurst, and the increasingly favoured voices of John Whitgift and Richard Bancroft altered the balance of opinion and power within the Elizabethan government, expressing a more conservative and authoritarian ideal of monarchy.70 Holding these contextual threads together we see that the consideration of ‘mixed-estate’ government in which parliament played a key role in a text such as Fletcher’s could only be politically sensitive in the early 1590s, despite Smith’s ambiguity over how the English Commonwealth was actually constituted – both absolute monarchy and mixed estate, both every man’s voice and the absolute authority vested in the prince as head of the body politic. Although many saw a mixed-estate view of government as particularly germane to the context of Elizabeth’s succession, as it both allowed for the

158

A commonwealth counselled unmarried female monarch to be counselled by men and for the dignified subjection of noblemen to a woman in authority, married as it were to her realm, it was not necessarily favourable to Elizabeth and by the 1570s at least, as Peter Lake has argued, it was being rejected from the top down.71 By the 1590s, of course, the theory of mixed-estate government was most definitely unwelcome to the queen and her imperium was being asserted, particularly in religious affairs.72 As Wentworth’s fate revealed, it was a controversial time to be writing and printing material that advocated the vital role of a representative parliament in law-making and governance and that criticised the imperium of a monarch over the needs of the commonwealth. Fletcher’s evident support for a mixed-estate view of government, through his critique of the Russian parliament, offers an indication of where he may have placed himself politically in relation to the late Elizabethan regime. THE FATE OF THE NOBILITY UNDER A TYRANT Fletcher’s analysis of the role of the nobility in Russia focused on the emperor’s attempts to keep the nobility servile and in ‘an under proportion aggreable to that State’ of tyranny.73 An educated humanist would have been able to discern classical parallels with this particular anxiety in Fletcher’s text and could have drawn contemporary inferences with the failing of the ancient noble families of England during the second half of Elizabeth’s reign. Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Christopher Hatton, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Mildmay and Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick had all passed away in the later 1580s and early 1590s. Elizabeth, in her conservatism, perhaps, rather than because of any premeditated policy, had not replaced her trusted, and now dead, privy counsellors, leaving the privy council of the 1590s bereft of virtuous nobility of ancient stock. The position of Principal Secretary of State, held by Walsingham up until his death in 1590, for instance, was left vacant until 1596.74 This act of not elevating certain members of the nobility to the status of official counsellors, while leaving offices vacant, caused unrest among aspiring nobles, as they felt their service had not been recognised.75 Elizabeth’s parsimonious tendencies, particularly towards the end of her reign, meant that although she demanded constant service from the peers in terms of leadership at the level of local government and defence, there was little or no reward for such dutiful service. The depletion of the queen’s rewards for service, through both patronage and office-holding, caused hostility from a nobility that felt keenly their frustration at always serving but not being rewarded with financial remuneration or the status of office.76 Catholic critiques of the regime had explicitly accused Elizabeth’s favourites, the two ‘Machiavel catilines’, Cecil and Bacon, of using the reformed religion to weed out the queen’s ‘chief defence’ – her faithful and wise ancient

159

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth nobility – naming Sir Nicholas Throckmorton and the Duke of Norfolk as her ‘faithful friends … by nature and affection … so well able to defend her’.77 The authors of A Treatise of Treasons lamented ‘Can any man be found so blind, so popular and unnatural, that seeth not and bewaileth not with tears the blood, the wasting and consumption of your ancient nobility in number, in wealth, in credit among your people, and in authority with your prince.’ The result was ‘the great weakening of your prince’s strength and state thereby’.78 Within the model of tyranny that Fletcher was espousing, his discussion of the Russian emperor’s establishment of the Oprichnina in 1565 presented a particularly potent example of the detrimental effects of tyranny on the nobility and a depiction of the archetypal manifestation of tyrannical government. As we have seen in Chapter 4, Ivan ‘devided his subjectes into two partes or factions by a general schisme’, one part selected in order ‘to protect and mainteyne them as his faithful subjects’, the other part including ‘such Noblemen and Gentlemen as he meant to cut off’.79 As well as highlighting the wretched fate of the ancient nobility under tyranny, Fletcher’s discussion of this policy of the Russian emperor may well have triggered reflections on the state of the English court in the late 1580s and 1590s, which was represented as backbiting and competitive. Fletcher’s use of the word ‘faction’ may have tapped into latent fears of civic and political disorder and division, when private political gain was pursued at the cost of the common good, and the detrimental effects this could have on the stability of the commonwealth.80 His description of the Oprichnina may also have reminded some readers of the ‘fine devises’ exposed by Catholic critics of the regime, who accused Elizabeth’s evil counsellors of having ‘erected, as it were, almost a new half of your nobility … and the rest then … are either cut off, worn out, fled, banished, or defaced at home’.81 Fletcher’s discussion of the Oprichnina and the decimation of the Russian ancient nobility served the purpose of highlighting the vital role of a strong nobility, who were not only truly noble in descent, but truly virtuous in their behaviour. The discourse (or cult) of ‘virtue’ – ‘a mixture of the traditional aristocratic values – concerning justice, generosity and, above all, war – with more modern cultural and intellectual qualities’ – was increasingly popular and widespread in the late sixteenth century and was a fundamental component of the identity and self-fashioning of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex.82 It may be no coincidence that Fletcher gained the patronage of Essex during the 1590s as a proponent of the indispensable role of a strong, virtuous and ancient nobility and he was later described as ‘interelye devoted’ to the earl.83 Many men, of course, looked to Essex for preferment in the 1590s, so Fletcher’s petition for patronage may have been innocent of forward political designs. However, since Essex’s political stance centred on the role of the true and ancient nobility in counselling the king and safeguarding the commonwealth with their virtuous conduct, it is not inconceivable that Fletcher was

160

A commonwealth counselled attracted as much to the politics of Essex as he may have been to the person of Essex, with his ability and desire to patronise the arts.84 Fletcher’s ominous conclusion to Ivan’s policy of Oprichnina and his destruction of the ancient nobility was that it had filled the land of Russia ‘so full of grudge and mortall hatred ever since, that it wil not be quenched (as it seemeth now) till it burne againe into a civill flame’.85 A Treatise of Treasons had similarly forecast a commonwealth ‘purposely sown to divide it into factions that it may rent itself in pieces’.86 Richard Pipes suggested that within fifteen years Russia was experiencing the civil war that Fletcher had prophesied, embodied in the ‘Time of Troubles’ – a series of attempts by vying political factions and pretenders to the throne to usurp imperial power in Russia, with varying degrees of success, from 1598 until the accession of the Romanovs in 1613.87 Such tyrannical behaviour from the Russian emperor in destroying his nobility – his source of good ‘counsel’ and friendship and the backbone and strength of his commonwealth – had not only riven his country with hatred and dissension, but would eventually lead to civil war as the only recourse to purge the land of its distress. The significance of Fletcher’s Russian tyranny and his premonition of Russian civil war may not have been lost on an English audience schooled in the classics and anxious that the fate of France should not become their own. RESISTING TYRANNICAL RULE IN THE COMMONWEALTH Fletcher’s observations that in Russia ‘they have none of the Nobilitie able to make head’ or to bring about any alteration in the government of the land, suggest that he had some awareness of the contemporary debate over whether or not resistance to a tyrant was permissible.88 In the first instance, his reference to whether the nobility or people could change the state of Russia may have brought to mind the ideas of the French anti-League theorists, such as Theodore Beza and François Hotman, and the Scottish Presbyterian George Buchanan. Their works discussed the legitimacy and legality of resisting a tyrant and considered the question of whose role it was to lead such resistance.89 Resistance theories also circulated in England through the conduit of English translations of Dutch news pamphlets that described the latest events of the religious and political conflicts in the Netherlands, but also advanced the main tenets of the theories used to justify resistance to Catholic tyranny.90 The debate over the legitimacy of resisting tyrants was particularly pertinent to the situation of Protestants in the continental context of religious persecution, the French civil wars, Catholic ascendancy and the trauma, experienced or remembered, of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. However, the discussion took on a more subversive tone in the context of the supposedly harmonious, yet fragile and internally opposed Protestant peace of Elizabethan England in

161

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth the early 1590s.91 Fletcher’s rumination on the possibility of resisting the tyranny of Russian government chimed with a political perspective somewhat at odds with the Elizabethan regime as it drifted towards more absolutist ideas of government in the 1590s. Alarmingly, the theme of resistance to tyranny bore resemblance to the exiled English Catholic views expressed in A Treatise of Treasons (1572) and ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’, as well as the continental Catholic League’s turn towards resistance theory post-1584. In order to explore why Fletcher may have been engaging with resistance theory discussions in his depiction of Russia, we need to consider the significance and extent of the debate in the second half of the sixteenth century, as well as Fletcher’s own personal politics and experiences. The real difficulty for renaissance statesmen and political commentators alike was the question of whether resistance to a tyrant was legitimate, lawful, civil and godly. In the English context, the works of Marian exiles, such as Christopher Goodman’s How Superior Powers Ought to be Obeyed of their Subjects (1558), and John Knox’s First blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558) advocated fervent resistance theories against the absolute imperium of the monarch in the context of Mary Tudor’s ‘tyrannical’ persecution of Protestants. In the early part of Elizabeth’s reign, resistance theory continued to play an important part in popular and political discussions over the continuing threat of Mary, Queen of Scots, particularly in the immediate wake of the Ridolphi Plot of 1571 and in the following parliament of 1572. In the face of Elizabeth’s obstinacy, ‘bent on a heedless course of self-destruction’ and unwilling to address and punish those who were conspiring to assassinate her and usurp her throne, it was no surprise, argues Gerald Bowler, that parliament-men in 1572 deployed resistance theory arguments, bolstered by examples from the Bible and Roman law, to justify the execution of Mary and her conspirators.92 In this context, the idea of resisting the tyrannous intentions of the Scottish queen, out of duty to the true religion and out of self-defence, was a ‘safe topic’ to discuss openly. The later 1570s and early 1580s saw the publication of George Buchanan’s De jure regni apud Scotos (1579) and Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582), which argued that the king was chosen, or consented to by the people and that kings could be legitimately deposed if they failed to carry out the obligations and contract of their coronation oath. Fletcher’s patron, Thomas Randolph, was a friend of Buchanan’s and possibly even a student of his in Paris in the 1550s.93 Their friendship was strengthened by Randolph’s frequent visits to Scotland, as Elizabeth’s unofficial ambassador during the 1560s and 1570s.94 He later encouraged Buchanan to write De jure regni apud Scotos and in 1577 arranged for the English printing of his play Baptistes, which had originally been written and produced in 1542. This play depicted the tyranny of Herod and there has been some speculation over the possible candidates for Buchanan’s

162

A commonwealth counselled representation of tyrannical government, including James V of Scotland, François I of France, and Henry VIII of England.95 In 1562 Randolph was commending Buchanan in letters to Cecil and Leicester and may have been the source of Buchanan’s introduction to the ‘Sidney circle’.96 Randolph also had contacts with Christopher Goodman, who had similarly argued that rulers could be deposed by their subjects ‘if they violated divine or human law, in which case she was a tyrant’, and he had been active, along with Walsingham, in discussions about how to deal with Mary, Queen of Scots in the parliament of 1572.97 As we know, Fletcher had accompanied and served Randolph on his ambassadorial mission to Scotland in 1586. By then, Buchanan had passed away and Goodman was no longer in Scotland, but the network of connections and communication of ideas through these networks may have meant that Fletcher was influenced politically and intellectually by Randolph, his patron until 1590. By association with Randolph he may also have been influenced by the ideas of Buchanan and Goodman. Since Randolph was a conduit for the work and person of Buchanan to Sidney and his associates, it is likely that he also shared his enthusiasm for Buchanan’s and Goodman’s ideas on popular sovereignty and resistance theory with Fletcher, his assistant and client. Significantly, Buchanan’s De jure was condemned by Act of Parliament in Scotland in 1584 for the argument it asserted about the legitimacy of resisting a tyrant.98 As early as 1586, then, Fletcher was exposed, at least indirectly, to supporters of and sympathisers with troublesome texts that endorsed a mixed-estate form of government and defended the right, legitimacy and power of nobles and ‘private men’ to depose their monarch if the commonwealth was not being well managed by its prince. As for the influence of the French Huguenot, anti-Catholic League tracts on English writers and thinkers in this period, Parmelee suggests that their works were ‘well known in the Sidney circle’ in the 1570s and 1580s and that Sidney ‘held in common with Philippe du Plessis-Mornay a great admiration for George Buchanan’.99 Given Fletcher’s ties to those around Sidney through his patron Randolph, he may have been acquainted with or at least aware of the Huguenot resistance theory tracts in French or Latin. In Fletcher’s discussion of the decayed and barbarous state of Russia, he asserted that the Russian nobility were too weak and servile to make any form of resistance against tyrannical government. He went on to argue that, as a result, the people of Russia now longed for foreign invasion.100 In this view we find parallels with the pattern of arguments presented in the anti-Catholic League tract Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579), generally attributed to Philippe du Plessis-Mornay. Sections III and IV of the Vindiciae deal respectively with ‘Whether it be lawfull to resist a Prince which doth oppresse or ruine a publique State, and how farre such resistance may be extended, by whom, how and by what right, or law it is

163

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth permitted’ and ‘Whether neighbour Princes or States may be, or are bound by Law to give Succours to the Subjects of other Princes, afflicted for the cause of true Religion, or oppressed by manifest tyranny’.101 Significantly, the only English edition of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos printed in this period was published in 1588 and consisted solely of the fourth and final part of the text: ‘The Question. When the Subjects of anie prince are either afflicted for religion or oppressed with tyrannie, it is lawfull for the Princes inhabiting about them to send them ayde’.102 This was published as A short apologie for Christian souldiours wherein is conteined, how that we ought both to propagate, and also if neede require, to defende by force of armes, the Catholike Church of Christ, against the tyrannie of Antichrist and his adherentes. This fourth part allowed for and indeed encouraged the duty of a foreign prince to intervene in the case of tyrannical government in a neighbouring state, which was certainly appropriate in the context of English support for and military intervention in the Low Countries. This English translation of the fourth part of the Vindiciae did, however, assert that it was in no way legitimate or legal for anyone but a prince to intervene and resist a tyrant.103 Thus in England in the late 1580s it was acceptable in published print for foreign princes to intervene in cases of tyranny in neighbouring countries, but anathema for private persons, whether nobility or not, to take matters into their own hands if they suffered under a tyrannical government. As Parmelee has so deftly demonstrated in her study on the influence of French anti-League propaganda in Elizabethan England, ‘while English opinion stood unwaveringly in support of the Huguenots in their struggle to survive in Catholic France, French works containing ideas unpalatable to the queen’s councillors never appeared in England, Protestant though their authors might be’.104 The exception was the carefully selected and edited final part of the Vindiciae, which served to legitimate Elizabeth’s active intervention in the cause of the rebel Netherlanders against Spanish tyranny. In fact, although the Elizabethan regime, especially in its later decades, denounced theories that validated resistance to monarchs, English translations of Dutch propaganda that endorsed such resistance theories against Spanish tyranny appeared openly in English print culture without censure.105 This was one of the ‘hypocrises’ of Elizabethan foreign policy criticised by English Catholics in exile, that resistance to tyranny was justifiable and legitimate in the context of the Netherlands, but that the deposing power of the pope that freed Catholics from obedience to Elizabeth’s tyranny was deemed illegitimate and illegal by the Elizabethan regime and Catholic accusations of tyranny were censored.106 Fletcher’s suggestion that Russians needed to be liberated from the slavery of tyranny, and that the people longed for foreign invasion to achieve this, was disturbingly congruent with the views of dissenting Catholics. A Treatise of Treasons claimed that if nothing was done to stop the machinations of

164

A commonwealth counselled Elizabeth’s puppet-masters, then ‘her Subjects, for the intolerable servitude that they susteine under the Tyrannie of those two that raigne by her name, shal cal in Foreine forces in greater numbers, then both shalbe hable to put foorth againe’.107 The author(s) of the treatise did not want the assassination of Elizabeth, but rather to liberate her from evil counsellors who were destroying the ancient nobility, persecuting their own people (English Catholics) and exploiting the queen’s weaknesses for their own political ends.108 ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ went further in forewarning that the people themselves would rise up against the tyranny of Leicester, ‘who maketh no accompte to injurie and oppresse whole countries and commonalties together’,109 as the Romans had risen up and destroyed Nero and later Vitellius: For that the universal hatred of a people is a perilous matter. And if I were in his Lordship’s case, I should often think of the end of Nero, who, after all his glory, upon fury of the people was adjudged to have his head thrust into a pillory and so to be beaten to death with rods and thongs. Or rather I should fear the success of Vitellius, the third emperor after Nero, who for his wickedness and oppression of the people was taken by them at length, when fortune began to fail him, and led out of his palace naked, with hooks of iron fastened in his flesh, and so drawn through the city with infamy.110

The themes outlined in Fletcher’s text on Russia (the symptoms and degradations of tyranny, the reducing of the ancient nobility, the prospect of relief by foreign invasion or by resistance to the tyrant) had all been foreshadowed by English Catholic propagandists attacking the Elizabethan regime. To anyone even vaguely familiar with those banned texts, Fletcher’s portrait of Russia might look very much like a repetition of those Catholic critiques. Presumably, Fletcher would have been at least somewhat aware of this line of Catholic attack because of the notoriety of these texts. This raises the possibility that Of the Russe Common Wealth was vulnerable to being seen as endorsing the banned Catholic critiques (regardless of Fletcher’s own views) and that Fletcher may have tried to protect his work and deflect potential accusations by making sure that his criticisms of the Russian religion and church in explicitly anti-Catholic terms demonstrated suitably his Protestant credentials. If Fletcher did try to shield his book against looking like an endorsement of Catholic critiques of the regime by utilising a discourse of pervasive anti-popery and describing Russian priests in terms associated with puritan views, this may have opened him to another source of danger. His work may have appeared to echo puritan surveys of the Elizabethan church that heavily criticised establishment non-preaching ministers as ignorant and disengaged from their flock. Whitgift and his acolytes were deeply sensitive about puritan critiques of the establishment in the wake of the Marprelate affair – the illegal publication of a series of irreverent, satirical pamphlets, attacking the

165

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Elizabethan episcopacy and proposing a Presbyterian alternative in its place. It is possible, then, that Fletcher sought to avoid the Scylla of being identified with Catholic critiques of the regime, but ended up being ensnared by the Charybdis of what may have looked like a puritan critique of the Elizabethan church in need of further reformation at a time when such critiques were being condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities.111 In February 1589, Richard Bancroft delivered a sermon to the public at Paul’s Cross in response to the ‘Martin Marprelate’ tracts, which was quickly published and widely dispersed.112 The sermon connected puritanism directly with resistance theory, denouncing as seditious such texts as the Vindiciae and De jure regni apud Scotos, which legitimised resistance to a tyrannical magistrate. Bancroft informed his audience that these books argued ‘it is lawfull for the people by force of armes to resist the Prince, if he hinder the building of the Church’ and that ‘if princes do hinder them that seeke for this discipline, they are tyrants both to the church and ministers … And being tyrants they may be deposed by their subjects.’113 Bancroft labelled such ideas ‘most strange and rebellious propositions stiflie maintained, dilated and amplified’ and exhorted his flock to be wary of thinking that such ideas ‘cannot in any sort be applied to our reformers in England: my answer is, that I wish from the bottome of my hart it were so, but I greatly feare, by that which already is done, that excepte there be in time verie good order taken, it will fall out far otherwise’.114 Although Fletcher was no separatist, nor a Catholic dissident, his consideration of resistance to a tyrant, in this case the Russian emperor, placed him on thin ice in a regime whose tide had turned against conciliar government and further reformation and towards anti-puritanism and political conservatism. With Whitgift and Bancroft in the ascendant, imposing conservative Protestantism, inciting anti-popery and demonising puritanism in all quarters, and with Fletcher’s zealous Protestant and internationally minded patrons (Walsingham and Randolph) both dead, Fletcher was launching his treatise into a commonwealth regime in transition. The ‘flashes of topicality’ found in Fletcher’s text, resembling both the arguments of dissenting Catholics and anti-League Huguenot and Presbyterian writers, may have been too easy to read as controversial, and at variance with the increasingly claustrophobic tenor of Elizabeth’s reign.115 RUSSIAN POPERY, ENGLISH ANTI-POPERY Fletcher used the pervasive language of anti-popery to describe the Russian church and to record how Russian Orthodox religious practices and doctrines resembled some of the worst abuses of ‘popery’. The language of anti-popery itself was the most easily available and accessible language in which Fletcher

166

A commonwealth counselled could dissect, as well as interpret for an English audience, the character and conditions of religious practice in Russia. In this sense, anti-popery was a convenient linguistic trope used to aid the conceptualisation and interpretation of a land and religion beyond the scope of ordinary Elizabethan imaginative boundaries. Fletcher’s depiction of Russia’s corrupt clergy as ignorant, unlearned, idolatrous and clad in excessive clerical garb bore some resemblance to reformed and puritan condemnations of the Roman Catholic Church. For reformed Englishmen of an advanced Protestant view, the Catholic Church was the primary archetype of religious corruption and decay, so deeply infected as it was by ignorance, idolatry and by the Antichrist himself. ‘Popery’ was a far more insidious and destructive force than the Elizabethans’ more tangible adversaries in religion, the Turks, Jews or pagans, for ‘Anti-Christ was an agent of Satan’, the agent of Satan, embodied in the pope and residing in the Catholic Church ‘pretending piety and reverence while in fact inverting and perverting the values of true religion’.116 Fletcher’s use of this language of anti-popery to describe Russian religion consequently drew the reader’s attention to the threat of Antichrist embodied in the Russian Orthodox Church and the tyrannical government of Russia, but more importantly to Russia’s vulnerability to the inveiglements of Rome. As we have seen in Chapter 2, the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism was being played out even in the far-flung court of Feodor I, as the deposed Patriarch of Constantinople solicited the Russian emperor on behalf of both Philip II and the pope to ally himself to Catholicism, spiritual and political. However, the news of Elizabeth’s victory against the Spanish Armada appeared not only as a triumph over a political and physical threat, but also represented the defeat of the ‘popish’ heresy of Catholicism and the blessing of God on English Protestantism. The outcome of this particular round of ‘popery’ versus ‘true church’ had resulted in victory and affirmation for the bearers of God’s right religion, flourishing despite the odds in Elizabeth’s commonwealth. Fletcher’s relation of the Patriarch of Constantinople’s proposal to remove his see to the city of Moscow provided a perfect opportunity to reveal more characteristics of the Antichrist, embedded in the figure of the pope. Fletcher speculated on how the patriarch’s translation of the see would ‘make some schisme betwixt the Greeke and Russe Churche’, and predicted that the pope would then take advantage of such a schism to ‘bring over the Russe Churche to the sea of Rome (to which end peradventure he devised the stratageam and cast in this matter of schisme among them)’.117 In this instance, Fletcher’s unconcealed hostility to Catholicism was displayed in his conspiracy theory regarding the patriarch’s behaviour. According to Fletcher, the proposal of the translation of the see from Constantinople to Moscow clearly had more than a trace of the Antichrist mastermind about it.

167

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth The extensive use in Fletcher’s text of the language of anti-popery points to resonances with the anxieties and concerns that riddled the political and religious consciences and contexts of late Elizabethan England. Fletcher’s text displays as commonplace these deep-seated anxieties about the perceived threat of popery. As we have seen in Chapter 2, Fletcher was involved in the torturous interrogation of Catholic seminary priests, a governmental policy driven by the fear that the English commonwealth would succumb to ‘Catholic’ invasion, both political and religious.118 During the 1580s, the increasing numbers of seminary priests deployed on missions to proselytise and persuade individuals back to Catholicism and to support the claim of Mary, Queen of Scots to the English throne, combined with the assassination plots on Elizabeth’s life, bred a climate of intense hostility and anxiety over a resurgence of militant Tridentine Catholicism in England. This fear – that the Protestant cause was to be defeated by powerful international Catholic alliances emanating from Rome and Spain – was sanctioned in statute law drawn up against Catholic seminary priests, making it a treasonable offence simply to be a seminary priest abroad in England.119 In fact, the execution of Catholic priests peaked during the period 1586–91: 1588 saw the largest number of Catholics martyred (thirty one) in any single year in the period 1535–1681; 1591 claimed the second highest number (fifteen) of Catholics martyred.120 It was, of course, the year 1591 when Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth was published and also when Fletcher was commissioned by the privy council to examine, with torture if necessary, the seminary priest George Beesley, his associate Robert Humberson and Eustace Whyte and Brian Lassy.121 As Fletcher demonstrated in his analysis of the Russian state, corrupt religion played an integral role in the sustaining of tyrannical government, just as right religion preserved a civil commonwealth. Fletcher’s language of anti-popery, then, encapsulated a condemnation of both tyrannical political government and tyrannical religious government, epitomised in the position of the pope. Russian Orthodoxy’s similarity in practice, doctrine and liturgy to Catholicism made the analogy between the two easy to draw, especially given the increasingly acute political threat of Catholic tyranny overtaking continental Europe in the 1580s and the common opinion of Russia as despotic and barbaric. For Elizabethan readers of Fletcher’s text, the use of this language of anti-popery to describe corruption in both Russian religion and government could be reflected back onto the workings of the Elizabethan regime in other ways, implying that the sinister threat of Antichrist could be felt close to home as well as in the cold and barbaric north. Puritan and Presbyterian protestations about corrupt episcopacy and tyrannical church government were explicit and forthright, particularly in the early decades after Elizabeth’s accession. Puritans argued that a regime that was not reformed enough was

168

A commonwealth counselled placing obstacles to salvation in the path of many a subject who needed true religion, rather than popish corruption. This religious and political obstinacy was bordering on tyrannical government, as the Vindiciae would have it, as the subjects under such government were being ‘afflicted for the cause of true religion’, held back by a regime that had not got rid of enough of the abuses of the ‘popish church’.122 Led by John Whitgift and endorsed by the queen, the governmental response during the 1580s was a crack-down on puritan and Presbyterian positions that were seen to be subversive of both church and state authority. This response, fuelled by the fear that puritan hostility to episcopal authority also brought with it opposition to political authority, only served to provide martyrs for the puritan cause and reasons to radicalise further. Fletcher himself had been on the receiving end of the royal will in the parliament of 1584–5, when the bill drawn up by a committee he served on recommending further reformation of the Church of England was summarily dismissed by the queen with a word of discipline to the Commons to meddle no further in matters of the established church.123 In the end, of course, Elizabeth, Whitgift and the religious settlement triumphed as moderate puritans increasingly shied away from their radical puritan counterparts and the radicals themselves, such as Thomas Cartwright, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, were punished either through imprisonment or in the more extreme cases of Greenwood and Barrow through execution.124 Fletcher’s use of the language of anti-popery and his condemnation of corruption within the Russian church reflected an image of religion very familiar to those who wished for further reformation of the English church, hoping to rid it of the ‘popish’ clerical vestments, the sign of the cross at baptism and bowing at the name of Jesus.125 In Martin Marprelate’s The Epistle (1588), for instance, the English ecclesiastical authorities were fashioned as ‘proud, popish, presumptuous, profane, paultrie, pestilent and pernicious prelates’.126 It is notable that Fletcher accused the Russian clergy of prohibiting any innovation or learning entering or circulating within the land and that he included a report of how ‘some yeares past in the other Emperors time … a printing house was set up … But not long after, the house was set on fire in the night time, and the presse and letters quite burnt up, as was thought by the procurement of the Cleargy men.’127 In Fletcher’s Russia, press censorship and the suppression of learning at the instigation of the clergy was yet another sign of a tyrannical state; a point laden with some significance given the Elizabethan regime’s feverish attempts to shut down the mobile press of Robert Waldegrave, responsible for the printing of the early Marprelate tracts, and to imprison all those involved in the publications.128 The later censorship of Fletcher’s own work adds another layer of poignancy to his observations on the suppression of learning and the circulation of ideas through print within Russia.

