Free World Enough and Time by Nicholas Murray Page B

The Tsar’s adornment of jewels made him seem ‘like a sparkling Sun’ and the English party coming into his presence were ‘like those who coming suddainly out of the dark are dazled with the brightness of the Sun’. The Tsar, at thirty-four, was the same age as the English Ambassador. His first question was about the Queen Mother: ‘How doth the desolate Widow of that glorious Martyr Charles the First?’ Various florid Latin speeches, composed and delivered by Marvell, were offered from the English side, and gifts were presented, including a gun used by the royal martyr and a pair of pistols worn by Charles II when ‘after so long adversity he rid in his triumphant Entry into His Metropolitan City of London’.
    A second audience took place on 13 February at which, in spite of its being the first opportunity to get down to the essential business that had brought them there, the ambassadors were still complaining about the slights they had received from the Russian officials. The Tsar reproved them for these complaints before informing them that he was refusing their substantive request on the grounds that the English Company of Archangel who wished to see their former privileges restored had supported the rebellion. An English informer, Luke. Nightingale, had, the Tsar claimed, been sent by Charles I with this information. He went on to suggest that the English planned to rob him and had abused trading rules to line their own pockets at the expense of the Russians. To cap it all the Tsar then announced that he took grave exception to being described in Marvell’s Latin address as ‘Illustrissime’ rather than ‘Serenissime’.
    After this brutal setback, the English returned on 29 Feburary to try to win a change of heart. Still pressing for an apology for the slight given by the Tsar’s officials – apparently not considering it tactful to let this go in the difficult circumstances – Carlisle attempted to demolish the Russian objections. The Tsar was informed smoothly by Carlisle – who had been wounded at the Battle of Worcester fighting for Cromwell – that ‘though all the English were involved in the calamatie of that Rebellion, but the better part alwayes free from the guilt thereof’. This was a very Marvellian argument. Carlisle next attempted to destroy the credibility of Luke Nightingale, calling him ‘a broken merchant, a perjured fellow and a grosse Imposter’. On the impropriety of the Latin address – and speaking no doubt to a learned brief drafted by Marvell, who may have actually delivered all this matter in his own Latin – Carlisle pointed out that ‘the word Serenus signifieth nothing but still & calme’. He added that Cicero had called the night serene, and similar usages could be found in Lucretius. Carlisle’s final riposte was that, if titles were in dispute, why was his king not accorded by the Russians that of Defender of the Faith? On 19 March the Tsar replied that the King offered him no help against his enemies ‘the Pole and the Grim Tartar’. At a final private audience on 22 April that lasted until one o’clock in the morning Carlisle saw defeat staring him in the face. The whole elaborate embassy, with all its pomp and circumstance, had been a total failure.
    After a final public audience on 24 June, the party finally left Moscow, having witnessed the exchange of coloured eggs at the Orthodox Easter. Carlisle wrote a letter to Secretary of State Henry Bennet, later Earl of Arlington, a member of the Cabal, after the final private audience in which he expressed his irritation: ‘What else was to be expected in a country where all other beasts change their colours twice a yeare but the rationall beasts change their soules thrice a day.’ 5
    On 3 August the ambassadors arrived at Riga on the next leg of their journey to Sweden. They travelled on horseback, with three