In 1553, Richard Chancellor was engaged to take Sir Hugh Willoughby to Russia by sailing around the northernmost tip of Norway, in the hope of bypassing jealous competitors in Continental Europe and reaching Russia or even India. But their ships were driven apart in a storm, and four months after leaving England Chancellor arrived in Archangel alone.

Chancellor was heartily welcomed to Moscow by Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and for more than a century Chancellor’s Muscovy Company enjoyed exclusive rights over Anglo-Russian trade. He even brought Ivan’s ambassador Joseph Nepeya back to England on a trade delegation in 1556, but tragedy befell Chancellor soon after, when he was shipwrecked off the Scottish coast.

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