169

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Fletcher’s work demonstrated a personalised and pragmatic, as well as a somewhat ambiguous, use of the language of anti-popery. Anti-popery, it seems, was a fluid discourse that could be used, for instance, to describe the corrupt nature of the Russian Orthodox Church and the potential threat of Antichrist at work in it, as well as harbouring the potential to be read as an allusion to the situation of religious politics in England. At the same time, it could be employed simply to reveal the current concerns of the author’s mind and his attempts to translate something unfamiliar to an audience in England that would understand the familiar language of anti-popery. Fletcher’s text, with its multiple agendas of diplomatic intelligence, travel information and counsel for commonwealth, demonstrated a distinct flexibility in the use of the language of anti-popery, employing it both to make the Russian Orthodox religion recognisable by using a language loaded with imagery that an English audience would understand, as well as hinting at the threat inherent in a description of the Russian church as ‘popish’. In light of Peter Lake’s prolific work on the subject of anti-popery and anti-puritanism and his pervasive influence on the associated historiography, there is a danger of reading all uses of the language of anti-popery as religio-political polemic, underwritten with accusations of Catholic and/or forward Protestant conspiracy theory. This presents a somewhat circumscribed model for exploring late Elizabethan religious and political discourses. What Fletcher’s text demonstrates is the way in which the discourse of anti-popery was used in order to further a greater argument about good and bad government, inviting the commonwealth to contemplate, as he had done, the legitimate limits of power and who genuinely had the interests of the literal common wealth at heart. Fletcher’s treatise implicitly suggested that any state that used and abused corrupt religion also bred tyranny and decay and most certainly did not value the common interests of its subjects. In Fletcher’s case the language of anti-popery and ‘commonwealth’ were entwined to provide a text that could be read as both positive and negative counsel on how a godly, civil commonwealth could be achieved. Fletcher’s use of the discourse of anti-popery provides us with a fitting example of how Elizabethan texts had the potential to be read with multiple and layered agendas and discourses, depending on the specific content and context of publications.129 His work resonated with the contemporary religio-political state of England as well as providing important foreign intelligence on the religious condition and political vulnerabilities of Russia. By permeating his text with the discourse of anti-popery, Fletcher revealed his underlying commitment to protecting the fragile Protestantism of the English civil commonwealth and added further religious reformation to his ideal of what the civil commonwealth should look like, in contrast to the tyrannical state of Russia.

170

A commonwealth counselled ECONOMIC OPPRESSION IN THE TYRANNICAL COMMONWEALT H The economic tyranny exerted by the tsars was revealed by Fletcher through his discussion of Russian fiscal policy. Although he set aside a chapter to discuss in detail the revenues and finances of the tsars, Fletcher also suffused his text with references to the detrimental effects of tyrannical government in the form of harsh impositions and taxes on the people with the result that ‘both Nobilitie and Commons are but stoarers for the Prince, all running in the ende into the Emperours coffers’.130 The situation of English finances and economic politics during the 1580s and 1590s provides a conspicuous backcloth to Fletcher’s concerns with oppressive fiscal policies and the effects of these on the commonwealth. The 1580s, in particular, were suffused by thoughts, negotiations and discussions of war and the ongoing security of the young Protestant commonwealth of England, as the threat of conquest by Spanish Catholicism loomed large. Catholic tyranny appeared to be encroaching from every side upon English Protestant liberty, with Spanish and Habsburg power on the increase, embodied in the figure of Philip II, who had taken control of Portugal in 1580 and was drawing France ever more into his sphere of dominance, through the Guise faction and the Catholic League. In the Netherlands, the position of the Estates General was being undermined by the Spanish from the late 1570s onwards through Don John of Austria and later Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, leaving the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands desperate for assistance, eventually provided by the Duke of Anjou and, after his death, by English intervention.131 This constant threat and eventual conflict put huge strain on the political and financial wellbeing of the English Commonwealth. Elizabeth had financially supported the cause of the Northern Provinces throughout the 1580s, but as a result of active intervention in the Netherlands conflict, the cost of full-scale war became an enormous pressure on English finances and essentially on the English people. The extraordinary expenditures incurred by the war with Spain, the cost of suppressing rebellion in Ireland, supporting anti-Spanish factions in France and the Netherlands, controlling the Channel and Atlantic ports, raids in Portugal and the Azores, and the pension given to James VI to ensure the security of England’s northern border, were far too great to be covered by the parliamentary taxes granted in the years 1585, 1587, 1589, 1593, 1597 and 1601.132 Thus Elizabethan sources of revenue had to be found elsewhere.133 Consequently, local levies to provide for wartime exigencies fell heavily and unevenly on the commons, for instance in 1588 military exactions on the City of London totalled an extortionate £31,609.134 Coat-and-conduct money, militia rates, paying the salaries of muster-masters and the ever-hated ship money put

171

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth tremendous strain on local resources to the extent that the collection of such levies was contested, for example in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and forbidden outright in the case of ship-money collection in Suffolk.135 Additionally there were poor harvests in 1585 and 1586, pushing up grain prices to record levels. These factors made increases in taxation and impositions necessary, but politically dangerous. Poor harvests combined with the crisis in the export market for English cloth, as a result of political and military disruption of Antwerp, meant that this was a peculiarly difficult period of time for merchants, wool-growers and cloth-workers.136 The risk of social discontent and resistance to the government’s fiscal policies was surely only exacerbated by the fact that the external pressures and threat to English security were greater in the 1580s than they had ever been previously in Elizabeth’s reign.137 The result was chronic tax evasion and, at times, social unrest and protest; the regime’s fear of such social disorders resulted in the widespread imposition of provost-marshals to arrest suspicious-looking characters and to enforce martial law where necessary.138 The added expense of war only served to aggravate opposition to peace-time revenue-raising methods that were already unpopular. The unfortunate reality that English monarchs were land-poor and demesne revenue, in its most literal sense, did not provide enough income for the crown meant that it was necessary to find other means to produce income in order for the crown and commonwealth to function.139 Thus, much of the crown’s revenue was gained through fiscal practices that can be defined in some sense as taxation, but which were in fact based on the prerogative rights of the crown to raise income from sources ranging from monopolies, customs duties and impositions to forced loans, wardships and purveyance.140 Although not definitively taxation, these revenue-raising methods were a necessary means for the crown to gain income. They were, however, legally suspect, and often manifested as low-cost, high-yield rewards for favourites that had a propensity to put more money in the pockets of individuals and middlemen, at the expense of the commonwealth as a whole.141 Perhaps these were just the kind of fiscal policies that could be read onto Fletcher’s descriptions of the ‘strange cavillations’ and ‘Scythian … grosse and barbarous policie’ of the Russian emperor and his minions, fleecing and spoiling the commonwealth to the point of utter decay.142 The Elizabethan practice of selling off royal wardships as rewards, often to courtiers and members of the royal household, certainly appeared to be a ‘strange cavillation’ that involved subjecting minors ‘to the dictates of the marketplace’ to be treated as an investment that could be exploited and sometimes pressed into neglectful households and forced marriages.143 Such taxes, or taxation practices at least, were often viewed with hostility and their legality questioned, because they appeared to be a manipulation of the prerogative rights of the crown. Hurstfield has perceptively labelled the

172

A commonwealth counselled ship money, monopolies, exploitation of the forest laws, distraint of knighthood and other revenues as the bastard revenues, neither medieval nor modern, neither legal nor illegal, unjustifiable in theory and indispensable in practice. Whatever might be said in their defence, they constituted an affront to the commonsense and the interests of the propertied classes. But the crown had no choice … it was driven to search for an income by applying and distorting its constitutional rights, where opportunity served.144

The potential illegality and indefensibility of such policies for increasing the crown’s revenue opened the door to political resistance and conflict between parliament and crown, especially if the legality of such ‘bastard revenues’ could be contested. Fletcher’s detailing of the unusual means of gaining revenue employed by the Russian emperor had the potential to be interpreted by his audience as a critique of the dubious nature of these ‘demesne’ revenue-raising practices, which were being justified by the monarch’s prerogative.145 The practice of purveyance was a particularly contentious issue in the very immediate context of The Russe Common Wealth’s production and publication. The controversy over revenue-raising by means of purveyance had a long history of resistance and complaint. The practice was based on the ancient right of the crown to appropriate goods for the royal household and to purchase goods at the ‘king’s price’. Unsurprisingly, this right has been described as ‘potentially arbitrary and tyrannical’ and there were recurrent demands for curbs and limitations on the practice of purveyance to safeguard the commonwealth from indiscriminate seizures by monarchs.146 Objections were repeatedly made about this practice throughout Elizabeth’s reign, especially in the parliaments of 1571, 1581 and 1587.147 Elizabeth and her councillors managed to counter the Commons’ complaints against the corrupt and oppressive nature of purveyance with sharp reproof against such presumptuous meddling in the household affairs of the queen by calling into question ‘her Majesty’s grant and prerogative’ in these years.148 However, by 1589 the Commons were more prepared to contest Elizabeth’s prerogative rights as queen and forced her, eventually, to concede to revising the administration of her household in consultation with the parliament and appointing a royal commission to deal with the abuses of purveyance.149 The result was a system of ‘compounding’ which allowed for a group, usually the JPs, of each county to levy a composition tax, buy supplies at a normal rate and sell them on to the crown at the lower ‘king’s price’, recouping their loss out of the composition levy. This would potentially remove the worst abuses and spread the cost of the practice of purveyance more evenly.150 Through this concession Elizabeth had managed to side-step parliament’s demand for new legislation that could have limited

173

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth the monarchical prerogative, by asking members of parliament to cooperate in planning and instituting reform of the abuses.151 Reading between the lines, Fletcher’s audience could have interpreted the descriptions of the Russian emperor’s exactions and impositions as pointing, through language that held symbolic capital, to the dangers of the English crown manifesting tyrannical tendencies in its practices of revenue-raising.152 Not only was tyranny identifiable in the rejection of ‘good counsel’, the decrease of the ancient and virtuous nobility, and a corrupt or ill-reformed church, but also fundamentally in the financial wellbeing (or decay) of the commonwealth. It was the duty of the monarch to protect her subjects economically as well as politically, spiritually and physically and to be just and benevolent, as opposed to greedy and exacting, in the sphere of revenues and royal economy. The threat of economic tyranny in the Elizabethan regime had already been highlighted by the authors of A Treatise of Treasons, bemoaning the ‘new inventions to pill your people for these purposes: & (bysides accustomed Subsidies, Fifteenes, and lones) to levie new exactions of them by forcible Tasking and Collections, under false names’.153 ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ likewise exposed the favouritism shown to private subjects who ‘possesseth so manie gainful licenses to himself alone … moste pernicious unto the common wealth … that hath his share in al offices of great profit and holdeth an absolute monopole of the same’, to the detriment of all Elizabeth’s other subjects.154 Fletcher’s discussion of the ‘strange’ nature of Russian economic policies was communicated to an audience that would have understood the political nuances of a language of ‘monopolies’, ‘customs’ and ‘rents’ used to describe, for example, the emperor’s personal and exclusive control over the Russian fur, corn and wood trade.155 Fletcher explained the tsar’s common practice ‘to make a Monopoly for the time of such commodities as are paid him for rent, or custom, & to inhanse the price of them, as furres, corn, wood, &c. What time none must sell of the same kind of commodity, til the Emperours be all sold’.156 The use of monopolies for rewards of service was widespread, particularly in the late Elizabethan regime. These monopolies for preferred courtiers were not only cheap for the government, but very lucrative for the recipient.157 However, the queen’s policy of rewarding her favourites with monopolies on goods such as glass, salt and sea-coal compromised her duty to provide benevolently for her realm as a whole, as the private patentee prospered at the expense of the rest of the queen’s subjects. This made the policy of monopolies highly unpopular, especially when the crown also began to take a percentage of patentees’ profits to offset the customs revenues lost through the decrease in foreign imports of goods that were now being produced at home.158 The policy of granting monopolies to favourites was both a danger to the realm and a danger to the queen. By putting the crown’s revenues and the rewarding of

174

A commonwealth counselled her courtiers before the wellbeing of the commonwealth, the queen was not fulfilling her duty as a godly monarch to protect and provide for her people and thus risking the discontent as well as the decay of her subjects. In the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, protests over monopolies came to a head. In 1601, Francis Moore, a renowned lawyer, politician and active opponent of monopolies, remonstrated that there was ‘no act of Hers that hath been, or is more derogatory to her Majesty, or more odious to the subject, or more dangerous to the common-wealth, than the granting of these monopolies’.159 The intimate ties between the crown and trading companies who were granted monopolies similarly caused hostility from merchants who were excluded or not part of the privileged and incorporated trading companies. Monopolies were granted to trading companies on the understanding that to discover and establish a new trade a large amount of capital was initially required to cover the costs and risks of loss of goods and ships in preliminary expeditions. Complaints surfaced, though, when after a reasonable amount of time the founders had not recovered their losses, and yet the monopoly still prohibited independent English traders or rival, unauthorised companies from trading with foreign lands.160 Enterprises such as the Muscovy Company were rife with corruption and inefficiency, as servants, factors and members alike took advantage of joint-stock company resources in order to pursue their own private trade, something Fletcher had highlighted in his diplomatic reports to Elizabeth and Burghley on the state of the Muscovy Company’s trade in Russia in the late 1580s.161 Another dubious taxation practice that generated resentment in the Elizabethan commonwealth was the farming of customs revenues. Simon Adams has drawn attention not only to the prominence of concessions and monopolies in Elizabethan crown finances and patronage, but also to the exploitation of customs revenues through farming. Leicester, Hatton, Walsingham and later Essex were all recipients of licences to farm customs as rewards for service. Again, the problem with these forms of reward was that the cost fell on the commonwealth rather than on the crown, which led to criticism of and hostility to such policies and the beneficiaries of these policies.162 The recipients of such forms of patronage could be seen as corrupt citizens working for private profit alone and encouraged by a covetous and inequitable monarch who did not have the good of the commonwealth at heart.163 Through the practice of offering licences to farm customs revenues and granting monopolies to favourites, certain members of the body politic were favoured over others. This strategy ran the risk of social and political upheaval, for those not favoured could easily be exploited by those who had been rewarded and, as a consequence, the oppressed members of the body politic could rise up against a monarch who had elevated certain members of the commonwealth above the rest.164

175

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth The abundance of criticism in Fletcher’s text regarding a tyrannical emperor who was greedy, exploitative, extorting and viewed his people ‘like to his beard. The oftner shaven, the thicker it would grow. Or like sheepe, that must be shorne once a yeere at the least: to keep them from being over laden with their wooll’ points to an acute concern with how easily the finances of a commonwealth could be exploited not for the good of the people, but solely for the good of the ruler and his or her favoured few.165 The pervasive language of economic tyranny in Fletcher’s text kept the issue of ‘godly economy’ firmly in the audience’s mind, allowing for the agency of the reader to draw politically charged comparisons between the Russian and English contexts, even if Fletcher himself had no authorial intention to glance at the Elizabethan regime as he wrote Russia.

RUSSIAN AND IRISH COMPARISONS Fletcher’s portrayal of Russia as a vicious cycle of tyranny and repression that ultimately served only to increase the emperor’s treasury and to damage the poor, leaving the commons suffering under multiple layers of injustice, may have struck a chord in readers’ minds with the state of Ireland. George Turberville certainly drew a direct comparison between the two: ‘wilde Irish are as civil as the Russies in their kinde, hard choice which is the best of both, ech bloody, rude and blinde’.166 Edmund Tremayne detailed the oppression that the Irish tenant suffered under from his lord, who ‘useth the inferior people at his will and pleasure he eateth and spendeth upon them with man horse and dog he useth man wife and children according to his own life … not only as an absolute king but as a tyrant or a lord over bondmen’.167 Just as Fletcher complained of the hegemony of the spoken law in Russia which favoured the lord over the common people, so Tremayne had asserted that in Ireland ‘shall you not find any other law betwixt the lord and tenant but the very will and pleasure of the lord’.168 There was a long tradition of representing Ireland as savage, backward and barbaric. Giraldus Cambrensis’s twelfth-century depiction of the Irish described them as a people living off beasts and like beasts; a people that still adheres to the most primitive way of pastoral living. For as humanity progresses from the forests to arable fields, and towards village life and civil society, this people is too lazy for agriculture and is heedless of material comfort; and they positively dislike the rules and legalities of civil intercourse.169

As Elizabethan colonial policy looked to reform the state of what was nominally their land, even if barbaric and degenerate, the representation of Ireland’s

176

A commonwealth counselled barbarism and desperate need of reformation became a focus for Elizabethan humanist reforming zeal. In the early 1570s, Sir Thomas Smith’s plans and petition to set up a colony in Ireland were based on the idea that the Irish were savage and backward and did not make proper use of the land that God had given to them. The indenture between the queen and Smith and his colleagues reveals a shared image of the Irish as ‘a wicked, barbarous and uncivil people’.170 It could only be beneficial and rewarding to the English commonwealth, bringing ‘honour and commodity to her majesty’, to ‘bring the ruse and barbarous nation of the wild Irish to more civility of manner’.171 Smith was not the only one in the Elizabethan regime considering the potential possibilities and problems of colonisation in Ireland. Cecil, Leicester, Thomas Radcliffe, Sir Francis Knollys, Sir Henry Sidney and Sir William Fitzwilliam, along with private subjects such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Richard Grenville and Walter Devereux, were all involved in such considerations at one time or another.172 In Edmund Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland, Irenius, the rhetorician of the two interlocutors, explained to Eudoxus that the Irish were ‘a people very stubborne and untamed’ and that ‘the evils, which seeme to me, most hurtfull to the common-weale of that land … are of three sorts: The first in the Lawes, the second in the Customes, and the last in Religion.’173 Spenser’s description of the Irish clergy bears much resemblance to Fletcher’s comments on the Russian clergy, suggesting a politically expedient shared language of incivility, ignorance and popery, used by Elizabethan commentators to represent the degradations of ‘barbaric’ lands such as Ireland and Russia. In Spenser’s Ireland, the clergy ‘neither read scriptures, nor preach to the people, nor administer the communion, but baptisme they doe, for they christen yet after the popish fashion’.174 In Russia, Fletcher described the priests as ‘men utterly unlearned, which is no marveile, forasmuch as their makers, the Bishops themselves (as before was saide) are cleere of that qualitie, and make no farther use at al of any kind of learning, no not of the scriptures themselves’,175 and he also remarked on the similarities between the Russian and the ‘popish’ form of baptism.176 The views of Spenser, Sir Thomas Smith and Tremayne and the reforming ideology of the Leicester and Sidney circles all point to an Elizabethan understanding of the Gaelic Irish as profoundly backward, almost beyond civilising, or in need of the intervention of the English sword to bring about civility in Ireland. By their very nature, the Irish were not only socially inferior, but more fundamentally culturally and spiritually degenerate, at a more primitive stage of development than the English and this became the justification for using any means necessary to civilise Ireland. However, if this could not be achieved, the absolute barbarism of the people was used as justification to slaughter the Irish in order to plant civility in these fertile lands.177 Nicholas Canny argues

177

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth that in Elizabethan colonial ideology the same condemnation that had been brought against the Irish was subsequently imposed on the Amerindians and enslaved, imported Africans in the New World arena – that they were idle, lazy, licentious and barbaric and unable to make ‘godly’ use of the land they inhabited.178 Echoes of Irish barbarism, as depicted in the ideological literature surrounding Elizabethan activities in Ireland, can be seen in Fletcher’s representation of the poor, oppressed, servile commoners of Russia. Canny notes as a commonplace in English colonial ideology the role of English ‘compassion’ for the fate of the poor in ‘barbaric’ societies such as Ireland. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, contemporary English commentators often divided up Ireland into two categories, ‘the barbarous tyrants or “cruell cannibales” and the meek laborers whom they held in utter bondage’, as a justification for their own, at times cruel and barbaric, interventions and colonisation attempts in Ireland.179 Perhaps Spenser displayed this attitude most explicitly with his dichotomous description of the Irish kerne and the Irish churl: ‘[T]‌here are two sortes of people in Ireland to be considered of … the one called the kerne the other the chorle. The kerne bredd up in idleness and naturally inclined to mischiefs and wickednesse, the chorle willing to labour and take pains if he might peaceably enjoy the fruites thereof.’180 Such idealised depictions of the poor Gaelic Irish tenants were used as validation for the ideology of cultural development that the English colonisers had constructed, with themselves as socially, culturally and spiritually superior and the Irish as degenerate barbarians, needing redemption. The practical out-workings of such ideology resulted in violent, inhumane treatment of the Irish, for as Canny argued, if the insecure colonising Englishman were ‘to admit that the oppressed did not exist or were not anxious to avail themselves of English justice, then the colonist’s raison d’être was called in question’.181 Despite the similarity of the descriptions and the reasoning behind these representations of both the Russians and the Irish, Fletcher’s argument was slightly different. Fletcher, of course, was not attempting to justify any kind of inhumane means to civilise an apparently barbaric country. Rather he was pointing to the degrading effects of what tyrannical government could do to a land and its people. The similarities, however, were not without a certain resonance, germane to the politics of Elizabethan colonisation in Ireland. Fletcher’s discussion of Russia’s ‘colonies and pollicie in mainteyning their purchases by conquest’ is not incidental in the text and although no explicit comment is made on English colonial activity in Ireland, anxieties over this area of English policy could have been read into Fletcher’s discussion of the policies of the Russian emperor in his colonial conquests. In the same way that Richard Beacon expressed a critical discussion of English policy in Ireland, through the veil of the Athenian attempt by Solon to capture and colonise

178

A commonwealth counselled the island of Salamina, Fletcher’s readers may have taken the opportunity to meditate on a critique of tyrannical imperial policy in Fletcher’s depiction of Russian conquest.182 It is also possible, that in an indirect way, Fletcher was making an implicit argument about the follies of greedy colonising. Fletcher observed that it had not been long since the Russian emperors had acquired their great colonial conquests, expanding their territory to include parts of Lithuania, Kazan and Astrakhan, Permia, Pechora and Siberia. He also commented that it had not been long since the government and thus the land and institutions of Russia had become increasingly corrupt. Was this a humanist warning, in the vein of Cicero’s concerns regarding the ethics of empire and the dangers of conquest as a pitfall of the greedy? Was this counsel on the treacherous overstretching of legitimate power, the consequences of corruption and the sin of gluttony, apparent in the oppressive practices of the Spanish conquistadors, as well as in the tyranny of the Russe commonwealth?183 George Turberville’s verses on Russia clearly display a popular perception of Russia as bound indelibly and indefinitely to its barbarity and tyranny: If thou be wise, as wise thou art, and wilt be rulde by mee: Live still at home, and covet not, those barbarous coasts to see. No good befals a man that seekes, and finds no better place: No civil customs to be learn’d where God bestows no grace. And truly ill they do deserve to be belov’d of God that neither love nor stand in awe of his assured rod.184

Fletcher’s hint at the Russian people’s desire for foreign intervention to bring redemption to Russia from corrupt religion, tyrannical government and ultimately their own slavery is a far cry from the more common dismissal of Russia as far off and far from civility and redemption. Fletcher’s Russia may have been somewhat distinctive, but his implicit engagement with issues relating to the domestic and foreign politics of the late 1580s and early 1590s produced a narrative that was both recognisable and potentially contentious. The political conscience, humanist education and aspiring ambitions of Fletcher, a civil lawyer, parliament-man and poet of the late Elizabethan period, provide some explanation for his distinct and yet familiar view of an unfamiliar land. In confronting the issues of tyranny in government, the roles of parliament and nobility and the legitimacy of resisting a tyrant, Fletcher was not simply giving a nod to the pressing concerns in Elizabethan political and cultural debate, but was actually engaging with these discussions through the representation of Russia; thinking out loud about the state of civil government on a more universal scale, through the medium of an exotic and unfamiliar land. In writing Of the Russe Common Wealth Fletcher was in the process of doing his duty as a virtuous member of the body politic, providing good and timely ‘counsel’ on the threat of tyrannical rule to the wellbeing of a commonwealth. In

179

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth printing Of the Russe Common Wealth, Fletcher widened his remit of counsel from queen and court to the public audience of the commonwealth and thus engaged the ‘public sphere’ of Elizabethan England in the all-important discussion of how to safeguard the fledgling Protestant realm and their virgin queen from all forms of tyranny. NOTES 1 P. Collinson, ‘The state as monarchical commonwealth: Tudor England’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 15:1 (2002), 93. 2 Fletcher, RCW, epistle dedicatory. 3 A. B., ‘A. B. to the reader’, in H. Savile, The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba (London, 1591), sigs 3r–v. 4 P. Kewes, ‘Henry Savile’s Tacitus and the politics of Roman history in late Elizabethan England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 74:4 (2011), 528. 5 Kewes, ‘Henry Savile’s Tacitus’, 528. 6 See D. F. R. de M., An answer to the untruthes, published and printed in Spaine, in glorie of their supposed victorie atchieved against our English Navie (London, 1589), esp. p. 48; I. L., A true and perfecte description of a straunge monstar borne in the citty of Rome in Italy, in the yeare of our salvation 1585 (London, 1590). See also S. Harward, The solace for the souldier and saylour contayning a discourse and apologie out of the heavenly word of God (London, 1592). For secondary literature, see R. Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 181–91. 7 J. N. Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain, 1500–1700: The Formation of a Myth (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), pp. 520–3. 8 See I. de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 341–2. 9 Fletcher, RCW, p. 16r. 10 See L. F. Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1996). 11 See T. W., trans., An answer and true discourse to a certain letter lately sent by the Duke of Alba (in maner of a pardon) to those of Amsterdam (London, 1573), sigs B–Biii. 12 See Parmelee, Good Newes, pp. 54–73. 13 See N. Canny, ‘Edmund Spenser and the development of an Anglo-Irish identity’, Yearbook of English Studies, 13 (1983), 1–19. 14 Parmelee, Good Newes, pp. 53–73. 15 Parmelee, Good Newes, p. 53. 16 Fletcher, RCW, 16r. 17 Fletcher, RCW, 16r. 18 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 16r–v.

180

A commonwealth counselled 19 Fletcher, RCW, p. 16v. 20 P. Collinson, ‘The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 69:2 (1987), 394–424. For scholarship relating to the concept of the ‘monarchical republic’, see J. F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 21 Fletcher, RCW, p. 16v. 22 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 16r, 26r. 23 See D. Dean, ‘Wentworth, Peter (1524–1597)’, in ODNB. 24 Fletcher, RCW, p. 35v. 25 Fletcher, RCW, p. 22r. 26 Fletcher, RCW, p. 28r. 27 Fletcher, RCW, p. 28r. 28 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 110v–111r, 35v. For more information on Feodor’s court and household, see R. O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613 (New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 205–11. 29 Fletcher, RCW, p. 32v. 30 Fletcher, RCW, p. 27r. 31 Fletcher, RCW, p. 99r. 32 Fletcher, RCW, p. 99r. 33 A Treatise of Treasons (Louvain?, 1572), p. 84v. 34 Treatise of Treasons, p. 84v. 35 ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’, originally printed as The copie of a leter, wryten by a Master of Arte of Cambrige, to his friend in London concerning some talke past of late betwen two worshipful and grave men, about the present state, and some procedinges of the Erle of Leycester and his friendes in England (Paris, 1584), passim. 36 ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’, p. 52. 37 D. C. Peck, ‘Authorship’, in D. C. Peck (ed.), Leicester’s Commonwealth: The Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584) and Related Documents (Athens, OH and London: Ohio University Press, 1985), pp. 21–5. 38 Fletcher, RCW, p. 27r. 39 See P. Lake, ‘ “The monarchical republic of Elizabeth I” revisited (by its victims) as a conspiracy’, in B. Coward and J. Swann (eds), Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 87–111. 40 A caveat for France, upon the present evils that it now suffereth Together with the remedies necessarie for the same (London, 1588), p. 4. 41 The Verye trueth of the conference betwixt the queene mother, and the prince of Conde, Julye, 1562 (n.p., 1562), sigs A3, A4. 42 R. K. Marshall, ‘Stewart, James, earl of Arran (c. 1545–1596)’, in ODNB.

