Free World Enough and Time by Nicholas Murray

Indeed, his short disappearance to Holland had proved, in the event, not to have needed his cutting the trip short: ‘Neither do I now go abroade againe but with a probability of coming back before your opposers can haue any hope of effecting their former pretensions.’ He suggested that the balance of the money he had asked them to deposit with him to facilitate his work for them in the lighthouse business could now be returned. Will Popple could arrange that for them. And then he was off.
    Marvell’s certainty that this mission would do his career some good was well founded. His clash in the House with Clifford had taken place more than a year previously but he would be aware that he still had enemies at Westminster who remained suspicious of the past he himself had so easily disowned. A mission on behalf of the King to a foreign power, in the company of a favoured young aristocrat, would surely remove once and for all any doubts about his loyalty. Further commissions might follow.
    The voyage from Gravesend to the port of Archangel took a month, the frigate making much quicker progress than the merchantman which did not arrive until 5 September. Guy Miège described the whole embassy in often very vivid detail in A Relation of Three Embassies from His Sacred Majesty Charles II to the Great Duke of Muscovie, The King of Sweden and the King of Denmark Performed by the Right Ho’ble the Earle of Carlisle in the Years 1663 & 1664, which was published anonymously in 1669, ‘with his Lordships approbation’. It was a popular work that went through several editions and translations. Miège, who was born in Lausanne in 1644, went on to publish in 1691 a New State of England – a sort of anatomy of Britain – and various French dictionaries and grammars. He was a shrewd and observant writer. The purpose of the embassy he described was to bring about the restoration of certain trade privileges that English merchants had previously enjoyed in Russia but which the Tsar had cancelled after the execution of the King. Miège wrote that the present ruler of ‘Moscovy’, Alexey Michailovitz, had a great ‘abhorrency of the murther of King Charles the First’ so the embassy would have its work cut out. Back in England, the King had already held a lavish reception for the Russian ambassadors, but a personal visit of his representatives was necessary. Another aim of the embassy was to restore a special English privilege of paying no impost when using the port of Archangel in recognition of their having originally discovered the port. Two reasons were proffered for winning back these privileges: the fact that the rebellion was over and that ‘these very Priviledges were the basis and foundation, upon which the Amity betwixt the two Crowns of England and Moscovy were superstructures’.
    The embassy was led by the dashing young Carlisle, aged thirty-four and with ‘a peculiar grace and vivacity in his discourse’. Throughout, he deployed the maximum amount of display and pomp in order to ingratiate himself with the Duke of Moscovy:
    His Train consisted of near fourscore persons, amongst which he had ten Gentlemen, six Pages, two Trumpets, and twelve Footmen. He had also a Chaplain, several Interpreters, a Chirurgeon, six Musicians, besides many Tradesmen that were very necessary in Muscovy.
    The ships were weighted down with items of furniture and catering equipment and they had brought also ‘a magnificent canopy of red Damask, surrounded with a gold and silver Fringe, and having on the back in a large circle the Arms of the King of England, richly embroidered with silver’. On arrival at the bar of Archangel on 19 August Carlisle immediately set in train the arrangements for the triumphal entry of this splendid retinue:
    He sent Mr Marvel his Secretary, into the Town. Of whose landing the Governour having notice, ordered him to be conducted by six Gentlemen to the