Inward and Secret Letters: Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1561–1583

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Rayne Allinson

Published:

2012

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan US

In 1580 Tsar Ivan IV summoned an English clerk of the Muscovy Company named Jerome Horsey to his presence and informed him that he had "a message of honour, weight and secresie" to convey to the English queen. Russia was being attacked on two fronts—by Poland and Sweden to the west and by Crimean Tartars to the south—and lacked saltpeter, lead, and other crucial military supplies. The last English ambassador to Russia, Daniel Sylvester, had been killed by lightning in 1576 en route to Moscow, and no other ambassador had arrived to replace him.2 Horsey watched as the tsar and his chief secretary of state closed up a packet of letters and instructions "in one of the fals sieds of a wodden bottle fild full with aqua-vita [i.e., vodka, or "Russe wine," as Horsey termed it], to hang vnder my horss maine."

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