181

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 43 By the Queene. A proclamation for the suppressing of seditious bookes and libelles (London, 1584). 44 J. Stubbs, The discoverie of a gaping gulf (London, 1579), sig. A2. 45 Stubbs, The discoverie, title-page and sig. A2. 46 Stubbs, The discoverie, sigs A2–A3. 47 See Natalie Mears, ‘Stubbe [Stubbs], John (c. 1541–1590)’, in ODNB. 48 See E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1930), I, p. 353. 49 Chambers, William Shakespeare, I, p. 353. 50 B. Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 209–13. 51 Fletcher, RCW, p. 22v. 52 Fletcher, RCW, p. 20v. 53 Fletcher, RCW, p. 23r. 54 T. Smith, De republica Anglorum: The maner of governement or policie of the realme of England (London, 1583), pp. 34–5; C. St German, Here after foloweth a lytell treatise called the newe addicions (London, 1531). 55 J. Guy, ‘Monarchy and counsel: models of the state’, in P. Collinson (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 125; G. R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559–1581 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 23. For discussion of competing views on the nature of kingship, see J. Sommerville, ‘Richard Hooker, Hadrian Saravia and the advent of the divine right of kings’, History of Political Thought, 4 (1983), 229–45. 56 Guy, ‘Monarchy and counsel’, pp. 136–7. 57 I. W. Archer, ‘Smith, Sir Thomas (1513–1577)’, in ODNB. 58 S. Baker House, ‘More, Sir Thomas (1478–1535)’, in ODNB. 59 See R. Pipes, ‘Introduction’, in G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, Facsimile Edition with Variants, ed. R. Pipes and J. V. A. Fine, Jr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 27–8. 60 N. Younger, ‘Securing the monarchical republic: the remaking of the lord lieutenancies in 1585’, Historical Research, 84:224 (2011), 249–51. 61 Cf. Pipes, ‘Introduction’, p. 28. See also L. E. Berry (ed.), The English Works of Giles Fletcher, the Elder (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp. 150–4. 62 Smith, De republica Anglorum, p. 35. 63 M. Graves, The Tudor Parliaments: Crown, Lords and Commons, 1485–1603 (London: Routledge, 1985) p. 1, and G. R. Elton, ‘Tudor government: the points of contact: parliament’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Tudor Monarchy (London: Arnold, 1997), p. 342. See also Elton, Parliament of England, pp. 16–20. 64 Smith, De republica Anglorum, p. 10. See also A. McLaren, ‘Reading Sir Thomas Smith’s De republica Anglorum as Protestant apologetic’, Historical Journal, 42:4

182

A commonwealth counselled (1999), 912–14, 921, and D. Hoak, ‘Sir William Cecil, Sir Thomas Smith and the monarchical republic of Tudor England’, in McDiarmid (ed.), Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, pp. 38–41. 65 Smith, De republica Anglorum, pp. 34, 47. 66 See the treatise or script of a speech, most likely written by Peter Wentworth, ‘Certayne statutes concerninge the cause of Perliament and priviledges and Liberties dew to them which bee of the Parlament and their Servaunts’, n.d., but after 1585, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, MS V.b.303, pp. 194–7. 67 Dean, ‘Wentworth, Peter’. 68 S. Adams, ‘Britain, Europe and the world’, in Collinson (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603, pp. 213–15. 69 A. G. R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State: The Commonwealth of England, 1529–1660 (Essex: Longman, 1986), p. 152 and A. G. R. Smith, The Babington Plot (London: Macmillan, 1936). 70 P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 76 and 80–2. On Lord Cobham, see J. Lock, ‘Brooke, William, tenth Baron Cobham (1527–1597)’, in ODNB. On Lord Buckhurst, see R. Zim, ‘Sackville, Thomas, first Baron Buckhurst and first earl of Dorset (c. 1536–1608)’, in ODNB. On Whitgift, see W. J. Sheils, ‘Whitgift, John (1530/31?–1604)’, in ODNB. 71 McLaren, ‘Reading Sir Thomas Smith’, 913–14, 921; Hoak, ‘Sir William Cecil, Sir Thomas Smith’, pp. 38–41. 72 Guy ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–19; Guy, ‘Monarchy and counsel’, pp. 132–7. 73 Fletcher, RCW, p. 24v. 74 S. Adams, ‘Eliza enthroned? The court and its politics’, in C. Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984), p. 61. 75 Adams, ‘Eliza enthroned?, pp. 60–3. 76 L. L. Peck, ‘Peers, patronage and the politics of history’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 87–108. 77 Treatise of Treasons, pp. 83r, 113r–v. 78 Treatise of Treasons, pp. 101v–102r. 79 Fletcher, RCW, p. 25v. 80 See Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. I, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 56–64. 81 Treatise of Treasons, pp. 105v–106r. 82 Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 19–20. For a discussion of the humanist discourse of virtue, see Skinner, Foundations … The Renaissance, pp. 172–80. 83 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 658, fo. 202, quoted in Lucy Munro, ‘Fletcher, Giles, the elder (bap. 1546, d. 1611)’, in ODNB.

183

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 84 Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 17–21, 43. See also A. Gajda, ‘Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex and political culture, c. 1595–c. 1601’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2005), pp. 1–10 and 82–133. 85 Fletcher, RCW, p. 26r. 86 Treatise of Treasons, p. 166v. 87 Pipes, ‘Introduction’, p. 37. See also N. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 5th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 157–75, 177, 456. 88 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 33v, 34r. 89 T. de Bèze, Du droits des magistrats sur leurs subjets, traité très nécessaire en ce temps, pour advertir de leur devoir, tant les magistrats que les subjets (Geneva, 1574); F. Hotman, Francogallia (Geneva, 1573); H. Languet, Vindiciae, contra tyrannos: sive, de principis in populum, populíque in principem, legitima potestate (Basel, 1579); G. Buchanan, De jure regni apud Scotos (Edinburgh, 1579), reprinted in Antwerp in 1580 and London in 1581. For further discussion of Elizabethan conceptions of the legitimacy of resisting tyrannical government, see Worden, Sound of Virtue, pp. 280–91. 90 See H. Dunthorne, ‘Resisting monarchy: the Netherlands as Britain’s school of revolution in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in R. Oresko, G. C. Gibbs and H. M. Scott (eds), Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 132–4. 91 Worden, Sound of Virtue, p. 284. 92 G. Bowler, ‘ “An Axe or an Acte”: the parliament of 1572 and resistance theory in early Elizabethan England’, Canadian Journal of History, 19:3 (1984), 355. 93 J. E. Phillips, ‘George Buchanan and the Sidney circle’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 12:1 (1948), p. 25. 94 For Randolph’s friendship with Buchanan, see Lock, ‘Randolph, Thomas’. 95 G. Buchanan, Baptistes, sive calumnia tragoedia (London, 1577). See also D. M. Abbott, ‘Buchanan, George (1506–1582)’, in ODNB. 96 Phillips, ‘George Buchanan’, 25. 97 Guy, ‘Monarchy and counsel’, p. 127. 98 Abbott, ‘Buchanan, George’. 99 Parmelee, Good Newes, p. 82. 100 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 33v, 34r. 101 These quotations are taken from the first full English translation of the Vindiciae, which made its timely appearance in 1648, Vindiciae contra tyrannos, a defence of liberty against tyrants (London, 1648), title-page. The original Latin quotations can be found in Vindiciae, contra tyrannos (1579), sig. A1v. 102 A short apologie for Christian souldiours wherein is conteined, how that we ought both to propagate, and also if neede require, to defende by force of armes, the Catholike Church of Christ, against the tyrannie of Antichrist and his adherentes (London, 1588), sig. A2. 103 A. Gajda, ‘The state of Christendom: history, political thought and the Essex Circle’, Historical Research, 81:213 (2008), 438.

184

A commonwealth counselled 104 Parmelee, Good Newes, p. 31. 105 For example, see The apologie or defence, of the most noble Prince William, by the grace of God, Prince of Orange (At Delft [i.e. London], 1581); An Answer and true discourse (London, 1573?); A Defence and true declaration (London, 1571). For further discussion, see Dunthorne, ‘Resisting monarchy’, pp. 125–34. 106 A. Gajda, ‘Debating war and peace in late Elizabethan England’, Historical Journal, 52:4 (2009), 866–7. 107 Treatise of Treasons, preface to the reader. 108 For further discussion, see Lake, ‘  “The monarchical republic” … conspiracy’, pp. 87–111. 109 Copie of a leter, p. 88. 110 Copie of a leter, pp. 86–7. 111 See P. Lake, ‘Anti-puritanism: the structure of a prejudice’, in K. Fincham and P. Lake (eds), Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), pp. 80–97. 112 Bancroft’s sermon was delivered on 9 February 1589 and entered into the register on 3 March 1589, see R. Bancroft, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the 9. of Februarie being the first Sunday in the Parleament, Anno. 1588 (London, 1589), p. 78. For more information on the pseudonymous Martin Marprelate and his tracts, see P. Collinson, Richard Bancroft and Elizabethan Anti-Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 60–82. 113 Bancroft, A sermon preached, pp. 78–9. 114 Bancroft, A sermon preached, pp. 78, 80. 115 Kewes, ‘Henry Savile’s Tacitus’, 548. 116 P. Lake, ‘Anti-popery: the structure of a prejudice’, in R. Cust and A. Hughes (eds) Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603–1642 (Harlow: Longman, 1989), p. 73. 117 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 81v–2r. 118 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 31–2. 119 By the Queene. A declaration of great troubles pretended against the Realme by a number of Seminarie Priests and Jesuists (London, 1591). 120 G. F. Nuttall, ‘The English martyrs, 1535–1680: a statistical review’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 22:3 (1971), 193. 121 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 31, 32. 122 Vindiciae contra tyrannos, a defence, title-page. The Latin original of the Vindiciae reads ‘Religionis puræ causa afflictis’, see Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579), sig. A1v. The 1588 English translation of the fourth part of the Vindiciae simply reads ‘afflicted for Religion’, see A short apologie for Christian souldiours (London, 1588), sig. A2r. 123 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 18. 124 See M. E. Moody, ‘Greenwood, John (c. 1560–1593)’, in ODNB; P. Collinson, ‘Barrow, Henry (c. 1550–1593)’, in ODNB.

185

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 125 See P. I. Kaufman, ‘The Protestant opposition to Elizabethan religious reform’, in R. Tittler and N. Jones (eds), A Companion to Tudor Britain (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 271–88. 126 The Epistle, p. 6, in The Marprelate Tracts, 1588–1589, facsimile edn (Menston: Scolar Press, 1967). 127 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 85r–v. 128 J. Black, ‘Marprelate, Martin (fl. 1588–1589)’, in ODNB. 129 For another example, see R. Beacon, Solon his follie, or a politique discourse, touching the reformation of common-weales conquered, declined or corrupted (Oxford, 1594). For further discussion, see M. Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 75–6; N. Canny, ‘Spenser’s Irish crisis: humanism and experience in the 1590s’, Past and Present, 120 (1988), 207–9, and A. Hadfield, ‘Censoring Ireland in Elizabethan England, 1580–1600’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 149–64. 130 Fletcher, RCW, p. 20v. 131 P. Williams, The Later Tudors, England 1547–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 283, 278, 299, 305–6. 132 R. B. Outhwaite, ‘Dearth, the English crown and the “crisis of the 1590s” ’, in P. Clark (ed.), The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History (London: Unwin Hyman, 1985), pp. 24–5. 133 Williams, Later Tudors, pp. 307–4. On the cost of war, see M. J. Braddick, The Nerves of State; Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 28–9. 134 P. E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 186. See also N. Younger, War and Politics in the Elizabethan Counties (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 135 P. Williams, ‘The crown and the counties’, in Haigh (ed.), Reign of Elizabeth I, pp. 129–31. 136 Williams, Later Tudors, p. 317. 137 Younger, ‘Securing the monarchical republic’, 249–65. 138 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, pp. 186–7. 139 Braddick, Nerves of State, pp. 68–9. 140 Braddick, Nerves of State, pp. 8–16. 141 Braddick, Nerves of State, pp. 72–9. 142 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 44v, 41r. 143 Williams, ‘Crown and the counties’, p. 133. 144 J. Hurstfield, ‘The profits of fiscal feudalism, 1541–1602’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 8 (1955), 53. 145 Fletcher, RCW, p. 44v.

186

A commonwealth counselled 146 Braddick, Nerves of State, p. 80. 147 P. Croft, ‘Parliament, purveyance and the city of London, 1589–1608’, Parliamentary History, 4:1 (1985), 9–34. See also A. Woodworth, ‘Purveyance for the royal household in the reign of Queen Elizabeth’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 35:1 (1945), 1–89. 148 Woodworth, ‘Purveyance’, 21–2. 149 For a contemporary discussion of the proposed bills to reform the practice of purveyance and the Exchequer, see ‘Reasons for procedinge in the billes touchinge the Exchecquer and Purveyors’, 27 February 1589, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, MS V.b.303, pp. 155–7. 150 Williams, ‘Crown and the counties’, p. 132. 151 Williams, ‘Crown and the counties’, pp. 122–6, and Woodworth, ‘Purveyance’, 21–2. 152 Fletcher, RCW, p. 41r. 153 Treatise of Treasons, p. 100v. 154 Copie of a leter, p. 68. 155 For a discussion of monopolies in Elizabeth’s reign, see G. D. Duncan, ‘Monopolies under Elizabeth I, 1558–1585’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1976). 156 Fletcher, RCW, p. 44r. 157 J. Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 59; D. Harris Sacks, ‘The countervailing of benefits: monopoly, liberty, and benevolence in Elizabethan England’, in D. Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 273. 158 Thirsk, Economic Policy, pp. 53–8, and Sacks, ‘Countervailing of benefits’, pp. 273–6. 159 Quoted in Sacks, ‘Countervailing of benefits’, p. 276. See also Braddick, Nerves of State, pp. 77–9. 160 W. R. Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, vol. II, Companies for Foreign Trade, Colonization, Fishing and Mining (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), pp. 50–1, 37–8. 161 See Fletcher, ‘MD’, fos 104v–105r, and Fletcher, ‘SN’, fos 157r–160v. 162 S. Adams, ‘The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective’, in Guy (ed.), Reign of Elizabeth I, pp. 39–40. 163 N. Mears, ‘Regnum Cecilanum? A Cecilian perspective of the court’, in Guy (ed.), Reign of Elizabeth I, p. 60. 164 Sacks, ‘Countervailing of benefits’, p. 277. 165 Fletcher, RCW, p. 41r. 166 G. Turberville, Tragicall Tales (London, 1587), p. 193. 167 Edmund Tremayne’s description of Irish Governance, December 1573, HEH, EL 1701, fos 1r–4v (transcript provided by Mike Braddick). 168 HEH, EL 1701, fos 1r–4v.

187

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 169 G. Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernica, Bk III, ch. 10, in The History and Topography of Ireland, ed. and trans. J. J. O’Meara (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982). 170 Quoted in D. B. Quinn, ‘Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) and the beginnings of English colonial theory’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 89:4 (1945), 551. 171 Quinn, ‘Sir Thomas Smith’, 551. 172 Quinn, ‘Sir Thomas Smith’, 543–60. 173 E. Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland (composed c. 1596), first printed in J. Ware, The Historie of Ireland (Dublin and London, 1633), pp. 3 and 2, respectively. 174 Spenser, View of the Present State of Ireland, p. 60. 175 Fletcher, RCW, p. 85v–86r. 176 Fletcher, RCW, p. 94r. 177 N. P. Canny, ‘The ideology of English colonisation: from Ireland to America’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 30:4 (1973), 575–98. 178 Canny, ‘Ideology of English colonisation’, 596. 179 Canny, ‘Ideology of English colonisation’, 597. 180 E. Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596), ed. W. L. Renwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 179, quoted in Canny, ‘Ideology of English colonisation’, 598. 181 Canny, ‘Ideology of English colonisation’, 598. 182 See Hadfield, ‘Censoring Ireland’, pp. 156–7. 183 Cicero, On Duties, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Bk II.27–8, pp. 72–3. See also A. Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press, 2003), p. 3. 184 Turberville, Tragicall Tales, p. 193v.

188

Chapter 6

A controversial commonwealth

Censorship, poetry and Fletcher’s later career

A man of spirit and understanding, helped by learning and liberal education, can hardly endure a tyrannicall government. Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591)

The specific context of the late 1580s and early 1590s provided an environment ripe for a sensitised reaction against Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth, which could have been read as encouraging criticism of sacral monarchy and unreformed religion, and engaging with the particularly prickly issue of resistance to tyrannical government. In addition, the politics of Anglo-Russian relations following in the wake of Fletcher’s embassy shed further light on why his text may have had a negative reception when published in 1591. This chapter traces the controversial printing history of The Russe Common Wealth and the reaction of the Muscovy Company and the Elizabethan regime to Fletcher’s text. It also explores Fletcher’s love poetry of the 1590s, detailing a capricious, cruel and tyrannical lover in the image of his beloved Licia and a chilling depiction of historical tyranny presented through the medium of Richard III’s ghost. The chapter closes with a brief consideration of whether Fletcher’s depiction of Russia and his later love poetry had any effect on his career prospects and fortunes as an aspiring citizen-subject of the Elizabethan crown. FLETCHER CENSORED Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth was published in octavo in 1591 by Thomas Charde. Only four years earlier Fletcher had assisted Charde, on behalf of the privy council, by ordering his creditors to give him time to pay off his debts, perhaps initiating the relationship between the two.1 Charde was a successful London publisher in the 1580s and 1590s, and also had business connections with Thomas Thomas, the university printer at Cambridge.2 It

189

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth was Thomas’s successor, John Legate, who published Fletcher’s poems Licia, or poemes of Love … whereunto is added the Rising to the Crowne of Richard the third anonymously in 1593.3 In response to the publication of Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth an outraged and anxious petition from the members of the Muscovy Company was sent to Lord Burghley, explaining that ‘the Companie of Marchauntes trading Muscovia … doe greatlie feare that a booke latelie sett out by Mr Doctor Fletcher, dedicated to her Majestie, intituled the Russe Common Wealthe, will turne the Companie to some greate displeasure with the Emperour and endaunger boeth theire people and goodes nowe remayninge there’.4 They asked Burghley to arrange ‘the callinge in of all the books that are printed’, because Fletcher’s work was so ‘offensive to the Russe that anie man should looke into’.5 The petitioners helpfully noted down ‘certen places offensive. Whereof the whole discowrse is full’, providing Burghley with folio references for particularly insulting passages that they had picked ‘out of which booke for your Lordships readines’.6 The passages identified as most provocative included Fletcher’s discussions of the Russian emperor’s ‘intollerable exaccions’, the infertility of the emperor and his wife, the Russian succession crisis, slanders on the Russian royal family, the tyranny of the Russian government allowing the nobility to abuse the ‘baser sorte of people’ without measure, and the whoredom, uncleanness, and intemperance of the whole country.7 The Muscovy Company members also noted down as offensive Fletcher’s comments on how the nobility and people allowed themselves to suffer under such oppression and their desire for foreign invasion to rid them of tyranny. The company were deeply concerned that the work had been dedicated to the queen and explicitly entreated for ‘some cowrse holden therein, signifying her Majesties dislike of the publishing of the same’. They feared diplomatic and mercantile repercussions from the text, explaining that ‘the Companie doubt the revenge thereof will light on theire people, and goodes remayninge in Russia and utterlie overthrowe the trade forever’.8 Given the state of Anglo-Russian relations in 1591, they had a valid point. In order to grasp the state of Anglo-Russian affairs in the immediate context of the publication of Fletcher’s text in 1591, we need to examine what had occurred in diplomatic and mercantile relations between the two lands since Fletcher’s return to England in the late summer of 1589. In April 1590, Jerome Horsey, against all the advice of the Muscovy Company, was sent into Russia to deliver letters from the queen and Burghley to Feodor and Boris Godunov respectively in response to the letters Fletcher brought back to England from his embassy. Horsey’s mission not only involved travelling to Russia, but to journey first to the Hanseatic cities of Stade, Lübeck and Hamburg to disseminate Elizabeth’s proclamation prohibiting the export of arms or victuals to Spain. He then travelled to Cologne to attend a diet

190

A controversial commonwealth of the queen’s Protestant allies, followed by a visit to Copenhagen to repair Elizabeth’s relations with Frederick II, the king of Denmark, after her hostility to James VI’s marriage to the king’s second daughter, Anne. Afterwards he was to make his way to Warsaw to negotiate with the king of Poland, Sigismund III, over the recovery of some substantial debts and then to travel on to Russia via Vilnius and Smolensk.9 Horsey attempted to conceal his overland arrival into Russia, but was found out by a local dignitary at Smolensk and so continued on his way undisguised.10 Horsey had been instructed to deliver letters and articles of complaint to the Russian court, detailing the ways in which Elizabeth’s ambassador, Fletcher, had been severely mistreated while in Russia, and how the queen had been dishonoured by the tsar’s public rejection of her gifts. Elizabeth’s letters also claimed that some Englishmen in Russia had been forced to be rebaptised into the Russian Orthodox faith and that one of the ambassador’s servants had been violently taken by the authorities. As well as the list of complaints from Elizabeth, Horsey was to deliver the Muscovy Company’s most recent grievances against the Russian court and local government at the ports, where the company’s privileges, which the queen thought to be ‘irrevocable’, were being overruled by local officers.11 The company were still contesting the repayment of the 7,800 roubles of Anthony Marsh’s debt and insisting that the debt was nothing to do with them. They also wanted redress and restitution of goods that had been stolen from their factor, Richard Proctor, and goods that had been confiscated by the tsar’s officers from John Chapel.12 When Horsey arrived in Moscow, however, he was refused an audience with the emperor, and the queen’s letters would only be received after Boris interceded on behalf of the English, allowing Horsey a reception in the ambassador’s office with the council only.13 Perhaps this was to be expected as Horsey had been expelled from Russia only the previous year, and escorted back to England by Fletcher, with the emperor’s recommendation that he deserved death for his misconduct. The queen even pointed out in her own letters to Feodor that she knew Horsey to be in disgrace at the Russian court.14 Given Horsey’s unfavourable reputation in Russia and the complaints and grievances he was commissioned to deliver, it is no surprise that his embassy was wholly unsuccessful. The disastrous decision to send the disgraced Horsey back to Russia with the company’s complaints and with such demands as those contained in Elizabeth’s letters can only be explained by the patronage and influence of Walsingham, the broader objectives of the mission and Horsey’s own reputation with Elizabeth. It is clear from the multi-purpose agenda of his mission that Walsingham and the queen needed a servant of the crown who could perform all the tasks on the itinerary, including travelling incognito across certain parts of Europe.15 Horsey had been a client of Walsingham’s for some time; he had also previously been used by Ivan IV

191

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth for secret negotiations in arms trading (although the only evidence for this is Horsey’s own account of his dealings in Russia).16 Thus he had some experience of covert missions of national importance. In reaction to the appearance of Horsey in Moscow as the queen’s ambassador, Feodor later wrote an irate letter to Elizabeth in July 1591, protesting against the employment of Horsey, as he had previously been ‘sente oute of our kyngdome for his evil behaviour’.17 Feodor described how Horsey had entered Russia ‘not the ordinarie way that he shoulde have comme, but through Polonia’ and mentioned several times that letters had previously been written to Elizabeth ‘concerninge him, that you would not hereafter upon any occasion send into our contry such a lewde villain as he is’.18 To add insult to injury, the queen’s letters had abridged ‘our stile and tytles of honor, where heretofore your Majestie in other your letters expressed at large’ and the ‘letters were sealed with your signet or small seale, which Hierom Horsey sayde was the seale of your majesties treasury’, not her ‘great seale’ of state.19 The queen must have received Feodor’s letter of outrage by the autumn of 1591 at the latest, for on 16 November of that year, the governors of the Muscovy Company, George Barne and John Hart, wrote to Burghley exhorting him to persuade the queen to respond to Feodor in a diplomatic and gracious fashion and to show the emperor that she had taken heed of his complaints against Horsey.20 The governors also asked Burghley to continue his amicable correspondence with Boris Godunov in order to ensure the protection of the company’s merchants in Russia.21 Both requests reveal a heightened sensitivity around the state of Anglo-Russian relations in 1591 and the importance of investing in appropriate diplomatic etiquette, expressing respect for Russia and its emperor. The continuation of amicable relations between the two countries was vital to the success and even the survival of the Muscovy Company. There is no record of the exact date of publication of Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth in 1591, nor of the date of the company’s complaint against the work, but it is clear that in November 1591 the Muscovy Company were incredibly anxious to placate the disgruntled Russian emperor and to protect their trading privileges. Regardless of whether Fletcher’s book could have reached Russia or even been read by anyone there, a work so completely damning of the Russian state penned by Elizabeth’s own ambassador could hardly have been published at a more inopportune moment in the company’s mercantile affairs. Russia in the sixteenth century was more permeable to imported books than it became after the Time of Troubles (1598–1613), to a large extent because demand was considerably greater than the Muscovite press could supply at this period. However, since very few Russians themselves had any knowledge of English, there can have been little, if any, demand for English publications.22 English books were brought over at times by merchants and

192

A controversial commonwealth ambassadors, but it is difficult to see how the Muscovy Company thought the Russian court would get hold of a copy of Fletcher’s text, or be able to read it, without an interpreter. It is more likely that the company were fearful of negative information about the book, rather than the book itself, being passed on to Boris Godunov or Feodor by their mercantile rivals (English interlopers or Dutch and French merchants), and that such information would irrevocably damage their reputation in Russia. Additionally Fletcher’s diplomatic status may have made this book much more dangerous in the eyes of the Muscovy Company, for if it became known in the Russian court that a representative of Elizabeth (and the company) had published such a work, it might have greater repercussions on Anglo-Russian political, and thus mercantile, affairs, than if it had been the work of a private individual who could have been represented as unconnected with either. Fortunately for the Muscovy Company, their petition was successful and Fletcher’s publication was suppressed. A brief letter by W. Dallye written into the opening pages of an original copy of Fletcher’s Russe Common Wealth, now held at Trinity College, Cambridge, informs the intended recipient of the book, his ‘ever honoured freind Mr Palmer Esquire secretary to the right honourable the Lord Keeper’, that ‘The booke was called in and rare, and therefore I pray you be carefull of it.’23 The work of Robert Lindsay, Lloyd E. Berry and Richard Pipes has effectively highlighted how Fletcher’s work was banned on the grounds of what it said directly about Russia and the Muscovy Company’s anxiety over their commercial and political position abroad.24 Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth was, as we know, deeply critical of the Russian emperor, government and society. And yet the lack of explicit intervention by the Muscovy Company into other texts by Elizabeth’s ambassadors that were critical of Russia must give us some pause for thought. The accounts of Jenkinson, Randolph and Chancellor, as we have seen in Chapter 4, presented the Russian ruler and his land in a far from flattering light. Similarly, George Turberville managed to insult every aspect of Russian culture and yet no explicit complaint was made against his work by the Muscovy Company or government censors.25 It is clear from the anxiety of the Muscovy Company and the precarious state of Anglo-Russian relations following Horsey’s embassy to Russia in 1590 that the company’s petition presented valid reasons to suppress Fletcher’s text. The company’s concern that the work was vulnerable to being seen as having the endorsement of the queen because it had been dedicated to her and their fear that this would destroy the company’s trade in Russia appears particularly acute. Their letter to Burghley, no doubt, prompted him to examine the book (if he had not seen it already) or to entrust one of his associates to do so. One could speculate, then, that when the book was read at the instigation of the company, Fletcher’s work may

