Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth

The Muscovy Company and Giles Fletcher, the elder (1546–1611)

Felicity Stout, Felicity Jane Stout

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780719097003
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784996253
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan Commonwealth tells the story of English relations with Russia, from the 'strange and wonderfull discoverie' of the land and Elizabeth I's correspondence with Ivan the Terrible, to the corruption of the Muscovy Company and the Elizabethan regime's censorship of politically sensitive representations of Russia. Focusing on the life and works of Giles Fletcher, the elder, ambassador to Russia in 1588, this work explores two popular themes in Elizabethan history: exploration, travel and trade and late Elizabethan political culture. By analysing the pervasive languages of commonwealth, corruption and tyranny found in both the Muscovy Company accounts and in Fletcher's writings on Russia, this monograph explores how Russia was a useful tool for Elizabethans to think with when they contemplated the nature of government and the changing face of monarchy in the late Elizabethan regime. It will appeal to academics and students of Elizabethan political culture and literary studies, as well as those of early modern travel and trade.

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 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 benefits 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 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 1555 and 1556 caused grain prices to increase rapidly to over double their normal rate, worsening the economic situation of the English commonwealth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Note on style, dates and terminology
• Introduction
• 1 An adventuring commonwealth
• 2 A commonwealths-man in Russia
• 3 Creating a feigned commonwealth
• 4 A corrupted commonwealth
• 5 A commonwealth counselled
• 6 A controversial commonwealth
• Conclusion
• Select bibliography
• Index