Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/299

 Rh Harwich. The storm had carried them into the gulf formed by the mouth of the Arrina, and there Willoughby had seen his comrades die off, one by one, of cold and hunger. The notes his splendid courage enabled him to keep prove that he himself survived till January, 1554.

When Chancellor got back to England he found Edward VI. dead; but Philip and Mary, on the report he submitted to them, sent him back to Moscow as the representative of a new company, the 'Fellowship of English Merchants for the Discovery of New Trades,' which was to take the place of the old 'Society for the Discovery of Unknown Lands,' which had organized the first expedition. For practical purposes, this company was always called the Russian or the Muscovite Company. Two special agents, Richard Grey and George Killingworth, were associated with the leader of the new mission, and provided with instructions which betoken a marvellous insight as to the interests concerned. The agents were desired to study the character and habits of the Russian nation, and the taxes, coinage, weights and measures of the country. They were to take care that all their fellow-countrymen carefully obeyed the Russian laws; they were to open counting-houses and shops in Moscow and the other principal towns; they were to notice the kinds and qualities of merchandise likely to find a good market, and they were to look out, at the same time, for the best means of making their way into the Far East, and more particularly into China. The instructions also enumerated those Russian products—wax, tallow, tar, hemp, flax, and furs—which it would be well to import into England; and asked for samples of the minerals the company might undertake to bring to the surface in the Tsar's dominions, and details as to the German or Polish woven stuffs which might be replaced, on the Russian markets, by others of English make. They contemplated the possibility of monopolizing certain branches of the external trade of Russia, and drew up a complete programme, in the execution of which Chancellor, Grey, Killingworth, and their successors were to prove fully equal to their task.

Chancellor re-embarked on the Bona Fortuna, reached Moscow without a hitch, opened negotiations with Viskovatyï, the Chancellor, and succeeded in obtaining a charter which granted his company the most precious favours—complete freedom of trade, a special jurisdiction for all Englishmen settled in Russia, autonomy as regarded differences between English subjects, and the Tsar himself to decide all causes involving litigation between subjects of the two countries. At first the profits of the Company were enormous. According to one of its agents, a piece of cloth, which cost, transport