193

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth have raised political red flags, not simply because of what it said about Russia and the company’s fear of its potential to ruin mercantile relations if the Russians got wind of it. The book’s resonance with both Catholic and puritan critiques of the Elizabethan regime, intentional or not, may have simply added politically charged fuel to the mercantile and diplomatic fire of the company’s complaint. For the controversial potential of Fletcher’s text did not lie solely in its critical discussion of the Russians, but in the political resonances between Fletcher’s image of Russia and the politics of the English commonwealth in the early 1590s. By scratching the surface of Fletcher’s text we have discovered in the previous chapters much more than an offensive and critical view of Russia. Of the Russe Common Wealth was, fundamentally, a theorising of tyrannical government viewed through the image of a foreign land and a consideration of how such government could be confronted or avoided. Although censored when printed in 1591, Fletcher’s treatise was eventually allowed to appear in Hakluyt’s later 1598–1600 edition of The Principal Navigations. Yet the text had been severely edited by Hakluyt, with the ‘offensive’ sections taken out, perhaps in response to the previous suppression of the work in 1591.26 Significantly, Hakluyt deleted all the passages that had been identified as ‘offensive’ in the Muscovy Company’s letter to Burghley, demonstrating that their petition had been influential and that Hakluyt had some knowledge, or suspicion at least, of what parts of Fletcher’s text were deemed to be provocative. Hakluyt followed the company’s concerns to the letter and omitted all the passages they had flagged up in their petition to Burghley regarding Fletcher’s discussion of tyrannical Russian government. Yet in his editing of Fletcher’s text, Hakluyt proceeded to cut out substantially more of the work than had originally been pinpointed by the company as problematic. The Muscovy Company had noted down individual phrases and passages in Fletcher’s text that they thought would be potentially insulting to the Russians, whereas Hakluyt omitted entire chapters in which such ‘offensive’ material appeared. For instance, where the Muscovy Company had noted down as inflammatory Fletcher’s comments on ‘The practise of the Godonoes to extinguishe the bloude Ryall, who seeke to Cut of or keapt downe the best of the Nobilitie’ in ­chapter 9, folios 26 and 27 of the work, Hakluyt proceeded to expurgate the whole chapter in which this information could be found.27 This chapter also included Fletcher’s discussion of the Oprichnina and his prophecy that a state ruled by tyranny would end in civil war, as well as detailing how heirs of the ancient nobility were ‘kept unmarried perforce, that the stocke may die with them’, all of which Hakluyt decided to cut.28 Thus the expurgated version of Fletcher’s text was missing fifteen complete chapters from the original version – c­ hapters 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26. The epistle dedicatory was also cut and select parts from c­ hapters 2,

194

A controversial commonwealth 3, 4, 15, 16, 18, 19 and 28, some of which had been identified by the Muscovy Company as pernicious, others not.29 Lindsay ascertained that around half of the excisions to Fletcher’s text were based on the list of offensive material contained in the Muscovy Company’s petition to Burghley, but what of Hakluyt’s additional excisions?30 The entirety of ­chapters 8, 11, 13, 21, 22, 24 and 25 were deleted on Hakluyt’s own editorial prerogative. Chapter 8 dealt with the travesty of Russia’s parliament; c­ hapter 11 explored the supremacy of Boris Godunov and his kin in the emperor’s privy council; ­chapter 13 exposed the utterly degraded state of the Russian commons They excell in no kinde of common arte, much lesse in any learning, or litterall kinde of knowledge: which they are kept from of purpose, as they are also from all militarie practise: that they may be fitter for the servile condition, wherein now they are, and have neyther reason, nor valure to attempt innovation.31

Chapters 21, 22, 24 and 25 all concerned the Russian Orthodox Church, discussing its offices, liturgy, marriage practices and other ceremonies in terms that echoed some of the puritan critiques of the Elizabethan regime. Thus Hakluyt’s arrangement of Fletcher’s text in 1598 may be an indicator of how and why the content of the work was sensitive, beyond the company’s complaints of its insulting subject matter, and perhaps even more sensitive in the context of 1598. The first volume of the 1598–1600 edition of The Principal Navigations, in which Fletcher’s expurgated text can be found, was published in December 1598 or early 1599, the dedication to Charles Howard having been signed by Hakluyt in October 1598.32 In January 1598, the Russian emperor Feodor I had died. Boris Godunov, who had been acting as de facto regent throughout Feodor’s reign, took over as tsar in fulfilment of the last will and ­testament of Feodor, and as requested by the Russian Orthodox Church, the petitions of the nobility and by ‘the whole communaltie of the land’, as he explained in a letter to Elizabeth.33 In many ways, this was ­beneficial for the Muscovy Company for Boris had always been a committed supporter of the company’s affairs in Russia, protecting English interests when rival privy counsellors, especially Andrei Shchelkalov, had opposed Muscovy Company privileges.34 Furthermore, during the mid-1590s, Anglo-Russian relations had been unusually tense, for in 1595 Elizabeth had been accused by the pope’s legate to the Russian emperor of sending arms and support to the Turks for use against Christian princes. In reaction to the accusations, Boris had requested the queen to write to Feodor denying any assistance to the Turks, so that privileged trade and political amity could continue between the two countries. Elizabeth had been slow to respond in denying any arms dealing with the Ottoman Empire and so relations remained uneasy between the two countries. Finally, in January 1598,

195

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth Elizabeth wrote to Boris denying reports that she had aided the Ottomans. In April 1598 she also sent an ambassador, Francis Cherry, to reiterate the message to Feodor. When Cherry arrived in Russia, however, Feodor was dead and Boris had taken the Russian throne. He accepted Elizabeth’s letters without question and renewed the company’s privileges in Russia, leaving the company in a stronger position, as their greatest supporter was now the tsar himself.35 Despite being in a more secure situation with Boris on the throne, the Muscovy Company would no doubt still have been anxious not to cause offence, so the fact that Fletcher’s suppressed text was allowed into Hakluyt’s compilation at all is intriguing. However, it is clear from Hakluyt’s excisions that he had been very careful, or had been advised to be very careful, about the parts of Fletcher’s text that he included in his work. Interestingly, Hakluyt still kept the full list of chapter titles from Fletcher’s work that he had originally included in the 1589 edition, so the reader of the 1598 edition could see which sections Hakluyt had included and which he had left out.36 As discussed briefly in Chapter 3, there were previous examples of Hakluyt bowing to external pressure in his editorial practices over politically sensitive affairs of state, diplomatic relations and commerce with Russia. In the earlier 1589 edition of The Principall navigations, we have seen how Hakluyt had been forced to replace Sir Jerome Bowes’s original account of his embassy with an anonymous and politically innocuous third-person account.37 About a third of the surviving copies of the 1589 edition include Bowes’s original account. The substituted account appears in the remainder of extant copies of the 1589 edition and it is this account that made it into the later 1598 edition of the work.38 There is also an example of one of George Turberville’s comments on Russian pederasty and prostitution, found in his verses on Russia published in his Tragicall Tales (1587) that does not appear in Hakluyt’s version of Turberville’s text as it is reproduced in Principal Navigations. However, it is not clear why or by whom this alteration was made.39 Hakluyt was not averse to tampering with texts relating to other countries as well, for instance in his editing of accounts of the voyages to Guinea between 1554 and 1583. These accounts had appeared in full in the first edition of Hakluyt’s text in 1589, but were severely expurgated in the second edition.40 There is some debate over whether such editorial decisions were driven by aesthetic considerations, or by political pragmatism and possibly by the need to please Hakluyt’s patron for the second and third volumes of the second edition, Robert Cecil, to whom he was ‘thrise happie to have these my travailes censured by your Honours so well approved judgement’.41 If there was any fear of Fletcher’s text causing embarrassment or undermining the regime, either at home or abroad, Hakluyt may have taken his own preventive measures to cut challenging material in order to make sure the work did not upset the censors. Alternatively he may have come

196

A controversial commonwealth under pressure from government or Muscovy Company interests to sanitise the notorious text if he wanted to include it in his celebration of English overseas successes. The other alternative, of course, is that Fletcher himself may have provided Hakluyt with a safe, uncontroversial and innocuous version of his text, in reaction to its previous suppression in 1591. If Hakluyt was indeed responsible for the elisions to Fletcher’s text, then his severe censorship of the work reveals something of the editorial rationale applied to The Principal Navigations and how Hakluyt chose to frame his representation of Elizabethan exploratory accomplishments. In making his selections and cuts, he may not only have been covering his back in an attempt to avoid censorship of his own work, as Lindsay argues, but he may have been aware of the politically charged nature of Fletcher’s treatise in the domestic context of the late 1590s.42 By either fashioning or accepting a text shorn of its political controversy, Hakluyt was engaging in the act of creating and defining the legitimate boundaries of printed travel narrative. By stripping the text of its political theory and its counsel for commonwealth, either Fletcher or more likely Hakluyt was cleansing it for a particular audience, which included investors and merchants, as well as nobility and monarch, and imposing a new and safe genre on the text, which was more concerned with cosmographical and mercantile information. If there was a particular logic to Hakluyt’s editorial practices, it seems to have been focused on providing the audience with as much positive information as possible in celebration of every aspect of England’s adventuring, mercantile and diplomatic achievements, while avoiding government censorship by selectively editing or not even including relevant material that could be seen as too impolitic to print.43 The narratives of Edward Fenton’s and John Hawkins’s respective voyages to Guinea, as well as material on the English fisheries in Newfoundland and Walter Bigges’s account of the Roanoke venture, A summarie and true discourse (1589), did not make Hakluyt’s final cut in the 1598–1600 edition. English activities in the Newfoundland fisheries had involved fighting and pillaging from Portuguese and Basque vessels, which Hakluyt may not have wanted to draw attention to, similarly Walter Bigges’s account of Roanoke included unsuitable comments on Drake’s removal of the Roanoke colonists in 1586.44 The selective editing of Fletcher’s account of Russia, among others, exposes what was not acceptable ‘travel narrative’ for Hakluyt in his attempt to create and celebrate English overseas exploits. As for the domestic context, Fletcher’s themes of tyranny, evil counsel, economic and religious oppression, succession crises and resistance to a tyrant could only have been in more danger of resonating with the English political situation in 1598.45 By this time, the Earl of Essex was convinced that his enemies at court were seeking to poison his reputation in the eyes of Elizabeth, intimating the kind of weak tyranny to be found in contemporary representations of historical tyrants, such as Richard II. His popularity and war-mongering were also beginning to grate with the regime,

197

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth providing Essex with more proof to point to a conspiracy of evil counsel closing in around Elizabeth, and the necessity for virtuous noblemen to act for the good of the commonwealth and protect the queen from the machinations of Machiavellian courtiers.46 John Hayward’s prose history of the deposition of Richard II, first published in February 1599, told the ‘story of a childless monarch unable to suppress a revolt in Ireland, who levied unpopular forced loans and ultimately lost the throne to a rebellious peer with a great military reputation’.47 The work was dedicated to Essex and it was alleged that the text justified resistance to tyrannical rulers.48 Hayward’s work was seen ‘to point to this very time’ and as a result he was imprisoned twice and nearly executed on charges of sedition.49 It is hardly surprising in this context, that Hakluyt (or Fletcher) would have been very careful to ensure that an account of Russia, which had been suppressed once already, was relieved of all of its potentially damaging, even seditious, material, especially any discussion of resistance to tyranny. Despite Hakluyt’s astute and meticulous editing of politically sensitive texts, The Principal Navigations did not manage to avoid censorship entirely. In late September 1599 the first volume of The Principal Navigations was withdrawn because of its celebration of the Earl of Essex and the inclusion of a laudatory account of the Cadiz expedition. When Essex returned home from Ireland without the queen’s leave on 28 September 1599, Elizabeth took exception to the high profile given to Essex in the first volume of The Principal Navigations, especially on its title-page and in the prefatory material.50 An altered version of the edition, with the account of Cadiz removed, a new title-page inserted that made no mention of Cadiz and a revised preface, was issued towards the end of 1599, stitched together with the second volume of the edition that had recently been finished; the dedication for this second volume was dated 7 October 1599.51 In the case of Fletcher’s expurgated account, which appeared in the first printing of volume one of The Principal Navigations, it seems that Hakluyt had learnt something of the need for political expedience in presenting the adventuring achievements of England, from his experiences of publishing the array of travel accounts found in his 1589 edition. However, he had clearly misjudged the prevailing political wind when it came to celebrating Essex in the 1598–1600 edition of The Principal Navigations. Fletcher’s account of Russia was later included in Samuel Purchas’s Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), but again it was a severely edited version of the text, not recording the full description of Russia originally published in 1591. Unlike Hakluyt, however, Purchas explained and excused his dramatic editorial intervention: ‘I have in some places contracted, in others mollified the biting or more bitter stile, which the Author useth of the Russian Government; that I might doe good at home, without harme abroad.’52

198

A controversial commonwealth THE POLITICS OF FLETCHER’S LOVE POETRY No payne like this, to love and not enjoye, No griefe like this, to mourne, and not be heard. No time so long, as that which breed’s annoy, No hell like this, to love and be deferd.53

After the publication and suppression of his account of Russia, Fletcher turned to other literary pursuits, still in search of a patron following the deaths of his former benefactors Walsingham and Randolph in 1590. Returning to his first love, verse, Fletcher created a collection of sonnets, which was published in 1593 along with a poem on the tyranny of Richard III, recounted in the voice of Richard’s ghost. This section examines Fletcher’s exploration of the theme of tyrannical love and goes on to consider how his verse account of Richard III’s precipitous rise and fall contributed to a popular mode of writing, verse and drama that scrutinised the vagaries of kingship and tyranny in the histories of long-dead rulers.54 Both works revealed Fletcher’s continuing fascination with kingship and tyranny and his contribution to contemporary discussions of defending the role of poetry as essential to the wellbeing of the commonwealth. Fletcher’s Licia, or poemes of Love was published anonymously in 1593, a testament to the political sensitivities surrounding print publication in the 1590s, as well as a response to the contemporary stigma attached to the printing of poetry.55 As Fletcher’s contemporaries disclosed, the threat of censorship was palpable and the position of the late Elizabethan poet precarious. In The Faerie Queene, for instance, Edmund Spenser presented the poet as subversive and as a potential threat to the politico-social order. Books I–III of The Faerie Queene had been published in 1590 and Books IV–VI were eventually published in 1596, although possibly composed and circulated in manuscript form in the late 1580s and early 1590s. In Book V of The Faerie Queene, Spenser’s poet Bonfont was punished by having his tongue nailed to a post because ‘he falsely did revyle and foule blaspheme that Queene … with bold speaches … And with lewd poems’.56 On the post, to which the poet’s tongue had been nailed, was written ‘BON FONS: but bon that once had written bin, / Was raced out, and Mal was now put in. / So now Malfont was plainely to be red’.57 Once a fountain of virtue, Bonfont had now become a source of insubordination.58 Not only was the poet cruelly and painfully punished for using his tongue for subversive criticism of the queen, but he also had a liminal identity thrust on him, being nailed up as a deterrent against critique of the regime.59 Tellingly Spenser’s Complaints, which was published early in 1591 – the same year that Fletcher’s work on Russia was published and called in – was quickly suppressed, because of its scandalous satire of Lord Burghley in ‘Mother Hubberd’s Tale’. This censorship was, perhaps, a trigger for the

199

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth creation of the character Bonfont, and the brutal punishment meted out to the ‘blasphemous’ poet.60 This depiction of the hazardous position of the poet expressed the acute concern of Spenser and others, especially among the Sidney and Essex circles, regarding the risks involved in pursuing the humanist vita activa through the medium of poetry and the control the regime wielded over its subjects and their literary outputs. In this light, Fletcher’s decision to publish his poetry anonymously seems a reasonable course of action, especially when coupled with contemporary associations of print publication with lower social status, with ungentlemanly and unlearned conduct, and as a pursuit of those on the peripheries of the court, rather than of its privileged members. Additionally, Fletcher’s previous work, Of the Russe Common Wealth, had only recently been suppressed by the privy council in 1591; another valid reason for seeking anonymity. Courtly love motifs and amorous verse, especially sonnets, took a back seat in English poetry between 1547 and 1570, but re-emerged during the 1570s and 1580s, culminating in the inundation of sonnet compositions of the 1590s.61 During the 1570s and 1580s, there was a noticeable move towards the standardisation of the sonnet form in English poetry. George Gascoigne, in The Poesies, asserted that sonnets were those poems ‘of fourtene lynes, every line conteyning tenne syllables. The first twelve do ryme in staves of four lines by cross meetre, and the last two ryming together do conclude the whole.’62 Cathy Shrank suggests that Gascoigne’s prescriptions were ‘reactive, working against a tradition in which the term sonnet was being freely applied to poems of varied rhyme scheme, length and meter’.63 It was only from the 1580s that English sonneteering became standardised and Fletcher was part of this movement, along with Sidney and Spenser, to civilise, through standardisation, the English literary culture.64 Fletcher’s Licia creatively contributed to this fashionable outpouring of love sonnets in the 1590s, alongside Sidney’s posthumously published Astrophil and Stella (1591), Henry Constable’s Diana (1592), Samuel Daniel’s Delia (1592), Thomas Lodge’s Philis (1593), Barnabe Barnes’s Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593) and Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti (1595) and Epithalamion (1595). In presenting his love poetry in the standardised sonnet form of fourteen lines and including erotic language and content in his verse, Fletcher was making a cultural statement, consistent with his previous literary aspirations. In all of Fletcher’s works, the intent to engage with the politico-cultural climate of the time as well as exercising his own principles and expressing his opinions is evident. Fletcher’s early poetry, as we saw in Chapter 2, focused on the forward Protestant agenda of further reformation of the church in his Latin eclogues and his later contribution to Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (1576). Similarly, his Of the Russe Common Wealth was sensitive enough to

200

A controversial commonwealth suffer suppression for its offensive and politically charged representation of Russia, and was later printed in an expurgated form only. By obliquely discussing the issues of favour, patronage and service through the allegory of unrequited love and by appending an account of the tyranny of Richard III to his love poetry, Fletcher may have been making a political statement, all too pertinent to the late Elizabethan context, albeit veiled by his feigned ‘retreat’ into love. In this respect there may be some significance in his choice of the name ‘Licia’ for the tyrant of his affections in the similarity it bore to the moniker of his sovereign queen. DEFENDING POETIC COUNSEL: FLETCHER’S PREFATORY MATERIAL The profusion of anti-poetic texts circulating in the 1570s and 1580s, as well as increasing censorship and a decrease in literary patronage, rendered poetic expression a potentially dangerous vocation, but also a cause that required defence, especially by renaissance humanists of a particularly Protestant view.65 In Licia Fletcher set up both his dedication and his preface to the reader as an apology for poetry; he was far from alone in this pursuit. Sidney, of course, had been a forthright defender of poetry, along with Spenser, Richard Willes, Thomas Lodge and George Puttenham, to name but a few.66 There are various examples, most notably Sidney’s, of late Elizabethan poets defending themselves and the writing of poetry, ‘which from almost the highest estimation of learning, is fallen to be the laughingstocke of children’.67 The pursuit of poetry had become an idle, light or even disreputable occupation in the tumultuous late 1580s and 1590s. In the context of war in the Netherlands against Spanish tyranny, assassination threats on the queen’s life, the tricky issue of succession, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and the arduous, expensive and unsavoury process of civilising Ireland, there were much more important ventures to engage a humanist Protestant, concerned with practising the vita activa. Nevertheless, it was within this context that Sidney wrote his Defence of Poesie (possibly composed 1582–3, printed 1595),68 that John Harrington prefaced his translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso with his own ‘A preface, or rather a briefe apologie of poetrie’ (1591), that William Webbe wrote his A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) and that Fletcher protested in defence of poetry in the prefatory material of his Licia. Sidney argued that poetry was a vehicle for counsel and wisdom and more useful than all other forms of counsel because of its divine quality, ‘for that some exquisite observing of number and measure in words, and that high flying liberty of conceit proper to the Poet, did seeme to have some dyvine force in it’.69 Poetry was able to create and feign: ‘[O]‌nely the Poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his owne invention,

201

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth dooth growe in effect, another nature, in making things either better then Nature bringeth forth, or quite a newe forme such as never were in Nature.’70 This was in opposition to both law, which prescribed legitimate behaviour, and history, which recorded the stuff of real life: ‘[T]he lawyer sayth what men have determined. The historian what men have done.’71 Sidney presented many examples of the way in which poetry had been elevated by other cultures, for instance ‘Among the Romans a Poet was called Vates which is as much as a Diviner, For-seer, or Prophet … so heavenly a title did that excellent people bestow upon this hart-ravishing knowledge.’72 Poetry was didactic as well as beautiful and inventive, for it was ‘a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight’.73 Not only was the poet best suited to advise, ‘but even in the most excellent determination of goodness, what Philosophers counsel can so readily direct a Prince, as the fayned Cyrus in Xenophon? Or a virtuous man in all fortunes, as Aeneas in Virgill? Or a whole Common-wealth, as the way of Sir Thomas Mores Eutopia?’74 According to Sidney, poetry was the most palatable and accessible form of counsel and communication, for ‘the Poesie is the foode for the tenderest stomacks, the Poet is indeed the right Popular Philosopher’.75 Fletcher’s defence of poetry was more guarded and less explicit than Sidney’s, but no less vehement. In his opening words to his patron, Lady Molyneux, Fletcher explained that ‘in the settled opinions of some wise heads this trifling labour may easily incurre the suspicion of two evils, either to be of an idle subject, and so frivolous: or vainly handled, and so odious’.76 Fletcher went on to argue that the pursuit of love poetry was commonly denigrated as dishonourable and vacuous for ‘Love in this age hath behaved himself in that loose manner, as it is counted a disgrace to give him but a kind looke.’77 In his defence of what ‘some wise heads’ conceived of as trivial and base, Fletcher provided four justifications for his explicit foray into an arena that was both controversial and modish, but which also aligned him politically with such figures as Sidney and Spenser. Firstly, Fletcher argued that the eternal quality of love itself was something to be honoured and credited, immortalising even the least worthy, for it was in itself ‘the perfect resemblance of the greatest happinesse … of greatest vertue, and able of him selfe to aeternize the meanest vasall’.78 As his second justification, Fletcher argued, somewhat disingenuously, that since the Brownists – a group of religious separatists originally inspired by Robert Browne – were readily forsaking the church and embracing non-conformist ideals, which threatened the authority of the queen and establishment, this was excuse enough to retreat from the world and fritter away his time writing love poetry, for his poetic non-conformity paled in comparison to the desertion of the Brownists.79 Fletcher explained that ‘whereas my thoughtes and some reasons drew me rather to have dealt in causes of greater weight, yet the present jarre of this disagreeing age drive me into a fitte so

202

A controversial commonwealth melancholie, as I onely had leasure to growe passionate’.80 It was the contemporary situation that apparently provided Fletcher with the excuse he needed to neglect his vita activa, his humanist duties, and pursue the ephemeral subject of love, ‘and I see not why upon our dissentions I may not sit downe idle, forsake my study, and goe sing of love, as well as our Brownistes forsake the Church, and write of malice’.81 There was, however, an element of duplicity to Fletcher’s excuse: the Brownists were not just forsaking the established church, they were criticising it, ‘writ[ing] of malice’ and thus undermining the established order. The trope of idling away one’s time in writing mere love poetry was, then, a deceptive and politically useful one. Fletcher’s justification for his poetry, that in a similar vein he would ‘goe sing of love’, was not an innocent retreat from the tumultuous times; rather it was a cover for political critique. Events that no doubt led to Fletcher’s reference to the Brownists in his preface were the notorious examinations of John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, two religious separatists who were charged with writing and printing seditious material against the established church, in which they disavowed the Book of Common Prayer and refused to acknowledge the queen as supreme governor of the church. Arrested in the autumn of 1587, Greenwood and Barrow were imprisoned initially for refusing to attend church, a statute intended against Catholic recusants. Barrow was examined four times and both he and Greenwood spent several years in the Fleet prison. In 1593 the bishops tried to pass a bill in parliament that would include puritans in new anti-recusant legislation. The House of Commons rejected this and the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, reacted by condemning Greenwood and Barrow to death for the printing of seditious literature, under the statute 23 Eliz. c. 2, s. 4, against the writing or printing of material that contained ‘any false, sedicious and slaunderous matter to the defamacion of the Queene’s Majestie’.82 On 24 March they were taken to the scaffold, but were pardoned. A week later, they were again taken to be executed and were again pardoned, implying they still had friends in high places. They were finally executed on 6 April 1593.83 Fletcher’s preface to the reader and epistle dedicatory are dated early September 1593, revealing that the Brownist controversy was still fresh in his mind, even five months later. Fletcher’s third justification for idling away his time writing love poetry was made on the basis of the example set by other learned scholars of times gone by and of foreign lands. Italy and France are mentioned, most likely in reference to the love poetry of Petrarch and Du Bellay, and even the ‘great pillar’ of Protestantism, Beza himself, who in his youth spilt much ink on juvenile verse.84 By introducing his love poetry through Beza’s Ad Lectorem taken from the Juvenilia, Fletcher was using the stalwart of Calvinism to legitimise both his poetry and his defence of the practice.85 Furthermore, in his preface he

203

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth argued – in poetry’s defence – that ‘our English Genevian puritie hath quite debarred us of honest recreation; and yet the great pillar (as they make him of that cause) hath shewed us as much witte and learning in this kinde, as any other before or since’.86 In a similar vein, George Gascoigne explained in his epistle ‘To the Divines’ that ‘I delight to thinke that the reverend father Theodore Beza, whose life is worthily become a lanterne to the whole worlde, did not yet disdaine too suffer the continued publication of such Poemes as he wrote in youth.’87 Fletcher’s most potent defence for writing love poetry, however, came from consciously aligning himself with the likes of Sidney and John Harington. Fletcher echoed Sidney’s defence of poetry in pointing out that the only poets worthy to call themselves so were the men of great learning to be found ‘in the Universitie wherein I lived (and so I thinke the other) [that] have so many wise, excellent, sufficient men’; a sentiment that, conveniently, the ‘worthie Sidney [would] oft confesse’.88 Fletcher also made explicit reference to ‘Harington’s Ariosto’ as a further example of the kind of learned, gentlemanly and courtier-like love poetry that he wished to associate himself with, rather than the low-born creations of ‘so many base companions’.89 The direct connection Fletcher drew between himself and Sidney may have been tenuous, but the association with Harington was legitimate, for Harington had been a student at King’s, Fletcher’s own college, studying for his BA when Fletcher was Lecturer in Greek, and studying for his MA when Fletcher held the senior positions of bursar and dean of arts. Fletcher was thus asserting a comparable level of intellectualism and status, as well as using the reputations of Sidney and Harington, and his scholarly connections with them, to justify his own sonnets and his defence of poetry as a legitimate pursuit for a learned and aspiring Elizabethan humanist. THE POLITICS OF SONNETEERING Fletcher dedicated his love poetry to Lady Frances Molyneux, the wife of Sir Richard Molyneux of Sefton in Lancashire and the daughter of Sir Gilbert Gerard.90 Lady Molyneux’s brother, Sir Thomas Gerard, was a prominent military follower of the Earl of Essex.91 Her husband and her brothers-inlaw, Richard Houghton and Peter Legh, were all mentioned in Fletcher’s prefatory material in glowing terms as ‘kind and wise’, ‘curteous’ and ‘all matchlesse, matched in one kindred’.92 Their families were wealthy, powerful and Catholic-leaning, yet these three acknowledged by Fletcher were outwardly conformist and took on various local government roles in Lancashire; Houghton in particular was zealous in arresting Catholic seminary priests during his time as High Sheriff of Lancashire.93 How Fletcher became associated with them is unknown, but one means of contact may have been through

