TSAR Ivan IV, better known by his nickname of Ivan the Terrible, was delighted at the prospect of outwitting the Europeans who had been choking the more southerly trade routes, and brought Chancellor six hundred miles to Moscow by sleigh. He replied to Chancellor’s letters of introduction from King Edward VI most warmly, and granted the Englishman’s Muscovy Company a monopoly on Anglo-Russian trade that lasted until 1698, though he later expressed puzzlement that Queen Elizabeth I let her merchants keep so much of the profits.*
Willoughby and his crew were found frozen to death in their ships next Spring. On his next visit to Russia in 1555 to 1556, Chancellor relaunched the ships at Archangel, and then brought Ivan’s ambassador, Joseph Nepeya, back to London for a trade delegation. With them went Willoughby’s distressing journal.
Sadly, after dropping his illustrious passenger safely off in the capital, Chancellor was shipwrecked near Fraserburgh in Scotland on 10th November 1556, and there lost his life.
The failure to pursue the good relations between England and Russia can be put down in part to the struggles for the Russian crown that followed Ivan’s death, the ‘Time of Troubles’; England was also hit hard by the Civil Wars and Interregnum (1639-60), and by the Navigation Acts (beginning in 1651, repealed 1826) that restricted foreign competition in the mistaken belief that this protected English interests. Contacts were renewed by Peter the Great in the time of William and Mary. See Britain and the Tsars, and The Grand Embassy.