Free World Enough and Time by Nicholas Murray Page A

Castle, through a Regiment of six hundred men, and the next day he sent sixteen boats guarded by several hundreds of men, under the command of a Collonel, to receive his Excellence, and bring him ashore.
    After this display, the ambassador himself, Lord Carlisle, finally entered the town of Archangel on 23 August, though some obscure breach of protocol in this heavy pageantry created some dismay in his hosts. Several English and Dutch merchant ships, happening to be in the harbour, had fired cannon salutes, a practice not approved of by the Russians. Nevertheless, the stay at Archangel augured well and the embassy was treated to ‘all manner of Good entertainment’.
    On 12 September the party left Archangel in six barges ‘of which one was set apart for his Kitchin, and a hearth and Chimney contrived in it’. The Earl, an Englishman abroad, had taken great care to bring his creature comforts with him. The barges, hauled by serfs not horses, moved slowly up the Duina and Sucagna rivers via Colmogro, Arsinoa, Yagrish, Ustiga, Tetma and Chousca, reaching Vologda on 17 October. As the Russian winter was setting in Marvell and his compatriots fortified themselves against the cold with furs and sheepskins; there was some anxiety that the rivers might freeze, halting the snail-like progress entirely. To pass the time the English party went ashore to shoot duck and pigeon. On arrival at the small villages the local priest would often come out to the barge with a present of fish or gooseberries in the hope of some reward, which usually turned out to be aqua vitae. The result of this was that he commonly went home again drunk. Feeling colder and colder, they huddled in their furs and now felt that ‘our Voiage began to be grievous and insupportable’. On arrival at Vologda they decided to lodge there for three months until the snow had frozen sufficiently to support sledges. There was some diversion there in the form of music and dancing. Guy Fawkes Night was celebrated on 5 November and ‘The Buttlers wife was brought to bed, having been big with child before she came out of London.’
    On 7 January the party moved off again by sledge via Yaroslaf, Rostof, Peroslaf and Troitza, reaching a little village near Moscow called Yawes on 3 February. Various encounters along the way had taught the English party that the Russians were sticklers for protocol, at least in relation to themselves. As they prepared for their entry into Moscow the behaviour of minor local officials sent out to negotiate the arrangements provoked irritation and offered ‘tokens of indignity and contempt’. Carlisle’s patience was becoming exhausted and he instructed Marvell to compose a letter in Latin to the Tsar ‘in which he should inform him of the principal circumstances of this disorder’. The letter complained of the ‘misfortune, if not an indignity’ of their treatment, and complained rather querulously of their sojourn at Yawes ‘in this pitiful village, amidst all kinds of inconveniences, and swarms of troublesome Insects’. Carlisle demanded, through Marvell’s Latin, satisfaction for these ‘barbarous and inhumane’ treatments and was apparently mollified by the response.
    On 6 February, almost seven months after leaving England, the embassy entered Moscow in splendour: ‘It was reported every where in the Court that the City of Mosco never saw the Entry of any Ambassador so glorious as this.’ Two hundred sledges made up the procession. A few days later, on 11 February, a formal audience with the Tsar took place, Carlisle arriving in a sledge in which Marvell was also riding: ‘In the Ambassadors sledge there was the Secretary and the chief Interpreter standing and uncovered, the Secretarie carrying in his hands upon a yard of red Damask his Letters of Credence written in parchment, whose Superscription contained all the tiles of the Tzar in letters of Gold.’