204

A controversial commonwealth their shared vocations of arresting and questioning Catholic priests. Fletcher’s desire to imitate ‘the worthie Sidney’ pervades his epistle dedicatory to the virtuous and unattainable Lady Molyneux, as well as his sonnets, both in defence of poetry and as a practitioner of the sonneteering on unrequited love that peppered the literary culture of late Elizabethan England. The closing words of Sidney’s Defence of Poesie highlighted the intimate ties between patronage and poetry and why the sonnet was so well suited to the modus operandi of aspiring poets, aiming for preferment.94 Sidney concluded ‘this incke-wasting toy of mine’ with the humorous, but painfully astute quip that he who did not have the poet’s art would ‘never get favour, for lacking skill of a sonnet’.95 According to Sydney, it was the sonnet form of unrequited love directed towards the virtuous potential patron that brought advancement in the 1580s and 1590s. Sidney’s suggestion – that the only poetry that could effectively secure patronage was the dedicatory sonnet, which reduced the pining lover to futile and debasing expressions of love in the hope of turning the cold heart of the dedicatee to show favour – reflected his deep criticism of the contemporary state of poetry in the late Elizabethan regime. That aspiring poets and careerists could and did use love poetry in order to seek favour, rather than to give counsel, made a mockery of Sidney’s humanist defence of poetry as divine and necessary philosophy of intrinsic value to the commonwealth and the queen. Thus Sidney exhorted his intended audience ‘to beleeve with Aristotle that [poets] were the auncient Treasurers of the Graecians Divinity … To beleeve with Bembus that [poets] were the first bringers in of all civilitie. To beleeve with Scaliger that no Philosopher’s precepts can sooner make you an honest man, then the reading of Virgill.’96 In response to Sidney’s ruminations, what we see in the poetry of Spenser and Fletcher, among others, is an attempt to use the most acceptable form available to patronage-seeking poets – the Petrarchan sonnet – as a vehicle for presenting veiled critique of such an obsequious and tyrannical system of preferment. Furthermore, their approach served to reveal a cold-hearted, distant and tyrannical queen, whom the poet was beholden to present as virtuous in order to continue gaining favour, which in turn allowed further opportunities for writing poetry and playing out the vita activa to provide poetic counsel to the monarch for the good of the commonwealth. Writing poetry was a distinct political act in the later sixteenth century and the writing of love poetry in particular took on added significance in the culture of patronage that Elizabeth had orchestrated, based on courtly love and the suitor’s duty to court the queen. Norbrook argues this case with the example of Fulke Greville, observing that ‘the conventions of love poetry enabled him to explore, and denounce, the psychological mechanisms by which a ruler can exploit the weaknesses of her subjects’.97 Norbrook also demonstrates how in the poetry of Greville, this censure of Elizabeth was taken further, criticising

205

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth her arbitrary favouritism as tyrannous, asserting that she had instilled fear rather than love in her subjects, a theme that is echoed in Fletcher’s love poetry, as well as in his preface to Of the Russe Common Wealth.98 The overarching motif of Fletcher’s preface to the reader and the poetry that follows it is the conflation of love with tyranny, detailing how although once virtuous and ardent, the lover becomes embroiled in the trap of Venus. Fletcher described love firstly from the point of view of the suitor and his feelings and actions towards the beloved. This kind of love was ‘fedde with admiration: respecting nothing but his Ladies woorthinesse: made as happie by love as by all favours chaste by honour, farre from violence: respecting but one, and that one in such kindnesse, honestie, trueth, constancie and honour’.99 What he contrasted this with, however, was the love of Venus – the exact opposite – with which Cupid ensnared him, compounded by the harsh responses of his beloved. This imprisoning ‘love’, ‘wherewith Venus sonne hath injuriouslie made spoile of thousandes’ was ‘a cruell tyrant: occasion of sighes: oracle of lies: enemie of pittie: way of errour: shape of inconstancie: temple of treason: faith without assurance: monarch of tears: murtherer of ease: prison of heartes: monster of nature: poisoned honney’.100 Fletcher’s use of the words ‘monarch’ and ‘tyrant’ in his preface to the reader are not incidental, for as his poetry unfolds it becomes clear his representation of Licia bears some resemblance to contemporary images of the virgin queen. FLETCHER AND COURTLY LOVE: THE SONNETS Fletcher’s comparison of true love (what the poet attempted) and the tyranny of love (what the poet became entangled in) held political nuances that become more apparent throughout the sonnets, as themes of imprisonment, cruelty and inconstancy come to the fore. Fletcher was far from alone in picturing the ‘courtly love’ of an aspiring Elizabethan suitor in such a way. Other representations of the Elizabethan practice of courtly love as cruel and tyrannical can be found in the poetry of Essex, Sir Walter Ralegh, Sidney and his brother, Sir Robert Sidney.101 The harsh and cold-hearted game of courtly love depicted in Fletcher’s sonnets resonates with the poetry of Sir Robert Sidney, who was constantly shunned in his attempts to gain advancement and attention at court, While she her faith a prize sets to new loves, In me faith reigns on wrongs, love on despair. Day, air, sea, brook, trees, fields, her falsehood know; Frosts, storms, floods, fire, plague, dearth, my merits show.102

Norbrook describes Robert Sidney’s love poems as ‘wintry and melancholy in their atmosphere, and full of images of violence and imprisonment’, highlighting the frustration of the courtier who was constantly deferred

206

A controversial commonwealth and not given preference in the court of Elizabeth.103 The criticism levelled at the queen by these poets focused on the fickleness of her affection and favour, the corrupt nature of the patronage system and the mockery made of the practice of ‘courtly love’ for preferment, now that Elizabeth was in her final years and not an appropriate figure for the courting of young men. The issue of reward and patronage was at the forefront of late Elizabethan love poetry and the model of Petrarch’s Laura mirrored the figure that Elizabeth cut of an icy and distant queen, veiled in majesty, but also vain, capricious and partial to her favourites. Petrarch, of course, had been in love with a married woman and his poems discussed the torture and suffering of unrequited and impossible love, the poet-lover’s sexual and spiritual frustrations in relation to his unattainable beloved and his moral responsibilities to God.104 Petrarch’s poetry was full of oxymoronic language and paradoxical extremes, describing the torture of loving an unapproachable woman. Being at once enchained and free, Petrarch’s poet-lover could ‘find no peace and have no strength to make war, and I fear and hope, I burn and I am ice, and I fly above the heavens and lie upon the ground, and I grasp nothing and all the world I embrace’.105 The themes found in Petrarch’s poetry and popularised in England by the works of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, George Gascoigne, Michael Drayton and Sidney, employed the Petrarchan conceits of antithesis, especially focusing on the captivity and tyranny of love – ‘One imprisons, who nor opens nor locks / Neither makes me hers nor unties the noose / And love does not kill and does not unchain.’106 The unhappiness and suffering of the lover, finding himself constantly at extremes was an oft-repeated theme of Petrarchism in England: ‘In these two extremes, contrary and mixed, / Now with desire frozen now fired, it / Stands thus between misery and happiness.’107 In a similar vein to Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Fletcher employed the Petrarchan tradition to engage in the discourse of the courtly suitor, while simultaneously criticising the focus of the court and the culture of ‘courtly love’.108 ‘Courtly love’ in the Elizabethan context was a tricky business. Having to submit to a woman in authority was problematic in early modern culture, but this was made palatable by the practice of courting Elizabeth as if being in love with her and submitting to her as a suitor would. Nevertheless such courtship of the queen did not guarantee preferment or success, politically and/or economically. The queen had favourites at court and the game of feigning love to her to gain patronage bound courtiers to a sometimes absurd performance of service and courtly flattery in the vain hope of preferment and reward. It is no surprise that the poetry of Petrarch – that of unrequited love – was appropriated for the English courtly context of unrecognised service, as courtiers’ attempts to gain favour were often fruitless. Ralegh, for instance, complained in his ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’ of Elizabeth’s arbitrary practice of

207

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth giving out reward on a whim to favourites, rather than to honour service.109 Similarly Fletcher depicted Licia as disregarding and indifferent to his labours of love: ‘Too Tyger-like you sweare, you cannot love: / But teares, and sighes, you fruitlesse backe have sent.’110 In Sonnet XL, Fletcher wrote of the difficulties of gaining Licia’s favour: Whose sweet commandes, did keepe a world in awe: And caus’d them serve, your favour to obtaine … Where each with sighes, paid tribute to that crowne: And thought them graced, by your dumme replyes. But I, ambitious, could not be content: Till that my service, more than sighes made knowne.111

Fletcher’s verse alluded to his faithful service to the queen as her ambassador and his desire for preference, but the bitterness of his depiction of ‘your dumme replyes’ points to the increasing frustration of those, like Fletcher, whose service was not rewarded and whose requests fell on deaf ears.112 Fletcher described the cruel power of Licia, ‘Love with her haire, my love, by force hath ty’d / To serve her lippes, her eies, her voice, her hand … to lie inchain’d, and live at her commaund.’113 Fletcher’s sonnets are frequently punctuated with Petrarchan images of Licia as callous, harsh and cold: Harde are the rockes, the marble, and the steele The auncient oake, with wind, and weather tost But you my love, farre harder doe I feele Then flinte, or these, or is the winters frost.114

His verse chimed with the situation of many an Elizabethan courtier and subject in thrall to Elizabeth, compelled to approach her in the language of love, but never to consummate that love as she, the eternal virgin queen, was already married to her commonwealth. In Fletcher’s sonnets, even Cupid becomes beguiled by Licia, infuriating Venus, his mother. In this way Fletcher presented the natural order turned on its head as the son of the gods was imprisoned by a mere mortal, and a woman at that. In Sonnet XIII Fletcher described Jove, the mightiest of the gods, being enamoured and yet slighted in his affection for Licia. Jove intreated Cupid to wound Licia with love for him, but Cupid ‘swore he could not, for she wanted heate, / And would not love. As he full oft had try’d.’115 In response Jove became enraged and threatened Cupid, who retreated to the safety of Licia’s gaze: For now more safe than in the heavens he dwell’d, Nor could Joves wrath, doe wrong to such a place, Where grace and honour, have their kingdome helde.

208

A controversial commonwealth Thus in the pride, and beautie of her eyes: The seelie boye, the greatest god defies.116

Licia, then, by her very existence, inverted the natural balance of power, as a mortal providing refuge for the son of Venus from the anger of Jove. Licia had upturned the natural order, had made the poet, and even Cupid, captive to her love, and had achieved immortality and the guise of constancy despite her cruelty and mutability: The heavens did graunt: a goddesse she was made, Immortall, faire, unfit to suffer chaung, So now she lives, and never more shall fade, In earth a goddesse, what can be more strange?117

The use of antithetical imagery, so reminiscent of Petrarch’s depiction of love’s icy fire, also finds its way into Fletcher’s depiction of Licia: Colde are her lippes, because they breath no heate. Not colde her lippes: because my heart they burne. Ise are her handes, because the snow’s so great. Not Ise her handes, that all to ashes turne. Thus lippes and handes, cold Ise my sorrowe bred Hands warm-white-snow, and lippes, cold cherrie red.118

In her brief analysis of his love sonnets, Elena Shvarts discusses Fletcher’s use of cold, icy imagery in direct connection with his Russian adventure. She argues that ‘the landscape of Russia becomes the linguistic landscape of his sonnets: “the frost too hard, not melted with my flame, / I Cynders am, and yet you feele no heate” ’.119 Fletcher did, of course, have the advantageous experience of having been to an icy-fiery land.120 Shvarts argues that it is Fletcher’s experiences in Russia that make his poetry political, ‘A new world enters his literary landscape and makes his lyric poetry geopolitical rather than insular.’121 Fletcher’s icy-fiery imagery, however, can more readily be interpreted as an act of engaging in the pervasive antithetical language of the English Petrarchan vogue. Since Fletcher had been an aspiring poet from a young age, engaging in the Petrarchan vogue in the 1590s was just as much about his poetical aspirations as a reflection of his Russian experience. It was Fletcher’s contemporary circumstances and his critical view of the world in general and the English commonwealth in particular that provided the political edge to his poetry. Although reminiscent of the subject of Petrarch’s affections, Licia strikes a much more dynamic figure than the passive Laura. In Fletcher’s sonnets, the cruelty and tyranny of unrequited love is bound up in the heartless actions of Licia herself, whereas the trope of tyranny surrounding Laura exists only in the circumstances of her marriage to someone else. Fletcher, the poet, is a critic

209

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth of Licia’s behaviour, rather than a mere devoted, marvelling and despairing victim of the tyrannous circumstances of love. He presents a particularly horrifying image of Licia in her sadistic reaction to Cupid when the boy attempts to steal a kiss from her while she is sleeping. In response: Seeing ’twas love which she did thinke was death: She cut his winges, and caused him to stay … His feathers still, she used for a fanne: Till by exchange, my heart his feathers wan.122

In another act of cruelty, Licia steals Cupid’s armour and weapons when he is asleep: Licia the faire, this harme to thee hath done I sawe her here, and presentlie was gone She will restore them, for she hath no need To take thy weapons, where thy valour lies For men to wound, the Fates have her decreed.123

Licia had defeated the mischievous Cupid and surpassed him at his own game. Her callous and capricious behaviour could be read as a disparaging depiction of the way in which Elizabeth ruled over her male courtiers. Essex had similarly complained, through the medium of poetry, that the queen treated him in an arbitrary and hard-hearted fashion: She useth the advantage tyme and fortune gave, Of worth and power to gett the libertie; Earth, Sea, Heaven, Hell, are subject unto lawes, But I, poore I, must suffer and knowe noe cause.124

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Fletcher concluded his collection of sonnets on the tyranny of love with an appendix on the tyranny of kings, epitomised in the image of Richard III. During her reign, Elizabeth was compared to such historical figures as Richard III and his ‘weak tyrant’ namesake Richard II, encapsulating both the figure of monarch and tyrant, as well as the subject of unrequited love; nor was the queen unaware of such comparisons.125 A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES? FLETCHER’S ‘RICHARD III’ Fletcher’s poem, ‘The rising to the crowne of Richard the third, written by him selfe’ was appended to the end of his love sonnets to Licia. It was based on Sir Thomas More’s account of Richard III’s tyranny, found in Holinshed’s Chronicles, and it served a variety of literary and political purposes.126 Firstly, its connection to Sir Thomas More’s Latin and English accounts exploring Richard III’s

210

A controversial commonwealth tyranny demonstrated a desire to connect with the philosophy and practice of this renowned statesman, humanist and Catholic martyr. More’s literary works were attempts to examine forms of government, to counsel and to reform, as well as to pursue his political ambitions to put his experience, wisdom and civil philosophy into practice in the role of privy counsellor to Henry VIII.127 The connection here is not without some significance, especially when we take into account the process of using the feigned, if real, land of Russia to theorise on tyrannical and commonwealth government, perhaps following in the footsteps of More’s imagined ‘Utopia’. Fletcher also situated his work within a popular literary mode, imitating the style and tenets of William Baldwin’s A Mirror for Magistrates (1559), itself an extension of John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (c. 1431–8) and Boccaccio’s earlier De casibus virorum illustrium (c. 1360). In the opening stanzas of ‘The rising to the crowne of Richard III’, Fletcher acknowledged the recent poetic creations of Thomas Lodge, Thomas Churchyard and Samuel Daniel on the tragic falls of stately women. In the voice of Richard III’s ghost, Fletcher questioned whether the fates of ‘Shore’s wife’, ‘Rosamond’ and ‘Elstred’ were valuable subjects for serious poetry, and had his protagonist smyle to see the Poets of this age: Like silly boates in shallow rivers tost, Loosing their paynes, and lacking still their wage. To write of women, and of womens falles, Who are too light, for to be fortunes balles.128

Daniel had recently appended ‘the complaint of Rosamond’, mistress of Henry II, to his Delia (1592); Churchyard had reprinted an augmented version of his poem ‘Shore’s Wife’ that had featured in the 1563 edition of the Mirror for Magistrates, as part of his Churchyards Challenge (1593); and Lodge had annexed ‘the tragicall complaint of Elstred’, a derivative of the story of Shore’s wife, to his collection of sonnets, Phillis, also printed in 1593.129 Richard’s ghostly dismissal of the topic of fallen women suggested at once an association and a denigration of the works of Daniel, Churchyard and Lodge. Fletcher, through Richard’s voice, implied that writing of the fall of such women was not so potent, so lucrative nor so worthy a pursuit. Having situated himself among his poet-contemporaries, Fletcher related the fate of Richard III as the over-mighty subject who usurped the crown, detailing his character traits, his behaviour and his ultimate downfall. Over-weening ambition, for instance, is highlighted as a signifier of a tyrant-in-waiting: My father’s fall did teach me to aspire; He meant by force his brother to put downe, That so himselfe might hap to rise the higher.

211

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth And what he lost by fortune, I have wonne, A Duke the father, yet a king the sonne.130

Surpassing the dignity, status and title of his father is given pride of place in Richard’s account of his meteoric rise to power. Such an ascent could not have occurred without much violence. Richard’s ghost boasts that ‘My brother George, men say, was slaine by me, / A brothers part, to give his brother wine, / And for a crowne I would his butcher be, / (For crownes with blood the brighter they will shine).’131 As well as displaying the traditional attributes of an evil counsellor turned tyrant – pride, ambition and bloodthirsty violence – the theme of tyranny is further expressed through Richard’s linguistic play with fate and fortune. Through the anthropomorphising of fate, tyrannical government is reflected in the workings of the cosmos as well as in Richard’s behaviour: ‘Tyme-tyrant fate did fitte me for a Crowne.’132 Richard’s own tyranny as a product of the tyranny of fate and fortune is presented through the image of his life as a tennis match between himself and Fortune, bound by the limitations of the court, the ball, the players and the time restrictions of the match. Richard related how ‘Two games we play’d at tennyse for a Crowne, / I pla’d right well, and so the first I wan: She skorn’d the losse, whereat she straight did frowne. / We play’d againe, and then I caught my fall, / England the Court, and Richard was the ball.’133 As the narrative progresses, Richard’s tyranny becomes increasingly obsessive, careless and unhinged: ‘Blood and revenge did hammer in my head, / Unquiet thoughts did gallop in my braine.’134 Fletcher presented Richard, in imitation of More, as an active tyrant, terrified of the potential disloyalty of his friends: ‘I had no rest till all my friends were dead, whose helpe I usde the kingdome to obtaine. / My dearest friend, I thought not safe to trust, / Nor skarse my selfe, but that perforce I must.’135 His tyranny was also displayed in making the law of the land his own word: ‘My will was strong, I made it for a Lawe.’136 The fascination of Richard III for the Elizabethan audience was not simply that Richard was a terrible and bloodthirsty tyrant, but that he had been an ‘evil counsellor’, who through Machiavellian dissimulation, deception and murder had been able to seize the crown. Such themes resonated with Fletcher’s depiction of Boris Godunov in his Of the Russe Common Wealth, as an ambitious and dangerously powerful ‘evil counsellor’, who succeeded in reaching for the throne. Essex’s followers later used the image of Richard III to point to, malign and counsel against what they saw as the evil and ambitious machinations of Robert Cecil, depicting him with a crooked back akin to Richard III’s: ‘First did thy Sire and now thy selfe by Machivillian skill, / Prevaile, and curbe the Peeres, as well befittes your will, / Secreat-are I knowe your Crookebacke spider shapen, / Poison to the state and Comons, Foe to vertue frend to rapine.’137 This dual theme of strong, active tyranny

212

A controversial commonwealth and the treacherous ‘evil counsel’ surrounding weak tyranny provides a thread that runs throughout Fletcher’s contemporaneously published work, which focused on representing and theorising tyranny in Russian government, in courtly love and the patronage system, and in the mirror image of Richard III, all with potential allusions to the Elizabethan regime. ‘The Rising to the crowne of Richard III’ acts as another layer of counsel and potential critique beyond Of the Russe Common Wealth and the sonnets to Licia, emphasising the corrupting effects of unchecked power and the dangers and vulnerabilities of non-conciliar government to both the commonwealth and the monarch. Whether it was active or passive tyranny, Fletcher was interested in portraying and thinking about the threats of unlimited monarchy to the commonwealth. With publication, Fletcher’s poetic portrayal of tyranny through the vision of unrequited love and through the history of Richard III became another example of counsel for commonwealth, contributing to the proliferation of works in verse, in print, in manuscript and on the stage that were engaging with the same sensitive issues of tyranny and good government for the commonwealth. These works allowed an educated (humanist) audience to consider, theorise, explore and critique different types of government and their opposites, in contrast to the authoritarian orthodoxy being endorsed by the late Elizabethan regime.138 Berry postulates that Fletcher’s choice to write a poetic history of Richard III may have been prompted by the weak representation of Richard’s tyranny in Baldwin’s Mirror for Magistrates. According to Baldwin’s own admission, the account of Richard in the Mirror ‘was thought not vehement ynough for so violent a man as kyng Rychard had bene. The matter was wel ynough lyked of sum, but the meeter was mysliked almost of all.’139 Berry has concluded that the closing words Fletcher placed into the mouth of his tyrant king, ‘My verse is harsh, yet (reader) doe not frowne, / I wore no garland, but a golden Crowne’, represented an attempt to avert any similar criticism of weak metre, as Richard was no poet, but a tyrannical monarch.140 Knowing what we do about Fletcher’s political alignments and his humanist aspirations to counsel, we can speculate that there may be more significance to his closing comments than merely covering his literary back. By juxtaposing the poet’s garland and the monarch’s crown, Fletcher underlined once again a fundamental theme that ran throughout late Elizabethan humanist defences of poetry, and pervaded all of Fletcher’s own works – the importance of poetry as a source of counsel for monarch and commonwealth alike, and the crucial role of poet as counsellor, as portrayed in the ancient Greek and Roman traditions, as well as in the home-grown ‘mirror for magistrates’ tradition. Fletcher’s words acted as a reminder that a monarch’s ability to versify may well be poor, coarse and plain because he or she was focused on statecraft and governance, rather than on writing poetic verse. In the case

213

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth of Richard III, he was a tyrant whose hands were steeped in blood – the harsher the rule, the ruder the verse. The poet on the other hand was a wordsmith, trained to give counsel through linguistic illustrations and able to do so through ordered, measured metre – clear counsel, through flawless words. That was why the poet wore the garland, the monarch the crown. The role of the monarch was to govern justly and to protect the commonwealth through regular recourse to counsel; the reward was the glory of a golden crown, the price was the weight and responsibility of it. The poet with the garland, on the other hand, could feign how a commonwealth might reach its potential, as Spenser had argued with the example of Xenophon that the poet ‘in the person of Cyrus and the Persians fashioned a governement such as might best be’.141 The garland was a signifier of how serious and weighty advice could be presented through a more imaginative, creative and palatable narrative. A monarch ignored her poets at her peril. ‘MY SYNCERE LOVE AND INCORRUPT HART TOWARDS HIR MAJESTIE MY MOST DEER SOVERAIGN’: FLETCHER’S LATER CAREER In late 1591 the queen’s ambassador to the United Provinces and English member of the Dutch Council of State, Sir Thomas Bodley, requested leave to return to England in order to settle his private estate and finances on the death of his father, who had been executing his affairs in his absence.142 Still in The Hague in March 1592, Bodley wrote to Sir Henry Killigrew, complaining that his estate was falling to rack and ruin and that he had heard that Dr Giles Fletcher had been appointed as his replacement.143 George Gilpin, Bodley’s secretary, had also heard from a Mr Allen, who had returned to The Hague with news from England that Fletcher believed Burghley to have promised him Bodley’s place and that Fletcher was preparing to go to the Netherlands by Easter.144 There is, however, no evidence that Fletcher did go to the United Provinces to replace Bodley and Bodley appears to have stayed on, for in October 1592 he lamented in a letter to Sir Robert Sidney ‘I would I were departing together with your Lordship, being wonderfully weary of this Hage, and this Soile, and this paltrie kinde of People.’145 In 1593 Gilpin took over Bodley’s role as English member of the Dutch council.146 Bodley, however, did not return to England permanently until early 1597.147 We could speculate that in the months following Bodley’s request in November 1591, Fletcher, a competent and experienced diplomat, may have been considered as Bodley’s replacement, but by the spring of 1592 things had changed. Perhaps the Muscovy Company had by this point made their petition to Burghley against Fletcher’s text; perhaps Burghley or one of his assistants had read it and perceived more than a threat to foreign policy in his text and as a result Fletcher may have been passed

214

A controversial commonwealth over as a suitable candidate for Bodley’s replacement. This is merely inference and there is no further evidence to suggest why Fletcher was not engaged to replace Bodley, despite his confidence in early 1592 that he had been promised the commission by Burghley, nor why Bodley stayed on, despite regularly requesting leave to return, wherein he incurred the queen’s displeasure. In a letter to Anthony Bacon in 1595, Bodley quipped ‘I hear for my comfort, that the queen on Monday last did wish I had been hanged.’148 Over the next few years Fletcher petitioned Burghley, and later Sir Robert Cecil, several times for patronage. In May and June 1596, Fletcher’s brother, Richard, Bishop of London, petitioned Burghley and Robert Cecil on Fletcher’s behalf, to award him the position of Master of Requests in Extraordinary. This was an honorary and temporary title that Fletcher had previously been granted by Elizabeth immediately prior to his embassy to Russia in 1588.149 In July 1596, Fletcher himself wrote to Robert Cecil, requesting him to mediate with Burghley in his request for the position, explaining that ‘My self rest wholy at your Honours disposition in all poor service I am able to doo.’150 Fletcher petitioned Cecil again for the position of Master of Requests in December 1600, claiming ‘I have been a long unhappy suitor to serve hir Majestie in the place of Requests’, but to no avail.151 Fletcher’s failure to gain patronage, particularly from Burghley and Robert Cecil, for several years after the deaths of his previous patrons, Walsingham and Randolph, in 1590 may lead us to suspect that Fletcher’s reputation may have been tarnished by his account of Russia and possibly by his love poetry. However, Fletcher’s failure to gain patronage from the court or queen did not necessarily mean his works had deeply offended, for many promising Elizabethans were passed over in their attempts to gain preferment, especially during the 1590s.152 Following the death of his brother Richard, Giles was put under great financial strain as executor of his estate, becoming responsible for paying off Richard’s debts to the queen and with the charge to look after his eight children.153 It was at this point that Fletcher finally gained a new patron, for his brother had previously been supported by Essex and now Essex stepped in to assist Giles in his petitions to Elizabeth to relieve him of Richard’s debts.154 No doubt, Fletcher’s new patronage was due in large part to Essex’s relationship with his brother, but Fletcher’s reputation as a scholar, the political tenor of his works, his Protestant commitment and particularly his position as Remembrancer of the City of London may also have stood him in good stead to gain the earl’s attention. For as correspondence between the earl and his secretary Reynoldes suggests, Essex’s motives for supporting Fletcher may have been more calculating than honourable, hoping to exploit Fletcher’s influence with the lord mayor and the City of London, as briefly mentioned in Chapter 2. In his scheme to pressure the queen into an assault to recover Calais, Essex wrote to Reynoldes of how useful Fletcher could be: ‘And yf it

215

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth could be let falle to the Cittizens by Mr Dr. Fletcher howe fit this opportunitie werre for the makinge of Callais Englishe and that they would make some offer to the queen to that ende it would muche advance the busines. But he must doo as onlie sollicited by the occasion itself.’155 Essex was most likely an influential party in Fletcher’s advantageous appointment as treasurer of St Paul’s in 1597. In June 1598, Fletcher was also reporting to Essex from The Hague about the current political climate in the Dutch Republic and about his negotiations with Stade on behalf of the Merchant Adventurers, following the expiration of their ten-year trade treaty, originally negotiated by Fletcher in 1587.156 Essex’s continued patronage, however, ultimately had a ruinous effect on Fletcher’s life and career within a few years. In the immediate aftermath of Essex’s revolt in 1601, Fletcher was arrested for complicity in the earl’s rebellion. He was examined on 14 February and was kept in custody until mid-March. He strongly protested his innocence, and finally sent a confession to the privy council at the beginning of March claiming that he had been misled and abused by Essex, believing his deceptions about threats on the earl’s life, but had no prior knowledge of, nor played any part in the organisation of his rebellion. Fletcher also suggested that William Temple, who was a suspected accomplice, had been equally deceived.157 Between 28 February and 20 May 1601, Fletcher wrote no less than five petitions to Robert Cecil, requesting his release from custody, or at least to be released on bail, in order to attend to his ‘poor wife. Hir poor estate and great distresse of so many children’ and to make payment on his debts.158 He explained to Cecil that to pay off his debts, caused by the executorship of his brother’s estate and charge of his eight children, he had ‘no means but the present sale of my poor howse whearin I dwell, and of my Office … I have yet no means, nor now libertie to seek for means for paiment of it’.159 He also informed Cecil that it had come to his attention that ‘divers suiters’ had approached Cecil for his position of Remembrancer, and he petitioned Cecil ‘not to regard the uncharitable suit of suche as seek to deprive a poor distressed man of that little which God hath given him and undoe an other to advance them selves’.160 Yet he also suggested that he would give up the position of remembrancer ‘upon condition of soom benefit towards relief of my great wants’.161 Cecil responded by granting Fletcher bail in mid-March, but little else. In May, Fletcher wrote to Cecil with thankfulness at being released on bail, but lamented that ‘[I]‌ continue still restryened by Bond to mak appearance before your Honours at 2. Dayes warning.’162 In November 1601, Fletcher petitioned Cecil yet again, for ‘the extremitie of my present state have enforced mee to this bouldnes’, claiming ‘My humble suit to the queens Majestie is not great nor ambitious, but small and reasonable, bestowed usually upon other men of least desert, for her Highnes Graunt of certain leases in Reversion to the Tenants use.’163 Fletcher was petitioning for ‘small change’ in patronage terms.164 He argued that his four diplomatic

216

A controversial commonwealth missions ‘in her Highnes service out of the realm … wear well effected to her Highnes honour, the publique good and the increase of her Highnes Coustomes, but the great hindrance and undoing of my privat estate, which being neglected and impoverished by these services, is now forced to crave relief’.165 There is no evidence, however, that Cecil provided either relief or offices to Fletcher in response to his petitions. Although his positions as remembrancer and treasurer to St Paul’s were not taken away, despite petitions for this course of action, and his innocence was implicitly upheld by his release from custody and the retaining of these offices, Fletcher suffered from the association with Essex for the rest of his life.166 In the summer of 1609, Fletcher wrote to Cecil petitioning for favour from the new monarch, King James, ‘for his gracious help and supportation which at his entrance to this Kindoom and long before hee voutchsafed to promise owt of his own meer goodnes and Princely grace withowt desert’.167 Fletcher detailed again his faithful service as a diplomat and offered his skills and extensive experience as an ambassador ‘in Scotland, Russland, Germanie and the Low Countries’. He described himself as ‘a man destitute of other help’ and as one ‘suche as by soom errour of their own or by malevolence undeserved of soom other’, but his lament fell on deaf ears, despite his claim that James had promised him patronage on his accession.168 Cecil appears to have refused all Fletcher’s requests for patronage both during the 1590s and following the Essex revolt and Fletcher does not seem to have forged any other links to the Jacobean court. Perhaps it is little surprise that he was unable to gain patronage in the new reign, for others who had been associated with Essex and had not developed earlier ties with Cecil, such as William Temple and Edward Reynoldes, similarly lost out on court patronage at the beginning of James’s reign, despite the Scottish king’s tendency to be generous with his favours.169 The final literary work that Fletcher produced was a treatise on the fate and location of the lost tribes of Israel. Fletcher wrote The Tartars or Ten Tribes in the last few years of his life, sometime between 1609 and his death in 1611, but it remained in manuscript form until it was eventually published in print in 1677 by Samuel Lee in his Israel Redux.170 Fletcher’s text on the Tartars was significant in being the first work written in English to argue that the lost tribes of Israel were in fact the Tartars. This treatise was also one of the first to be written in England, in any language, to suggest that not only were the Tartars the lost tribes, but that they would also convert to Christianity, return to Palestine and initiate the millennium in Jerusalem with repatriated, converted Jews.171 Even in his last years, religious reform and the hope of political and religious transformation remained at the forefront of Fletcher’s mind and his experiences of Russia continued to inform his worldview twenty years after his impressive, if arduous, embassy.

217

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth As a successful diplomat, civil lawyer, Elizabethan man-of-business and humanist poet of advanced Protestant views who supported a virtuous nobility offering good counsel, Fletcher’s career prospects should have been good, and would perhaps have been better had he been active earlier on in the Elizabethan regime. By the late 1580s and early 1590s, however, such committed Protestantism and humanist civil philosophy to counsel the queen as a private subject were unwelcome. Had Fletcher been successful in attaining Burghley’s approval and patronage, his career may well have looked different, untainted by censorship and with the possibility of patronage for his later poetry. Fletcher chose to publish his poetry anonymously, he petitioned Burghley and later Cecil for patronage several times without success, he does not seem to have gained substantial patronage from anyone until Essex took him under his wing in 1596 and he subsequently came under suspicion of complicity in Essex’s revolt as a consequence. Although Fletcher managed to survive and received several appointments in the service of the queen and commonwealth, his promising literary and political career may have been blighted by his unacceptable political stance and his attempts to counsel queen and commonwealth as a mere private subject at a time when the regime was beginning to oppose such forwardness. The suggestion that Fletcher’s writing and subsequent censorship of his work on Russia, as well as his love poetry, proved damaging to his future career path must, however, be set in the balance of the climate of the 1590s. Fletcher’s career prospects would have been complicated, just as much as anyone else’s, by the significant depletion in literary patronage during the 1590s, particularly from the crown. Fox makes the pertinent point that the diminution of literary patronage was a clear ‘sign of a regime in trouble’.172 It is not without significance, then, that it was Essex – the zealous defender of pan-European Protestantism, self-fashioned virtuous protector of godly English civility and noble patron of the arts – who took on the financial burden of supporting Fletcher.173 Fletcher’s concerns about tyranny in government and his fervent Protestantism no doubt appealed to the sentiments of the champion of zealous, international Protestantism, who later floundered in attempting a coup against what he perceived as the tyranny of evil counsel surrounding the Elizabethan throne. As we have seen, Fletcher was not favoured in the outpouring of James VI and I’s patronage in the early seventeenth century and seems to have spent the rest of his days petitioning for the position of Master of Requests, for diplomatic service and for patronage, without much success.174 Fletcher’s last words, as reported by his son Phineas, highlight the principles and political conscience that drove his desire to write of things that were ‘rather true then strange’ and had a didactic, moral, and civil purpose to counsel, as opposed to ambition for political and economic gain: ‘My son, had I followed the course of this World, and would either have given, or taken

218

A controversial commonwealth bribes, I might (happily) have made you rich, but now must leave you nothing but your education.’175 NOTES 1 L. E. Berry (ed.), The English Works of Giles Fletcher, the Elder (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 21. 2 D. Paige, ‘An additional letter and booklist of Thomas Chard, stationer of London’, The Library, series 4, 21:1 (1940), 32–6. 3 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 70. 4 ‘Some merchants trading to Russia represent to Lord Burghley, that if some passages in Dr. Fletcher’s History of Russia are not expunged, their trade will be ruined’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 39, fos 134–5. 5 ‘Some merchants’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 39, fos 134–5. 6 ‘Some merchants’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 39, fos 134–5. 7 ‘Some merchants’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 39, fos 134–5. 8 ‘Some merchants’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 39, fos 134–5. 9 See E. A. Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1856), pp. xciv–xcvii; Yu. Tolstoi (ed.), The First Forty Years of Intercourse between England and Russia, 1553–1593 (St Petersburg: A. Travshelya, 1875), pp. l–li; T. S. Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), pp. 218–20. 10 Tolstoi (ed.), First Forty Years, p. li. 11 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, Russia, Elizabeth I to Feodor I, in Horsey’s hand, 4 August 1590, fos 64–7. 12 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, fos 64–7. 13 Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, p. xcvi; Tolstoi (ed.), First Forty Years, p. li; Willan, Early History, pp. 218–20. 14 Tolstoi (ed.), First Forty Years, p. 365. 15 TNA, SP 82/3, State Papers Foreign, Hamburg and Hanse Towns, Jerome Horsey to Walsingham, 12 April 1590, fo. 120; TNA, SP 82/3, State Papers Foreign, Hamburg and Hanse Towns, Jerome Horsey to Walsingham, 17 April 1590, fo. 122. 16 J. Horsey, ‘A Relacion or Memorial abstracted owt of Sir Jerom Horsey His Travells, Imploiments, Services and Negociacions, observed and written with his owne hand; wherin he spent the most part of eighten years tyme’, printed in Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, p. 185. 17 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, Russia, Feodor I to Elizabeth I, July 1591, fo. 82. Also printed in Tolstoi (ed.), First Forty Years, pp. 396–403, and in Bond (ed.), Russia at the Close, pp. cxi–cxix.

219

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 18 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, fo. 82. 19 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, fo. 82. 20 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, Russia, Petition of Muscovy Merchants to Burghley, fo. 91. See also CSPD, 1591–4, p. 122 for a copy dated 16 November 1591, from Sir George Barne and Sir John Harte. 21 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, fo. 91. 22 See A. A. Bulychev, Istoriia odnoĭ politicheskoĭ campanii XVII veka (Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskih kul’tury, 2004). 23 See copy of Fletcher, RCW, sig. Ar, library of Trinity College, Cambridge. See also Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 153. 24 J. S. G. Simmons, ‘Russia’, in D. B. Quinn (ed.), The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1974) I, p. 165; Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 150–4; R. Pipes, ‘Introduction’, in G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth, Facsimile Edition with Variants, ed. R. Pipes and J. V. A. Fine, Jr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 18–19; R. O. Lindsay, ‘Richard Hakluyt and Of the Russe Common Wealth’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 57:3 (1963), 312–27. 25 Lindsay, ‘Richard Hakluyt’, 323–6. 26 Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), pp. 473–97. 27 ‘Some merchants’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 39, fos 134–5. See also Fletcher, RCW, pp. 24v–29v. 28 Fletcher, RCW, pp. 24v–29v, quoted at p. 26r. 29 See Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 166, and Lindsay, ‘Richard Hakluyt’, 323. 30 Lindsay, ‘Richard Hakluyt’, 323. Cf. ‘Some merchants’, BL Lansdowne MS 112, no. 39, fos 134–5. 31 Fletcher, RCW, p. 48r. 32 D. B. Quinn, C. E. Armstrong and R. A. Skelton, ‘The primary Hakluyt bibliography’, in Quinn (ed.), Hakluyt Handbook, II, pp. 490–1. 33 ‘Letter of the emperor of Muscovy’, 1598, in J. P. Collier (ed.), The Egerton Papers (London: The Camden Society, 1840), pp. 288–92. 34 TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, Russia, ‘Jerome Horsey’s account of the charges against him’, fos 72–3; TNA, SP 91/1, State Papers Foreign, Russia, ‘Boris Godunov to Burghley’, fo. 88. 35 Willan, Early History, pp. 224–31. 36 Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), p. 474. 37 Hakluyt, PN (1589), pp. 491–500 (first state); pp. 491–6 (second state). 38 See R. Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589), 2 vols, ed. D. B. Quinn and R. A. Skelton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), I, pp. xxiii–xxiv.

220

A controversial commonwealth 39 Cf. G. Turberville, Tragicall Tales (London, 1587), pp. 184–5, and Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 409. 40 P. E. H. Hair, ‘Guinea’, in Quinn (ed), Hakluyt Handbook, I, pp. 203–4. 41 Hakluyt, PN (1598–1600), epistle dedicatory to the second volume, sig. *4v. See also J. P. Helfers, ‘The explorer or the pilgrim? Modern critical opinion and the editorial methods of Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas’, Studies in Philology, 94:2 (1997), 177–9; C. MacCrossan, ‘Framing “the English nation”: reading between text and paratext in The Principal Navigations (1598–1600)’, in D. Carey and C. Jowitt (eds), Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 139–51; J. Schleck, ‘Forming the captivity of Thomas Saunders: Hakluyt’s editorial practices and their ideological effects’, in Carey and Jowitt (eds), Richard Hakluyt, pp. 129–38. 42 Lindsay, ‘Richard Hakluyt’, 327. 43 D. B. Quinn, ‘North America’, in Quinn (ed.), Hakluyt Handbook, I, pp. 252–3. 44 See Hair, ‘Guinea’, pp. 202–3, and Quinn, ‘North America’, pp. 251 and 247 respectively. 45 See M. Smuts, ‘Court-centred politics and the uses of Roman historians, c. 1590–1630’, in K. Sharpe and P. Lake (eds), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 21–44. 46 A. Gajda, The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). See also A. Gajda, ‘Debating war and peace in late Elizabethan England’, Historical Journal, 52:4 (2009), 851–78. 47 Smuts, ‘Court-centred politics’, p. 22. 48 D. Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, rev. edn), p. 154. 49 Smuts, ‘Court-centred politics’, p. 22. 50 Hakluyt, PN (1598), title-page and preface to the reader. 51 Quinn, Armstrong, and Skelton, ‘Primary Hakluyt bibliography’, pp. 490–1. 52 S. Purchas, Purchas his pilgrimes In five books (London, 1625), marginal note on p. 413. 53 G. Fletcher, Licia, or poemes of Love (London, 1593), Elegie III, p. 68. 54 See A. Gajda, ‘Political culture in the 1590s: the “second reign of Elizabeth” ’, History Compass, 8:1 (2010), 88–100. 55 J. W. Saunders, ‘The stigma of print: a note on the social bases of Tudor poetry’, Essays in Criticism, 1 (1951), 139–64. 56 E. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. T. P. Roche, Jr with the assistance of C. P. O’Donnell, Jr (London: Penguin, 1978), Bk 5, canto IX.25–6, p. 830. 57 Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Bk 5, canto IX.25–6, p. 830. 58 C. Burrow, Edmund Spenser (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996), p. 9. 59 E. J. Bellamy, ‘The vocative and the vocational: the unreadability of Elizabeth in The Faerie Queene’, English Literary History, 54:1 (1987), 1–30.

221

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 60 A. Hadfield, ‘Spenser, Edmund (1552?–1599)’, in ODNB. See also S. Lucas, ‘Diggon Davie and Davy Dicar: Edmund Spenser, Thomas Churchyard, and the poetics of public protest’, Spenser Studies, 16 (2002), 152. 61 S. W. May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), pp. 41–68. 62 G. Gascoigne, ‘Certayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati’, in The Poesies of George Gascoigne Esquire (London, 1575), sig. U1v, quoted in C. Shrank, ‘ “Matters of love as of discourse”: the English sonnet, 1560–1580’, Studies in Philology, 105 (2007), 30. 63 Shrank, ‘ “Matters of love as of discourse” ’, 30. 64 Shrank, ‘ “Matters of love as of discourse” ’, 30. 65 P. C. Herman, ‘Tudor and Stuart defenses of poetry’, in P. Cheney, A. Hadfield, and G. A. Sullivan, Jr (eds), Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 27–37. On censorship, see S. C. Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). On literary patronage, see A. Fox, ‘The complaint of poetry for the death of liberality: the decline of literary patronage in the 1590s’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 229–57. 66 Herman, ‘Tudor and Stuart defenses’, pp. 27–8. 67 P. Sidney, The Defence of Poesie (London, 1595), sig. B2. 68 H. R. Woudhuysen, ‘Sidney, Sir Philip (1554–1586)’, in ODNB. 69 Sidney, Defence, sig. B3r. 70 Sidney, Defence, sig. Cr. 71 Sidney, Defence, sig. B3r. 72 Sidney, Defence, sig. B3r. 73 Sidney, Defence, sig. C2r. 74 Sidney, Defence, sig. D3v. 75 Sidney, Defence, sig. D3v. 76 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2r. 77 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2r. 78 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2r. 79 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2v. See also M. E. Moody, ‘Browne, Robert (1550?–1633)’, in ODNB. 80 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2r. 81 Fletcher, Licia, sigs A2r–v. 82 See M. E. Moody, ‘Greenwood, John (c. 1560–1593)’, in ODNB. 83 See P. Collinson, ‘Barrow, Henry (c. 1550–1593)’, in ODNB. 84 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2v.

222

A controversial commonwealth 85 Fletcher, Licia, front matter. See also A. L. Prescott, ‘English writers and Beza’s Latin epigrams: the uses and abuses of poetry’, Studies in the Renaissance, 21 (1974), 83–117. 86 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2v. 87 G. Gascoigne, ‘To the Reverende Divines’, in The Poesies, ed. J. W. Cunliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), p. 6. 88 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2v. 89 Fletcher, Licia, sig. A2v. 90 M. Gratton, ‘Molyneux, Richard, first Viscount Molyneux of Maryborough (bap. 1594, d. 1636)’, in ODNB. 91 P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 293, 297. 92 Fletcher, Licia, sig. B1v. 93 E. A. J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: The ‘Lost Years’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998, rev. edn), pp. 11–15. 94 K. Macabee, ‘The Sonnet Virus’, University of California, Santa Barbara, http://english.ucsb.edu/faculty/kmcabee/sonnetvirus-culture.html (accessed 4 August 2014). 95 Sidney, Defence, sig. L3v. 96 Sidney, Defence, sigs L2v–L3r. 97 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 141. 98 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, pp. 140–54. 99 Fletcher, Licia, sig. B. 100 Fletcher, Licia, sig. B. 101 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, pp. 40–1, 137–8. 102 R. Sidney, ‘Pastoral 9’, in The Poems of Robert Sidney, ed. P. J. Croft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 228–9. 103 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 141. 104 T. P. Roche, Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences (New York: AMS Press, 1989), pp. 1–70. See also W. J. Kennedy, ‘Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Petrarchism’, in Cheney, Hadfield and Sullivan (eds), Early Modern English Poetry, pp. 70–1. 105 Translation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere 134, in S. Minta, Petrarch and Petrarchism: The English and French Traditions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p. 12. 106 Translation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere 134, in J. D’Amico (ed.), Petrarch in England: An Anthology of Parallel Texts from Wyatt to Milton (Ravenna: Longo, 1979), p. 134. 107 Translation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere 173, in D’Amico (ed.), Petrarch, p. 132. 108 Kennedy, ‘Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella’, pp. 74–6. 109 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 136. 110 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet VIII, p. 9.

223

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 111 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet XL, p. 41. 112 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet XXII, p. 23. 113 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet V, p. 6. 114 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet VIII, p. 9. 115 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet XIII, p. 14. 116 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet XIII, p. 14. 117 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet XXIIII, p. 25. 118 Fletcher, Licia, ‘A lover’s maze’, p. 62. 119 E. Shvarts, ‘Putting Russia on the globe: the matter of Muscovy in early modern English travel writing and literature’ (PhD thesis, Stanford University, 2004), p. 103. 120 C. Adams, ‘The newe navigation and discoverie of the kingdome of Moscovia, by the Northeast in the yeere 1553’, in Hakluyt, PN (1589), p. 285. 121 Shvarts, ‘Putting Russia on the globe’, p. 103. 122 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet XIIII, p. 15. 123 Fletcher, Licia, Sonnet IX, p. 10. 124 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 137. 125 For a brief discussion of parallels drawn between Elizabeth I and historical monarchs, see Gajda, ‘Political culture’, 93–4. 126 R. Holinshed, The Firste volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande and Irelande (London, 1577), pp. 1356–425. 127 S. Baker House, ‘More, Sir Thomas (1478–1535)’, in ODNB. 128 Fletcher, Licia, p. 70. 129 See Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 426. 130 Fletcher, Licia, p. 71. 131 Fletcher, Licia, p. 72. 132 Fletcher, Licia, p. 71. 133 Fletcher, Licia, p. 70. 134 Fletcher, Licia, p. 80. 135 Fletcher, Licia, p. 80. 136 Fletcher, Licia, p. 76. 137 ‘Libell against Sir Robert Cecill’, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Don. MS c.54, fo. 20r. 138 Gajda, ‘Political culture’, 93–4. 139 See Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 67. 140 Fletcher, Licia, p. 80. 141 E. Spenser, ‘A letter of the Authors’, The Faerie Queene, ed. Roche, Jr with O’Donnell, Jr, p. 16.

224

A controversial commonwealth 142 TNA, SP 84/43, State Papers Foreign, Holland, T. Bodley to Burghley, 11 November 1591, fo. 187. 143 TNA, SP 84/44, State Papers Foreign, Holland, T. Bodley to Sir H. Killigrew, 10 March 1592, fo. 143. 144 TNA, SP 84/41, State Papers Foreign, Holland, Gilpin to Sir H. Killigrew, 6 March 1592, fo. 217. 145 See W. H. Clennell, ‘Bodley, Sir Thomas (1545–1613)’, in ODNB. 146 See G. M. Bell, ‘Gilpin, George (d. 1602)’, in ODNB. 147 Clennell, ‘Bodley, Sir Thomas’. 148 Clennell, ‘Bodley, Sir Thomas’. 149 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 25, n. 35. 150 Giles Fletcher to Sir Robert Cecil, 7 July 1596, Hatfield House, Hertfordshire (hereafter Hatf.), Cecil Papers 42/12. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 390. 151 Giles Fletcher to Sir Robert Cecil, 7 December 1600, Hatf., Cecil Papers 181/45. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 402. 152 Fox, ‘Complaint of poetry’, pp. 229–57. 153 See B. Usher, ‘Fletcher, Richard (1544/5–1596)’, in ODNB. 154 Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 35–6, 38–9, 392–6. 155 Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, to Reynoldes, July 1596, Lambeth Palace Library, London, MS 658, fo. 93. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 36–7. 156 Giles Fletcher to the Earl of Essex, 2 June 1598, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 61/52; Giles Fletcher to the Earl of Essex, 29 June 1598, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 62/6. Both printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 398–400. 157 See Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 44–6. See also TNA, SP 12/279, State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I, Fletcher to the privy council, ‘Fletcher’s Confession’, 3 March 1601, no. 23. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 405–8. 158 Giles Fletcher to Sir Robert Cecil, 14 March 1601, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 77/60. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 408. 159 Fletcher to Cecil, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 77/60. 160 Giles Fletcher to Sir Robert Cecil, 21 March 1601, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 180/43. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 409. 161 Fletcher to Cecil, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 180/43. 162 Giles Fletcher to Sir Robert Cecil, 20 May 1601, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 86/53. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 411. 163 Giles Fletcher to Sir Robert Cecil, 21 November 1601, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 89/121. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, pp. 411–12. 164 R. W. Hoyle, ‘The Masters of Requests and the small change of Jacobean patronage’, English Historical Review, 127:520 (2011), 544. 165 Fletcher to Cecil, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 89/121.

225

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth 166 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 47. 167 Giles Fletcher to Sir Robert Cecil, 2 July 1609, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 127/89. Printed in Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 413. 168 Fletcher to Cecil, Hatf., Cecil Papers, 127/89 169 On William Temple, see E. Boran, ‘Temple, Sir William (1554/5–1627)’, in ODNB. On Edward Reynoldes, see P. E. J. Hammer, ‘Reynoldes, Edward (d. 1623)’, in ODNB. On the patronage of James I, see L. L. Peck, “ ‘For a King not be bountiful were a fault”: perspectives on court patronage in early Stuart England’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), 31–61, and Hoyle, ‘Masters of Requests’, 544–81. 170 Berry (ed.), English Works, p. 309. 171 R. W. Cogley, ‘ “The most vile and barbarous nation of all the world”: Giles Fletcher the elder’s “The Tartars Or, Ten Tribes” (ca. 1610)’, Renaissance Quarterly, 58:3 (2005), 781–2. 172 Fox, ‘Complaint of poetry’, pp. 229–57, especially p. 241. 173 Essex was a patron of accomplished scholars and academics such as Henry Savile, Henry Wotton, Henry Cuffe and William Whitaker, and was a poet himself, see Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 136–7, 300–7. He was a possible supporter of Edmund Spenser, see Hadfield, ‘Spenser’. 174 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, p. 175. 175 P. Fletcher, A Fathers Testament (London, 1670), sig. B1v, quoted in L. Munro, ‘Fletcher, Giles, the elder (bap. 1546, d. 1611)’, in ODNB.

226

Conclusion Thinking with Russia, writing English commonwealth

By tracing the evolution of Fletcher’s narrative of Russia from its first inception in the form of the notes of an Elizabethan ambassador in 1588 to its publication as a work of travel information, reference, political theory and counsel in 1591, we have discovered how Fletcher and his text encompass broader intentions, speaking to a wider public as a work of counsel for commonwealth, as well as advice on travel and trade to Russia. Fletcher’s writings sit comfortably and yet distinctively within the various accounts of sixteenth-century English encounters with Russia. The fluid representations, themes and meanings found in his texts problematise the later historiographical boundaries that have been imposed on the history of early modern Anglo-Russian relations, as either mercantile, diplomatic or ethnographic. As we have seen, Fletcher’s writings crossed all of these boundaries, and more. This analysis of his diplomatic reports, his published work of counsel for commonwealth and his love poetry has revealed the importance of recognising the individuality and variety of Elizabethan representations of Russia. There was not one essentialised Elizabethan ‘view’ of Russia, but multiple ways of seeing, thinking with and using Russia to reflect on the world in general, the English commonwealth in particular, and the changing nature of English identity and government during this period. The controversial place that Fletcher and his texts held in the Elizabethan regime, alongside and in contrast to his more practical concerns in government service, demonstrate that in this case at least, ‘travel writing’ had significance and political consequences closer to home. This was not just orientalising discourse, applying humanist models to a reified ‘other’, but an example of how new lands and exotic encounters were ‘good to think with’, if controversial and potentially risky for the individual who thought with them. Fletcher’s diplomatic reports to the queen and Lord Burghley reflected a particularly astute, if strongly Protestant, view of the situation of Russia, the state of the Muscovy Company trade and the Englishmen working and living

227

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth within that context. Fletcher’s humanist vita activa was borne out in his willingly given advice that the company reject their joint-stock policy in favour of becoming a regulated company and his insistent calls for clergymen to be sent out to Russia to keep the Muscovy Company employees civil and orderly. In this respect, his divergence from other diplomatic and mercantile texts revealed Fletcher’s acute concern regarding the barbaric effects of tyrannical government and the constant danger of the English falling from civility into servility. Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth, which appears to have started life as a manuscript addressed to Elizabeth rather than originally being aimed at a public audience, was an expansion of these same humanist concerns and reflects both Fletcher’s ambitions and sense of duty to counsel queen and commonwealth. Of the Russe Common Wealth was a theorising of and a safeguard against tyranny in the form of a treatise on Russia. It was an implicit attempt to grapple with the changing face of monarchy in the late sixteenth century, an exploration of government through the image of foreign tyranny, in much the same way as the popular history plays of the 1590s investigated the tyranny of kings gone by, such as Richard II, Richard III, Henry VI and Edward II.1 His work also encapsulated other modes of writing to veil and complement his counsel and civil philosophy, resulting in a multi-generic, multi-agenda text. These modes, both implicit and explicit, were ‘inescapably mixed’.2 There is a likeness in Fletcher’s Of the Russe Common Wealth to the generic mode of political theory, in the vein of Jean Bodin’s Les six Livres de la Republique (1576) or Justus Lipsius’s Six Bookes of Politickes or Civil Discourse (1589, trans. 1594) and Smith’s De republica Anglorum (1583). More importantly, however, we have seen that there was also an awareness in Fletcher’s work of the discourse (and appeal) of the mode of travel information. It is evident from Fletcher’s preface addressed to Elizabeth that he was conscious of an emerging mode of ‘travel information’ in which, more often than not, ‘strange’ and delightful things, as opposed to ‘true’ and weighty things, were discussed. Fletcher wanted ‘to note thinges for mine owne experience, of more importaunce then delight, and rather true then strange’, reality as opposed to fantasy, and yet in all of this he acknowledged that the very essence of Russia encapsulated both a familiar and a strange face of tyranny.3 In this sense Fletcher was engaging with the marvellous travel writing that proliferated in the later sixteenth century and that had been encouraged initially by the popularity of works such as Sir John Mandeville’s Travels and much later by Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations.4 Fletcher’s humanist mode of counsel-giving – his attempt to ‘think with Russia’ – was originally only meant for a select audience as a manuscript, but was given a public audience through his choice to print. Fletcher may have been aspiring to counsel the commonwealth, not just the monarch, consequently employing counsel as private and public.

228

Conclusion A more subtle but equally important mode of writing that Fletcher employed was that of presenting his material as a reference work. Fletcher’s table of contents for Of the Russe Common Wealth evoked, at first glance, the sense of promotional literature on Russia, providing useful knowledge of this unfamiliar ‘new world’, through his description of the cosmography of the land, its commodities and in-depth analysis of the politics, government, religion and behaviour of the Russian people. The structure of the table of contents guided the reader’s experience of the treatise. Although the reader was steered in the direction of following the overarching themes displayed in the table of contents, the work also allowed for referencing, providing the audience with a guide to the whereabouts of specific information on Russian foreign policy for instance or the Russian judicial system. Thus, not only was Fletcher’s text civil philosophy, travel information, and ‘counsel for commonwealth’, it was also a work of reference, a guidebook in effect, implying a potential audience of investors, promoters, diplomats and merchants, as well as educated humanist readers. Fletcher’s text moved beyond any authorial intentions to genre or meaning as soon as it was launched into the public sphere either through manuscript circulation or print publication. Once Fletcher’s text had an audience, the reader’s agency, indeed the reader’s ability to impose his or her own readings, interpretations and inferences on to the text rendered it a new creation. The response of the Muscovy Company promulgated a particularly hostile reading of Fletcher’s text, as a work with the potential to destroy the continuation of amicable and lucrative relations with Russia. The reading of Burghley or one of his assistants in response to the Muscovy Company’s complaint potentially brought about an alternative and politically sensitive interpretation of the text, concerned with the underlying themes of the work, rather than simply its offence to the Russians. The resonances with domestic and international politics that Fletcher’s readers could find in his account created yet another reading of the text, with the potential for it to be subversive beyond its threat to the success of Muscovy Company affairs. Thus not long after its publication, what had begun as Fletcher’s observations and notes on a foreign land, with whom the English had their most successful long-distance overseas trade at the time, became a text laden with controversial ideas, which was rendered subversive by the readings of Muscovy Company governors and the very ‘Catiline’ of Elizabeth’s regime, Burghley, or one of his clients at least. Burghley’s act of suppression confirmed the politically sensitive nature of Fletcher’s text as well as the regime’s tyranny over freedom of expression. Controversial on its first publication, Fletcher’s text on Russia also held political purchase for later editors. The themes of evil counsel, tyranny, oppressive taxation, parliament as every man’s voice, the importance of virtuous nobility and the crucial role of counsel in government in order to keep a commonwealth safe, civil and godly were of utmost importance to the debates and

229

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth discussions surrounding the politics of the 1640s. In the tumultuous context of English civil war politics, it is perhaps little surprise that Fletcher’s text was reappropriated in the outpouring of pamphlet literature and revolutionary discussion of what constituted tyrannical, barbaric government and what was legitimate behaviour from ruler and ruled.5 Concentrated discussion over what constituted good government of the commonwealth in the face of Charles I’s absolutism provided a pertinent context for the reprinting of Fletcher’s text in 1643 as The history of Russia, or, The government of the Emperour of Muscovia with the manners & fashions of the people of that country. Fletcher’s allusions to anxiety over tyrannical rule, the question of the extent of a ruler’s prerogative and the role of a body of ‘counsellors’ to ensure the continuing health and civility of a commonwealth also held political capital when his text was reprinted again 1656 and 1657, at a time when Cromwell’s dictatorial style of government was coming to the fore.6 Exploring the creation, revision, circulation, publication and suppression of Fletcher’s text has allowed us to consider the broader historical horizons of what political and cultural contexts and resonances made Fletcher’s text pertinent and caused such a censorious reaction. This analysis of Fletcher’s works has not been an attempt to categorise how the government and polity of sixteenth-century Russia or indeed by comparison late Elizabethan England worked, but rather to explore how individuals, such as Fletcher, wrote and read and thought about how commonwealths functioned, and in response, how different audiences may have responded to his ideas and themes. It has also revealed the fears of the Elizabethan regime in the face of accessible literary theorising on the consequences of tyrannical government. Fletcher’s depiction of the Russian commons and Russia itself, decaying under the tyranny of its ruler, could have been read as a call to resist tyrannical government, but it could equally have been read as a humanist understanding of government, influenced by the classical (and later humanist, new world) idea of noble savagism: the nomadic, non-Christian, non-civil government of the Tartars was better than the utterly corrupt government of what should have been a flourishing Christian commonwealth. If Christian, civil, commonwealth government became corrupt, the options were either destructive and aggressive – resistance, foreign invasion or civil war – or proactively preventive – restoring virtuous nobility, prioritising counsel, honouring the role of parliament, and encouraging mixed-estate government. Ultimately, however, Fletcher’s own intentions and conclusions remain shrouded in the past. What we can plausibly conclude from his work is that by appealing to an Elizabethan public audience through the revolutionary medium of print, Fletcher was engaged in cajoling the commonwealth to think with the image of Russia, as he himself had done, about what tyranny and godly commonwealth should and should not look like.

230

Conclusion NOTES 1 A. Gajda, ‘Political culture in the 1590s: the “second reign of Elizabeth” ’, History Compass, 8:1 (2010), 94. 2 D. L. Madsen, Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1995), p. 26, quoted in A. Hadfield, ‘Censoring Ireland in Elizabethan England, 1580–1600’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 157. 3 G. Fletcher, Of the Russe Common Wealth (London, 1591), epistle dedicatory. 4 J. Mandeville, Here begynneth a lytell treatyse or booke (London, 1499); Hakluyt, PN (1589). 5 G. Fletcher, The history of Russia, or, The government of the Emperour of Muscovia with the manners & fashions of the people of that country (London, 1643). 6 G. Fletcher, The history of Russia, or, The government of the Emperour of Muscovia with the manners & fashions of the people of that country (London, 1656). Another edition with a new title-page was printed in 1657. For further discussion, see L. E. Berry (ed.), The English Works of Giles Fletcher, the Elder (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp. 157–60.

231

Select bibliography

MANUSCRIPT PRIMARY SOURCES Bodleian Library, Oxford Ashmolean MS 826 English Historical MS c.477 English Letter MS c.441 North MS B.1 Rawlinson MS B.158 Tanner MS 60

British Library, London Additional MS 48151 Cotton MSS Nero B VIII, XI Cotton MS Otho E VIII Egerton MSS 2790, 3376 Harleian MSS 36, 296, 541, 1813 Lansdowne MSS 11, 16, 42, 48, 52, 53, 60, 62, 85, 112 Royal MS 13 B I Royal MS 18 D III

Huntington Library, San Marino, California EL MSS 1620, 1621, 1669, 1701, 2295, 2360, 2463 HM MSS 10, 33, 39, 715

James Ford Bell Library, Minnesota James Ford Bell collection, University of Minnesota Manuscript – Giles Fletcher, ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’

The National Archives, London SP 12/279 SP 70/147 SP 82/3 SP 84/41, 43, 44 SP 91/1 SP 102/49

232

Select bibliography SP 103/ 61 Copies of Russian manuscripts from the Central State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow, held at The National Archives:   PRO 22/60/1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 22

Queens’ College Library, Cambridge MS 25

University College Library, Oxford MS 144

PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. Beacon, R., Solon his follie, or a politique discourse, touching the reformation of common-weales conquered, declined or corrupted (Oxford, 1594). Blundeville, T., M. Blundevile his exercises containing sixe treatises (1594). Buchanan, G., Baptistes, sive calumnia tragoedia, auctore Georgio Buchanano Scoto (1577). Buchanan, G., De jure regni apud Scotos (Edinburgh, 1579). Buchanan, G., Rerum Scoticarum Historia (Edinburgh, 1582). The copie of a leter, wryten by a Master of Arte of Cambrige, to his friend in London concerning some talke past of late betwen two worshipful and grave men, about the present state, and some procedinges of the Erle of Leycester and his friendes in England (Paris, 1584). Dallington, R., A Method for Travell. Shewed by taking the view of France. As it stood in the yeare of our Lord 1598 (1605). Eden, R., A treatyse of the Newe India (1553). Eden, R., The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India (1555). Fletcher, G., Of the Russe Commonwealth or Maner of Governement by the Russe Emperour, (commonly called the Emperour of Moskovia) with the manners, and fashions of the people of that Countrey (1591). Fletcher, G., Licia or Poemes of Love, In Honour of the admirable and singular virtues of his Lady to the imitation of the best Latin Poets, and others. Whereunto is added the Rising to the Crowne of Richard the third (1593). Fletcher, G., The History of Russia, or The Government of the Emperour of Muscovia with the manners and fashions of the people of that countrey by G. Fletcher sometime fellow of Kings Colledge in Cambridge and employed in the embassie thither (1643,1656, 1657). Hakluyt, R., Divers Voyages touching the discoverie of America (1582). Hakluyt, R., The Principall Navigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation made by sea or over land, to the most remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1500. yeeres (1589). Hakluyt, R., The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation made by sea or over-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1600 yeres (1598–1600).

233

Select bibliography Harriot, T., A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588). Hortop, J., The travailes of an Englishman (1591). Languet, H., Vindiciae, contra tyrannos: sive, de principis in populum, populíque in principem, legitima potestate (Basel, 1579). Lee, S., Israel Redux: or the Restauration of Israel, exhibited in two short treatises (1677). Meyer, A., Certaine briefe, and speciall instructions for gentlemen, merchants, students, souldiers, marriners, trans. P. Jones (1589). Milton, J., A brief history of Moscovia and of other less-known countries lying eastward of Russia as far as Cathay, gather’d from the writings of several eye-witnesses (1682). More, T., A fruteful, and pleasaunt worke of the beste state of a publyque weale, and of the newe yle called Utopia (1551). Parke, R., The Historie of the great and mightie Kingdome of China, and the situation thereof: Togither with the great riches, huge Citties, politike governement, and rare inventions in the same (1588). Purchas, S., Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625). Savile, H., The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba (1591). Sidney, P., Astrophil and Stella (1591). Sidney, P., The Defence of Poesie (1595). Smith, T., De republica Anglorum: The maner of governement or policie of the realme of England (1583). Smith, T., The common-wealth of England and maner of government thereof (1589). Spenser, E., The Faerie Queene Disposed into twelve books, fashioning XII. morall vertues (1590). St German, C., Here after foloweth a lytell treatise called the newe addicions (1531). A Treatise of Treasons (Louvain?, 1572). Turberville, G., Tragicall Tales translated by Turbervile in time of his troubles (1587). Warner, W., Albions England a continued historie of the same kingdome, from the originals of the first inhabitants thereof (1597). Webbe, E., The rare and most wonderfull things which Edw. Webbe an Englishman borne, hath seene and passed in his troublesome travailes (1590). Willes, R., The History of travayle in the West and East Indies, and other countreys lying ether way (1577).

LATER EDITIONS OF PRIMARY SOURCES Aristotle, The Politics and The Constitution of Athens, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Berry, L. E. (ed.), The English Works of Giles Fletcher, the Elder (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964). Berry, L. E. and R. O. Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). Bond, E. A. (ed.), Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century: Comprising the Treatise Of the Russe Common Wealth by Dr. Giles Fletcher and The Travels of Sir Jerome Horsey,

234

Select bibliography Knt, Now for the First Time Printed from his Own Manuscript (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1856). Cambrensis, G., The History and Topography of Ireland, ed. and trans. J. J. O’Meara (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982). Cicero, On Duties, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). D’Amico, J. (ed.), Petrarch in England: An Anthology of Parallel Texts from Wyatt to Milton (Ravenna: Longo, 1979). Fletcher, G., Of the Rus Commonwealth, ed. A. J. Schmidt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966). Fletcher, G., Of the Russe Commonwealth, ed. R. Pipes and J. V. A. Fine, Jr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). Hadfield, A. (ed.), Amazons, Savages and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial writing in English 1550–1630. An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Herberstein, S. von, Notes Upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country, Entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii, by the Baron Sigismund Von Herberstein, trans. and ed. R. H. Major, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1851–2). Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt, rev. edn by John Marincola (London: Penguin, 1996). Mancall, P. C. (ed.), Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Morgan, E. D. and C. H. Coote (eds), Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1886). Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoricheskago Obshchestva (Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society), XXXVIII (St Petersburg: Imperatorskoy akademii nauk, 1883). Spenser, E., The Faerie Queene, ed. T. P. Roche, Jr with the assistance of C. P. O’Donnell, Jr (London: Penguin, 1978). Spenser, E., A View of the State of Ireland: From the First Printed Edition (1633), ed. A. Hadfield and W. Maley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). Strabo, Geography, trans. H. L. Jones (London: Heinemann, 1924). Taylor, E. G. R. (ed.), The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1935). Tolstoi, Yu. (ed.), The First Forty Years of Intercourse between England and Russia, 1553–1593/ Pervyia sorok let sochenii mezhdu Rossieiu i Anglieiu 1553–1593 (St Petersburg: A. Travshelya, 1875). Vremenik Imperatoskago Moskovskago Obshchestva istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh (Annals of the Imperial Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities), VIII (Moscow: University Printer, 1850).

SECONDARY SOURCES Adams, S., ‘Eliza enthroned? The court and its politics’, in C. Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 55–77.

235

Select bibliography Adams, S., ‘The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 20–45. Alford, S., The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Amussen, S. D., An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Anderson, M. S., Britain’s Discovery of Russia, 1553–1815 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1958). Andrews, K. R., N. P. Canny and P. E. H. Hair (eds), The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America, 1480–1650 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1978). Archer, J. M., Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India and Russia in Early Modern English Writing (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Armitage, D. and M. J. Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Ash, E. H., ‘ “A note and a caveat for the merchant”: mercantile advisors in Elizabethan England’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 33:2 (2002), 1–31. Ash, E. H. and A. Sandman, ‘Trading expertise: Sebastian Cabot between Spain and England’, Renaissance Quarterly, 57:3 (2004), 813–46. Baron, S. H., ‘A guide to published and unpublished documents on Anglo-Russian relations in the sixteenth century in the British archives’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 11 (1977), 355–87. Baron, S. H., ‘Osep Nepea and the opening of Anglo-Russian commercial relations’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, new series, 11 (1978), 42–63. Baron, S. H., Muscovite Russia: Collected Essays (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980). Baron, S. H., ‘Muscovy and the English quest for a north-eastern passage to Cathay (1553–1584)’, Acta Slavica Japonica, 3 (1985), 1–17. Baron, S. H., ‘Thrust and parry: Anglo-Russian relations in the Muscovite north’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, new series, 21 (1988), 19–40. Baron, S. H., ‘Fletcher’s mission to Moscow and the Anthony Marsh affair’, Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, 46 (1991), 107–130. Baron, S. H., Explorations in Muscovite History (Farnham: Variorum, 1991). Bell, G. M., ‘Elizabethan diplomacy: the subtle revolution’, in M. R. Thorp and A. J. Slavin (eds), Politics, Religion and Diplomacy in Early Modern England: Essays in Honor of De Lamar Jensen (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994), pp. 267–88. Bellamy, E. J., ‘The vocative and the vocational: the unreadability of Elizabeth in The Faerie Queene’, English Literary History, 54:1 (1987), 1–30. Berry, L. E., ‘Giles Fletcher, the elder and the Earl of Essex’, Notes and Queries, 205 (1960), 42–6. Berry, L. E., ‘Giles Fletcher, the elder, and Milton’s A Brief History of Moscovia’, Review of English Studies, new series, 11:42 (1960), 150–6. Berry, L. E., ‘Richard Hakluyt and Turberville’s Poems on Russia’, Bibliographical Society of America, 61 (1967), 350–1.

236

Select bibliography Bertolet, A. R., ‘The tsar and the queen: “you speak a language that I understand not” ’, in C. Beem (ed.), Elizabeth and Foreign Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 101–23. Braddick, M. J., The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996). Braddick, M. J. and J. Walter (eds), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Bryson, A., From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Canny, N. P., ‘The ideology of English colonization: from Ireland to America’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 30:4 (1973), 575–98. Canny, N. P., Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Certeau, M. de, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Clegg, C. S., Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Cogley, R. W., ‘ “The most vile and barbarous nation of all the world”: Giles Fletcher the elder’s “The Tartars Or, Ten Tribes” (ca. 1610)’, Renaissance Quarterly, 58:3 (2005), 781–814. Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Methuen, 1967). Collinson, P., ‘Cranbrook and the Fletchers: popular and unpopular religion in the Kentish Weald’, in P. N. Brooks (ed.), Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays in Honour of Arthur Geoffrey Dickens (London: Scolar Press, 1980), pp. 171–202. Collinson, P., ‘The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 69:2 (1987), 394–424. Collinson, P., Elizabethan Essays (London and Rio Grande: The Hambledon Press, 1994). Collinson, P., ‘The state as monarchical commonwealth: “Tudor” England’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 15:1 (2002), 89–95. Collinson, P. (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Cook, J. Q., ‘The image of Russia in Western European thought in the sixteenth century’ (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1960). Croskey, R. M., ‘A further note on Sir Jerome Bowes’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, 10 (1977), 39–45. Croskey, R. M., ‘Hakluyt’s accounts of Sir Jerome Bowes’ embassy to Ivan IV’, Slavonic and East European Review, 61:4 (1983), 546–64. Cross, A. (ed.), Russia under Western Eyes, 1517–1825 (London: Elek Books, 1971). Crummey, R. O., The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613 (London: Longman, 1987). Dietz, B., ‘Antwerp and London: the structure and balance of trade in the 1560s’, in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds), Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays Presented to S. T. Bindoff (London: Athlone Press, 1978), pp. 186–203.

237

Select bibliography Duncan, G. D., ‘Monopolies under Elizabeth I, 1558–1585’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1976). Elliot, J. H., The Old World and the New, 1491–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). Elton, G. R., ‘Tudor government: the points of contact: parliament’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Tudor Monarchy (London: Arnold, 1997). Fitzmaurice, A., Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Fox, A., ‘The complaint of poetry for the death of liberality: the decline of literary patronage in the 1590s’, in J. Guy (ed.) The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 229–57. Fuller, M. C., Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Gajda, A., ‘Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex and political culture, c. 1595–c. 1601’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2005). Gajda, A., ‘The state of Christendom: history, political thought and the Essex circle’, Historical Research, 81:213 (2008), 423–46. Gajda, A., ‘Political culture in the 1590s: the “second reign of Elizabeth” ’, History Compass, 8:1 (2010), 93–100. Gerson, A. J., ‘The organization and early history of the Muscovy Company’, in A. J. Gerson, E. V. Vaughan and N. R. Deardorff (eds), Studies in the History of English Commerce in the Tudor Period (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1912). Graves, M., The Tudor Parliaments: Crown, Lords and Commons, 1485–1603 (London: Routledge, 1985). Greenblatt, S., Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Guy, J., ‘Monarchy and counsel: models of the state’, in P. Collinson (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 113–44. Hadfield, A., ‘Briton and Scythian: Tudor representations of Irish origins’, Irish Historical Studies, 28 (1993), 390–408. Hadfield, A., ‘Censoring Ireland in Elizabethan England, 1580–1600’, in A. Hadfield (ed.), Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 149–64. Halperin, C. J., ‘Sixteenth-century foreign travel accounts to Muscovy: a methodological excursus’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 6:2 (1975), 89–111. Hamel, J., England and Russia (London: R. Bentley, 1854). Hammer, P. E. J., The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Haney, B. M., ‘Western reflections of Russia, 1517–1812’ (PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1971). Hart, J. L., Representing the New World: The English and French Uses of the Example of Spain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Hartley, J. M., Guide to Documents and Manuscripts in the United Kingdom Relating to Russia and the Soviet Union (London: Mansell Publishing, 1987).

238

Select bibliography Heale, E., ‘Travailing abroad: the poet as adventurer’, in M. Pincombe (ed.), Travels and Translations in the Sixteenth Century: Selected Papers from the Second International Conference of the Tudor Symposium (2000) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 3–18. Helgerson, R., Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Herman, P. C., ‘Tudor and Stuart defenses of Poetry’, in P. Cheney, A. Hadfield and G. A. Sullivan, Jr (eds), Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 27–37. Hoak, D., ‘Sir William Cecil, Sir Thomas Smith, and the monarchical republic of Tudor England’, in J. F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 37–54. Hoak, D. (ed.), Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Hoyle, R. W., ‘Crown, parliament and taxation in sixteenth-century England’, English Historical Review, 109:434 (1994), 1174–196. Huttenbach, H., ‘New archival material on the Anglo-Russian treaty of Queen Elizabeth and Tsar Ivan IV’, Slavonic and East European Review, 49 (1971), 535–49. Jansson, M. and N. Rogozhin, England and the North: The Russian Embassy of 1613–1614 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1994). Jardine, L. and A. Grafton, ‘ “Studied for action”: how Gabriel Harvey read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129 (1990), 30–78. Johnson, J. W., ‘The Scythian: his rise and fall’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20:2 (1959), 250–7. Kewes, P., ‘Henry Savile’s Tacitus and the politics of Roman history in late Elizabethan England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 74:4 (2011), 515–51. Kliuchevskii, V., Skazaniia Inostrantsev o Moskovskom Gosudarstve (Foreign Accounts of the Muscovite State) (Petrograd: Literaturno-izdatel’skii otdel komissariata narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1918). Kupperman, K. O., Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580–1640 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980). Lake, P., ‘The significance of the Elizabethan identification of the Pope as Antichrist’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31:2 (1980), 161–78. Lake, P., ‘Anti-popery: the structure of a prejudice’, in R. Cust and A. Hughes (eds), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603–1642 (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 72–106. Lake, P., ‘The “Anglican moment”? Richard Hooker and the ideological watershed of the 1590s’, in S. Platten (ed.), Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition: Continuity, Change and the Search for Communion (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2003), pp. 90–121. Lake, P., ‘ “The monarchical republic of Elizabeth I” revisited (by its victims) as a conspiracy’, in B. Coward and J. Swann (eds), Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 87–111. Lake, P., ‘Anti-puritanism: the structure of a prejudice’, in K. Fincham and P. Lake (eds), Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2006), pp. 80–97.

239

Select bibliography Lake, P., ‘ “The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I” (and the fall of Archbishop Grindal) revisited’, in J. F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 129–47. Lake, P. and M. Questier, ‘Puritans, papists and the “public sphere” in early modern England: the Edmund Campion affair in context’, Journal of Modern History, 72:3 (2000), 587–627. Leerssen, J., ‘Wildness, wilderness and Ireland: medieval and early modern patterns in the demarcation of civility’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 56:1 (1995), 25–39. Lindsay, R. O., ‘Richard Hakluyt and Of the Russe Commonwealth’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 57 (1963), 312–27. Love, H., Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Lubimenko, I., ‘The correspondence of Queen Elizabeth with the Russian Czars’, American Historical Review, 19:3 (1914), 525–42. Lubimenko, I., Les relations commerciales et politiques de l’Angleterre avec la Russie avant Pierre le Grand (Paris: Champion, 1933). McLaren, A., ‘Reading Sir Thomas Smith’s De republica Anglorum as Protestant apologetic’, Historical Journal, 42:4 (1999), 911–39. McLaren, A., Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558–1585 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Mancall, P. C. (ed.), Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Matar, N., Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). May, S. W., The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991). Mayers, K., North-East Passage to Muscovy: Stephen Borough and the First Tudor Explorations (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2005). Mears, N., ‘Regnum Cecilanum? A Cecilian perspective of the court’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 46–64. Minta, S., Petrarch and Petrarchism: The English and French Traditions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980). Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1584–1601 (London: Cape, 1957). Norbrook, D., Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). O’Brien, A. F., ‘Ireland: conquest, settlement and colonisation’, in D. Ó Ceallaigh (ed.), New Perspectives on Ireland: Colonialism and Identity. Selected Papers from the Desmond Greaves Summer School and Related Essays (Dublin: Léirmheas in conjunction with the Desmond Greaves Summer School, 1998), pp. 9–51. Outhwaite, R. B., ‘Dearth, the English crown and the “crisis of the 1590s” ’, in P. Clark (ed.), The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985), pp. 23–43. Pagden, A., European Encounters with the New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

240

Select bibliography Paige, D., ‘An additional letter and booklist of Thomas Chard, stationer of London’, The Library, series 4, 21:1 (1940), 26–43. Palmer, D. W., Writing Russia in the Age of Shakespeare (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Parker, J., Books to Build an Empire: A Bibliographical History of English Overseas Interests to 1620 (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1965). Parmelee, L. F., Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1996). Peck, L. L., ‘Peers, patronage and the politics of history’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 87–108. Peltonen, M., Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Perreault, M., Early English Encounters in Russia, West Africa, and the Americas, 1530–1614 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). Poe, M. T., ‘A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). Prescott, A. L., ‘English writers and Beza’s Latin epigrams: the uses and abuses of poetry’, Studies in the Renaissance, 21 (1974), 83–117. Quinn, D. B., ‘Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) and the beginnings of English colonial theory’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 89:4 (1945), 543–60. Quinn, D. B. (ed.), The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1974). Ramsay, G. D., The Queen’s Merchants and the Revolt of the Netherlands: The End of the Antwerp Mart (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). Raymo, R. R., ‘Three new Latin poems of Giles Fletcher, the elder’, Modern Language Notes, 71:6 (1956), 399–401. Read, C., Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (London: Cape, 1955). Riasanovsky, N. V., A History of Russia, 5th edn (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Richards, J. (ed.), Early Modern Civil Discourses (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Roche, T. P., Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences (New York: AMS Press, 1989). Sacks, D. H., ‘The countervailing of benefits: monopoly, liberty, and benevolence in Elizabethan England’, in D. Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 272–91. Said, E., Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). Saunders, J. W., ‘The stigma of print: a note on the social bases of Tudor poetry’, Essays in Criticism, 1 (1951), 139–64. Schochet, G. J., Patriarchalism in Political Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1975). Scott, W. R., The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912). Seredonin, S. M., Sochinenie Dzhil’sa Fletchera ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ kak istoricheskii istochnik (The Treatise of Giles Fletcher’s ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ as a Historical Source) (St Petersburg: I. N. Skorokhodov, 1891).

241

Select bibliography Sharpe, K., Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). Sheehan, B. W., Savagism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Shrank, C., ‘ “Matters of love as of discourse”: the English sonnet, 1560–1580’, Studies in Philology, 105 (2007), 30–49. Shvarts, E., ‘Putting Russia on the globe: the matter of Muscovy in early modern English travel writing and literature’ (PhD thesis, Stanford University, 2004). Skinner, Q., Visions of Politics, vol. II, Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Smuts, M., ‘Court-centred politics and the uses of Roman historians, c. 1590–1630’, in K. Sharpe and P. Lake (eds), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 21–3. Sommerville, J., ‘Richard Hooker, Hadrian Saravia and the advent of the divine right of kings’, History of Political Thought, 4 (1983), 229–45. Sorenson, F., ‘The masque of the Muscovites in Love’s Labour’s Lost’, Modern Language Notes, 50 (1935), 499–501. Spufford, P., From Antwerp to London: The Decline of Financial Centres in Europe (Wassenaar: Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, 2005). Stern, P., ‘Corporate virtue: the languages of empire in early modern British Asia’, Renaissance Studies, 26:4 (2012), 510–30. Stout, F., ‘ “The strange and wonderfull discoverie of Russia”: Hakluyt and censorship’, in D. Carey and C. Jowitt (eds), Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 153–63. Stout, F., ‘ “The country is too colde, the people beastlie be”: Elizabethan representations of Russia’, Literature Compass, 10:6 (2013), 483–95. Unkovskaya, M. V., ‘Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations, 1580–1696’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1992). Wallis, H., ‘England’s search for the northern passages in the 16th and early 17th centuries’, Arctic, 37:4 (1984), 453–72. Ward, L., ‘The treason act of 1563: a study of the enforcement of anti-Catholic legislation’, Parliamentary History, 8:2 (1989), 289–308. Willan, T. S., The Muscovy Merchants of 1555 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953). Willan, T. S., The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956). Williams, P., The Later Tudors, England 1547–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Woodworth, A., ‘Purveyance for the royal household in the reign of Queen Elizabeth’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 35:1 (1945), 1–89. Worden, B., The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). Wretts-Smith, M., ‘The English in Russia during the second half of the sixteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, 3 (1920), 72–102.

242

Select bibliography Yakobson, S., ‘Early Anglo-Russian relations (1553–1613)’, Slavonic Review, 13 (1934–5), 597–610. Youngs, F. A., Jr, ‘Definitions of treason in an Elizabethan proclamation’, Historical Journal, 14:4 (1971), 675–91. Zins, H., England and the Baltic in the Elizabethan Era, trans. H. C. Stevens (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972).

243

Index

Note: Literary works can be found under authors’ names, except where the author is unknown; such works are referenced by title.

absolute monarchy 7, 131, 156, 157, 158, 162 Africa 21, 133, 178 Guinea 196, 197 Alcock, Thomas 24 Alford, Francis 64 Alford, Stephen 5 Amerindians 178 anti-Catholic League 163 Antichrist 35, 105, 138, 167, 168, 170 anti-popery 6, 138, 165, 166–70 anti-puritanism 6, 166, 170 Antwerp 17–18, 22, 172 Ariosto 201, 204 Orlando Furioso 201 Aristotle 149, 205 Aristotelianism 121, 129 Arkhangelsk 30 Astrakhan 24, 179 Azores 171 Babington plot 158 Bacon, Anthony 215 Bacon, Sir Nicholas 152, 159 Baker, Philip 62, 63 Baldwin, William Mirror for Magistrates, A 211, 213 Baltic, the 18, 26 Bancroft, Richard 158, 166, 185n.112 Bannister, Thomas 18, 24, 43 barbarity 3, 9, 15, 32–46 passim, 78, 83–4, 102–3, 118–19, 127–40 passim, 163–79 passim Barlow, Roger 16–18 Barne, George 192 Barnes, Barnabe Parthenophil and Parthenophe 200 Baron, Samuel H. 8, 57n.195, 74–6, 77, 119 Baro, Peter In Jonam Prophetam Praelectiones 61 Barrow, Henry 169, 203

244

Bassendine, James 23 Beacon, Richard 178 Solon, his follie 186n.129 Beala (Muscovite dynastic family) 150 Beale, Robert 64, 67 Beckman, Reynold 37 Beesley, George 68, 168 Bellay, Joachim du 203 Bennet, Christopher 43–6 Berry, Lloyd E. 63, 94–5, 99, 104–5, 110–11, 119, 193, 213 Bertolet, Anna Riehl 8, 25, 29, 50n.75 Beza, Theodore 161 Juvenilia 203–4 Bigges, Walter 197 Boccacio, Giovanni De casibus vironum illustrium 211 Bodley, Sir Thomas 214–15 Bomhover, Christian 135 Bonde, William 23 Bond of Association 156 Bonner, Edmund, Bishop of London 60 Borough, Christopher 24, 41 Borough, Stephen 23 Borough, William 23 Bourne, William 101 Bowes, Sir Jerome 28–30, 37, 59, 71, 75, 77, 80, 109–10, 196 Brooke, Maximilian 61 Brooke, William, Lord Cobham 61, 64, 158 Browne, Richard 23 Browne, Robert 62, 202 Brownists 202–3 Buchanan, George 161 Baptistes 162 De jure regni apud Scotos 162–3, 166 Rerum Scoticarum Historia 162 Burton, Robert 121

Index Cabot, Sebastian 19, 31 Cadiz 67, 198 Calvinism 126, 203 Cambrensis, Giraldus 176 Cambridge King’s College 60–3, 110, 204 Queens’ College 95, 97 St John’s College 62 Trinity College 193 Carey, George, second Baron Hunsdon 64 Carey, Henry, first Baron Hunsdon 154 Cartwright, Thomas 62, 169 Cathay 2, 16–17, 19, 21, 23, 31 Catholic League 130, 149, 162, 171 Cecil, Anne 61 Cecil, Mildred, Lady Burghley 61 Cecil, Sir Robert 6, 196, 212, 215–17 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 5, 46, 63, 66–77 passim, 110–11, 113n.29, 152–77 passim, 190, 192–5, 199, 214–15, 218, 229 censorship 11, 154, 164, 201, 218, 222n.65 and Hakluyt, Richard 108–10, 196–7 and Marprelate, Martin 165–6, 169 and Of the Russe Common Wealth 108–10, 189–90, 193–5, 197, 199, 200, 214 and Principal Navigations, The 198 Russian 169 and Spenser, Edmund 199–200 Chalcondyles, Laonicus 102 Chancellor, Richard 18–21, 26, 91n.135, 118, 125, 193 Chapel, John 36–7, 40, 43, 191 Charde, Thomas 68, 189 Cherry, Francis 196 Church of England (also Anglican Church) 61, 62 abuses in 64, 137 reform of 64, 169 Churchyard, Thomas 211 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 5, 130, 179 De inventione 63 De officiis 63 City of London 65–9, 171 Court of Aldermen 66–8 Lord Mayor 65–7, 69, 215 civility 10, 15, 32 –40 passim, 78–81, 103, 133, 139–40, 177, 218, 228, 230 civil war English 230 fear of 7, 150, 151, 155, 161

French 150, 161 Russian 161, 194 cloth trade 17, 18, 21, 22, 124, 172 Collinson, Patrick 5–6, 62, 65, 66, 147–8 Collo, Francesco da 135 Cologne 190 colonisation Elizabeth I and Ireland 176–8 ethics of 179 Russian 178–9 Spanish 179 Columbus, Christopher 3, 21 Constable, Henry Diana 200 Constantinople 71–2, 102, 106, 167 Copenhagen 191 cosmography 93, 100, 101, 111, 119, 121, 229 counsel evil 10, 111, 128–31, 151–5, 160, 165, 197–8, 212–13, 218 good 64, 161, 174 Cranbrook 60, 62, 64 Cromer, Martin 100 Cuffe, Henry 226n.173 Dallington, Robert A Method for travel 98, 121, 122 Daniel, Samuel 7, 211 Delia 200, 211 Davison, William 66 Dee, John 23 Derbent 24 Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex 117, 160, 175, 200, 204, 206, 210, 226n.173 and evil counsel 197–8 and Fletcher, Giles 65, 67, 160–1, 215–18 and Fletcher, Richard 215 and Principal Navigations, The 198 revolt 216–18 Devereux, Walter 177 Drake, Francis 197 Drant, Thomas 62 Drayton, Michael 7, 207 Ducket, Geoffrey 18, 24, 43 Dudley, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick 159 Dudley, Edmund 66 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester 65, 131, 153, 159, 163, 175, 177 see also ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ Dvina Bay 21 river 20 see also St Nicholas, Bay of

245

Index East India Company 8, 15, 22 East Indies 2, 16, 18 Eden, Richard Decades of the Newe World 100, 118, 124 Edward II, King of England 7, 228 Edward VI, King of England 21, 24, 110 Edwards, Arthur 24 Elizabeth I, Queen of England courtly love 205–7 exclusion crisis 156 favouritism 174, 175, 206, 207–8 foreign policy 98, 164, 171, 201 and Netherlands 164, 171 patronage 175, 201, 205, 207 privy council 5, 32, 38, 65–9, 98, 100, 152–9 passim, 216 succession 5, 45, 70, 150–1, 197 and tyranny 46, 111, 148, 152–5, 156, 164–5, 174, 201–13 passim Elton, Geoffrey R. 157 episcopacy 166, 168 Eudoxia of Oldernburg 150 Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma 171 Fenton, Edward 197 Feodor I, Tsar of Russia 128, 167 accession 30 coronation 108, 132 death 195 and Elizabeth I 59 and Fletcher, Giles 71–7 weak tyranny 127–8, 149, 150 fertility (of land) 119, 125 Fitzwilliam, Sir William 177 Fleetwood, William 64, 67 Fletcher, Giles 1–2, 4, 8, 16, 38–9, 59–71, 214–19 diplomatic reports of 22–3, 77–85 embassy to Russia 31, 71–7 history of Elizabeth I 110–12 Licia, or poemes of love 189, 190, 199–210 Of the Russe Common Wealth 1, 8, 93–110, 117–46, 189–98 ‘Rising to the crowne of Richard the third’ 210–14 Tartars or Ten Tribes, The 102, 114n.46, 217 Fletcher, Joan (née Sheafe) 64 Fletcher, Phineas 64, 218 Piscatorie Eclogs 60 Fletcher, Richard, Bishop of London 215 Fletcher, Richard, the elder 60, 62

246

Foxe, John Actes and Monuments 61, 86n.20, 200 France 17, 81, 131, 151–64 passim, 171, 203 religious wars 147, 150 see also civil war:French François de Valois, Duke of Anjou 29, 67, 131, 154, 158, 171 Frederick II, King of Denmark 191 Fulke, William 62 Gajda, Alexandra 6–7, 224n.125 Garrard, Peter 40 Garrett, Sir William 44–6 Gascoigne, George 204, 207 Poesies, The 200 Gerard, Sir Gilbert 204 Gerard, Sir Thomas 204 Gifford, George 62 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey 177 Gilpin, George 214 Glover, Thomas 43 Goad, Roger 62–3 Godunov, Boris Fedorowich 37, 39, 72–6, 106, 127, 150, 190, 192, 212 de facto ruler of Russia 105, 128–9, 149, 152, 153, 195 gold ‘new world’ 132, 133 Russian 118, 121, 131, 132 Goodman, Christopher 162–3 Grafton, Anthony 10, 148 Graves, Michael 65–6, 157 Gray, Richard 26 Greenwood, John 169, 203 Grenville, Sir Richard 177 Gresham, Sir Thomas 22 Greville, Fulke 149, 205–6 Guise faction 130, 153, 171 Guy, John 5–7 Haddon, Clere 61 Haddon, Walter 61 Hague, The 214, 216 Hakluyt, Richard 3, 11n.3, 16–17, 20–1, 73–5, 77, 132 and Of the Russe Common Wealth 108–10, 194–8 and Principal Navigations, The 2, 9–10, 100, 117–18, 228 Hamburg 70, 190 Hammer, Paul 6

Index Hanmer, Meredith 68, 121, 142n.23 Hanseatic League 18, 21, 59, 70, 190 Harrington, John 201 Hart, John 192 Hartwell, Abraham 62 Hastings, Henry, Earl of Huntingdon 28 Hastings, Lady Mary 28–30 Hatton, Sir Christopher 159, 175 Hawkins, John 197 Hayward, John 7, 198 head-knocking 44–6 Heneage, Sir Thomas 64 Henry VI, King of England 7, 228 Henry VIII, King of England 16, 17, 21, 110, 155, 156, 163, 211 Herbert, Sir William 64 Hoak, Dale 157 Hoddesdon, Christopher 23 Holinshed, Raphael 61 Chronicles 102, 210 Holmes, Christopher 23 Holy Roman Empire 72 Horneby, John 40–1 honour (and dishonour) 15–46 passim, 78–80, 128, 153, 177, 202, 206, 208 Horsey, Jerome 22–42 passim, 71, 73, 82, 91n.133, 93, 108, 127, 132, 140, 141n.2, 190–2 Hortop, Job Travailes of an Englishman, The 118 Hotman, François 161 Houghton, Richard 204 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey 207 humanism 61, 84, 86n.33, 186n.129 Humberson, Robert 68, 168 Hurstfield, John 172 Huttenbach, Henry 28 idolatry see religion: idolatry imperium 158, 159, 162 ‘infidel’ 41 innovation (connoting alteration in power) 64, 134, 135, 137, 169, 195 interloping 26, 42–6 Ireland 34, 39, 54n.142, 68, 119, 121, 127, 134, 138, 198 civilising 176–8, 201 rebellion 171 Ivan IV, Tsar of Russia xiii, 21, 32, 42, 59, 111, 191 arms trade with England 22 diplomatic relations with England 24–30

Ivan Ivanovich, heir 126, 149, 150 league of amity 27–8, 110 marriage negotiations 28–9 and merchants 43–6, 78–9 Oprichnina 129, 160–1 trade, attitude to 25, 78–9 tyranny 127–37, 149, 151, 155 Jackman, Charles 23 James VI, King of Scotland 130, 153, 218 marriage to Anne of Denmark 191 pension 69–70, 171 Jardine, Lisa 10, 148 Jenkinson, Anthony 22–4, 26–7, 118, 132, 193 Jeremias II Tranos, Patriarch of Constantinople 71–2 John of Austria, Don 171 Johnson, Richard 24, 118 Johnson, Robert 63 joint-stock company 6, 22, 31–2, 82–3, 175, 228 Jonson, Ben 69, 93 Isle of Dogs 69 justice 127–9, 133–5, 138, 139, 160, 176, 178 Kara Sea 23 Kazan 179 Kewes, Paulina 7, 148 Kholmogory 27, 30, 81 Killigrew, Sir Henry 214 Killingworth, George 26 kingship 1, 5, 130, 149, 182n.55, 199 Kitchin, Alexander 24 Knollys, Sir Francis 154, 177 Knox, John First blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women 162 Lake, Peter 5, 6, 13n.27, 159, 170 Lassy, Brian 68, 168 law 44–5, 64, 80, 93, 127–34 passim, 138–9, 147–8, 162–4, 176 law–making 155–6, 159, 212 martial law 172 Legh, Peter 204 ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ 28, 153–4, 162, 165, 174 Lewkenor, Edward 64 Lindsay, Robert 193, 195, 197 Lithuania 111, 179 Livonia 75, 127, 135 Livonian War 22, 26, 111

247

Index Lodge, Thomas 201 Philis 200 tragicall complaint of Elstred, the 211 Lübeck 70, 190 Lydgate, John Fall of Princes, The 211 Machiavellianism (Machiavellian) 129–30, 149, 153, 198, 212 Magnus, Duke of Holstein 150 Manners, Roger, Earl of Rutland 117 Maria Vladimirovna of Staritsa 150 Marprelate, Martin 165–6, 169, 185n.112 Marsh, Anthony 31, 40, 59, 71, 73–6, 82, 191 Martyr d’Anghiera, Peter 100 Mary I (Mary Tudor), Queen of England 21, 24, 26, 60, 110, 130, 162 Mary, Queen of Scots 5, 150–1, 162, 168 execution 162, 201 Master of Requests in Extraordinary 215, 218 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor 80, 135 Maximilian III of Austria 71 McLaren, Anne 157 Mercator, Gerardus 23 Merchants Adventurers 70, 216 Merick, John 40 Meyer, Albrecht 101 Mildmay, Sir Walter 159 military 34, 164 levies 171–2 Russian warfare 102–3, 119 Milton, John 30, 119 mixed-estate government 6, 7, 65, 66, 156, 158–9, 163, 230 Molyneux, Lady Frances 202, 204, 205 Molyneux, Sir Richard, 204 monarchical republic 5–6, 13n.27, 151 monopoly 21–31 passim, 42, 46, 81, 107, 131, 172, 173, 174–5 Moore, Francis 175 More, Sir Thomas 66 Richard III 210–11, 212 Utopia 59, 94, 156, 202, 211 Morrice, James 64, 67 Moscow (also Mosco) 21–44 passim, 71–6, 81, 104, 106, 129, 167, 191–2 Muscovy (also Moscovia) 42, 118, 119, 124 Muscovy Company arms trade 22–3, 191–2 diplomacy 24–31, 59, 71–7, 80, 84, 98, 190–3 exports 22, 24 factors 24, 31, 32, 39, 82–3, 175, 191

248

fraud 30, 35–7, 40, 42, 71, 73, 76 governors 30, 31, 32, 40–1, 82, 83, 98, 192, 229 imports 21, 22, 79 incorporation 21–2 mercantile advisers 2, 18, 20 private trade 9, 15, 31–40 passim, 42–6, 73, 75–6, 82–3, 175 privileges (trade) 21–46 passim, 59, 74–7, 81, 83, 108–9, 191, 195–6 servants 9, 23–43 passim, 73, 81–3, 140, 175, 191 see also interloping; joint–stock company; monopoly Narva 26, 44, 45, 46, 75, 81 Nashe, Thomas 69 see also Ben Jonson:Isle of Dogs Nepea, Osip 24, 26 Netherlands, the 18, 81, 131, 155, 214 and England 158, 161, 164, 171 and Spain 130, 171, 201 Newfoundland 197 New World 3–4, 10, 21, 54n.142, 103, 121, 127, 132–3, 143n.51, 178 nobility 10, 98, 129, 135, 155–6, 179, 195 ancient 107, 111, 160, 165, 194 and tyranny 130, 131, 134, 159–61, 163, 190 virtuous 128, 130, 229, 230 noble savage 103, 107, 121, 139 Norbrook, David 205–6 Norden, John 68 north-eastern passage to Cathay 2, 15, 16, 18, 21, 23, 31, 75 north-western passage to Cathay 2, 16, 23, 132 Norton, Thomas 65–8, 87n.48, 126 Novaya Zemlya 19, 23 Ottoman Empire 72, 102, 195–6 Murad III, Sultan 72 Palmer, Daryl 4, 8, 56n.171, 63, 110 Palmer, Valentyn 76 parliament 5–6, 42, 65, 155–9, 162–3, 203, 229–30 and Fletcher, Giles 64–6, 156, 158, 179 House of Commons 6, 64, 66, 157, 158, 169, 173, 203 House of Lords 6, 64, 66, 157 and Queen Elizabeth 64–5, 156, 158, 173 Russian 119, 128, 151–2, 155–8, 195 and taxation 171, 173–4 see also law:law-­making; mixed-estate government; Smith, Sir Thomas

Index Parmelee, Lisa Ferraro 150, 163–4 patriarchalism (patriarchal) 33–4, 36, 83 Paulus, Lukash 71 Peacock, Robert 35, 37, 40–1, 73 Pechora 30, 84, 179 Pepys, Samuel 30 Permia 25, 97, 131, 179 Persia 2, 118, 214 Muscovy Company trade with 24, 26, 30, 74, 77 Venetian trade 24 see also Jenkinson, Anthony Persons, Robert 68 Pet, Arthur 23 Petrarch, Francesco 203, 207–9 Philip II, King of Spain 21, 24, 26, 149, 151, 171 Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias 149 league with Russia 72, 167 see also Spain Pipes, Richard 95, 99, 108–9, 110, 161, 193 Pisemsky, Feodor Andreevich 28 Plessis-Mornay, Philippe du Vindiciae contra tyrannos 163–4, 166, 169, 184n.101 Pliny, the elder 100 Plumtree, Lionel 24 Poe, Marshall T. 8, 121, 142n.18 poet 60–2, 64, 93 censorship 199–200 philosopher as 94 poetry counsel, as 63, 94 defence of 94, 199, 201–4 love poetry 189, 199, 200, 206–10 sonneteering 200, 204–6 standardisation 200 stigma of printing 199–200 Poland 71, 135, 191 political culture 2, 4–5, 7, 138 popery see anti–popery; religion: Catholic (Roman), ‘popish’ Portugal 16, 22, 171 Prague 71 prerogative (monarch’s) 6, 156, 172–4, 230 privy council English 1, 5, 32, 38, 65–9, 98, 110, 152–9 passim, 200, 216 Russian 151–2, 195 Proctor, Richard 191 providence 107, 122–6 provost-marshals 172 Ptolemy, Claudius 100

public sphere 180, 229 Purchas, Samuel Purchas his Pilgrimes 98, 198 puritan see anti-puritanism; religion: puritan Qazvin 24 Radcliffe, Thomas 177 Ralegh, Sir Walter 206, 207 Ramusio, Giovanni Battista Delle navigationi et viaggi 2, 100 Randolph, Thomas 23–46 passim, 60, 65, 69–70, 74, 80, 110, 118, 123, 137, 162–3, 193, 215 reading practices 7, 10, 11, 142n.24, 148, 229 rebellion 35, 43, 171, 216 recusants 203 religion Catholic (Roman) 45, 105, 136–8, 149, 154, 158–9, 164, 166–71, 203, 211 corrupt 10, 128, 136–9, 140, 168, 170, 179 idolatry 35, 123, 140 ‘popish’ 35, 167 Protestant xiii, 35, 45, 60, 64, 65, 126, 149, 150, 154–5, 161–71 puritan 62, 137, 154, 165–6, 168–9, 194–5, 203 reformed 61–2, 149, 159, 167 Russian 34–5, 84, 108, 120, 123, 126, 136–9, 140, 165–70, 195 separatists 202, 203 Tartar 101 religious persecution Protestants 60, 161, 162 Catholics 68, 168 see also St Bartholomew’s Day massacre Relph, Richard 40 Remembrancer of the City of London 63, 65–9, 215–17 resistance (theory) 7, 111, 161–6, 189, 197, 198 Reynoldes, Edward 215, 217 Richard II 7, 154, 197–8, 210, 228 Richard III 7, 130, 199, 201, 210 and Cecil, Sir Robert 212 and Fletcher, Giles 189, 199, 210–14 and Holinshed, Raphael 210 and More, Thomas 210–11 see also tyranny Ridley, Sir Thomas 62 Ridolphi Plot 162 Riga 81

249

Index Roanoke 197 Romanovs 161 Rome (ancient) 148 Cupid 206, 208, 209, 210 Jove 208, 209 Nero 148, 165 Venus 206, 208, 209 Virgil 202, 205 Vitellius 165 Rome (Catholic) 45, 72–3, 105, 147, 167, 168 see also anti-popery; religion: Catholic Roxolani 100 Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor 29, 71–2 Ruthven faction 153 Rutter, Ralph 43 Sackville, Thomas Gorboduc 126 Said, Edward 3 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre 154, 161 St German, Christopher 156 St Nicholas, Bay of (port) 21, 23, 26, 30, 40, 71, 75, 76, 81, 104 Saltonstall, Richard 70 Samoyeds (also Samoites; Samoeds) 23, 97, 118 Savile, Henry 7, 148 Savin, Andrei Gregoryevich 27 Scotland 17, 69, 121, 130, 131, 162, 163 see also Mary, Queen of Scots; James VI Scythians 102, 103, 121, 140, 172 self-fashioning 160, 218 seminary priests 68, 158, 168, 204 Senecan dramatic tradition 126, 130, 149 Shakespeare, William 7 Hamlet 126 Shchelkalov, Andrei 72, 73, 74, 76–7, 195 ships Bona Confidentia 19, 21, 23 Bona Speranza 19, 21, 23 Edward Bonaventure 19, 20 Serchthrift 23 Thomas Bonaventure 24 Shirvan 24 Shrank, Cathy 200 Shvarts, Elena 3, 8, 209 Siberia 25, 105, 179 Sidney, Sir Henry 19, 177 Sidney, Sir Philip 29, 65, 131, 163, 200, 201–2, 204–6 Arcadia 154 Astrophil and Stella 3, 207 Defence of Poesie 94, 205

250

Sidney, Sir Robert 206–7, 214 Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland 72, 135, 191 Silke, Richard 36 Silvester, Daniel 27–8, 34 Smith, Sir Thomas 177 De republica Anglorum 138–9, 156–8, 228 Smolensk 191 social unrest 172 Spain 16, 18, 21–2, 72–3, 150, 158, 168, 190 England at war with 72, 148, 158, 171 Spanish Armada 72, 167 Spenser, Edmund 94, 201, 202, 205, 214 Amoretti 200 Epithalamion 200 Faerie Queene, The 199–200 ‘Mother Hubberd’s Tale’ 199 View of the Present state of Ireland, A 119, 138, 177–8 Stade 70–1, 190, 216 Stewart, James, Earl of Arran 153 Strabo 100 Stubbes, Philip 62 Stubbs, John Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, The 154 succession 5, 45, 111 discussion of 151 English 70, 150–1, 197, 201 French 155 Russian 150–1, 152, 155, 190 Sweden 81, 84 Tacitus, Publius Cornelius 7, 100, 148 Tahmasp I, Shah of Persia 24 Tartars 22, 101–3, 107, 121, 135, 139–40, 147, 217 taxation, taxes 171–6, 229 distraint of knighthood 173 evasion 172 exploitation of forest laws 173 farming of customs revenues 175 hostility to 172 legality of 172–3 purveyance 173–4 Russian 131, 171, 174 ship money 171–3 wardships 172 Temple, William 216, 217 Thorne, Robert 16–17, 18 Throckmorton plot 158 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas 160 Time of Troubles 161, 192 Tolstoi, Yury 8, 38 Topcliffe, Richard 68–9

Index torture 41, 68, 74, 168, 207 trade see Muscovy Company travel narrative (also ‘literature’) 2, 4, 7, 10–11, 44, 78, 97–9, 101, 117, 119, 133, 197, 227 treason 41, 43, 45, 68, 148, 206 Treatise of Treasons, A 152–3, 160, 161, 162, 164, 174 Turberville, George 44, 118, 119, 123, 176, 179, 193, 196 Turnbull, William 73 tyranny 1, 6–11, 42, 46, 69 active (aggressive; strong) 127, 130, 149 Catholic accusations of Elizabethan 152–4, 164–5 economic 171, 174, 176 Irish 134, 149 of love 206–7, 209, 210 Protestant accusations of Elizabethan 154–5 Russian 81, 93, 107, 111, 119, 128–50 passim, 155–61, 179, 190 Spanish 130, 147, 149, 164, 201 weak 127–8, 130, 149, 152, 197–8, 213 see also evil counsel; resistance (theory) Unkovskaya, Maria 8, 72 Varzina river 20 Vaygach Island 23 Vere, Edward de, Earl of Oxford 61 Vilnius 191 virtue 5, 15, 60, 61, 64, 84, 135, 160, 199 vita activa 9, 63–4, 65, 200, 201, 203, 205, 228 Volga, the river 74

Vologda 30, 81, 104 Waldegrave, Robert 169 Walsingham, Sir Francis 23, 36, 38, 60–9, 82, 109, 110, 130, 159, 163, 175, 191 Wardhouse (Vardøhus, Vardø) 19, 20 Warkotsch, Nikolaus von 71–2 Warner, William Albion’s England 3, 102 Wars of the Roses 7, 150 Webbe, Edward Rare and most wonderfull things, The 118 Webbe, William Discourse of English Poetrie, A 201 Wentworth, Peter 151, 157–8, 159 White Sea 20, 23, 30, 31 Whitgift, John, Archbishop of Canterbury 64, 158, 165, 166, 169, 203 Whyte, Eustace 68, 168 Willan, T. S. 8, 27, 73, 89n.94 William of Orange 158 Willoughby, Sir Hugh 18–20, 23 witchcraft 101 Woodcocke, James 23 wool-growers 172 Worden, Blair xiii, 6, 112n.7, 154 Wotton, Henry 226n.173 Wrenne, George 24 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 207 Wymmington (Wimmington), Thomas 36, 40 Yaroslavl 30, 81 Yelverton, Christopher 64

251

Blank page