Richard Chancellor and the Persian Ambassador: a New Look at the English “Discovery” of Russia in 1553—1554

This article examines information provided by the English translator Richard Eden (1555) about the circumstances of Captain Richard Chancellor’s receipt of permission from Tsar Ivan IV to open trade in the Muscovite state in February 1554. According to this author, an unknown ambassador from Safavid Persia, who was in Moscow at the time, played a significant role in the negotiations with the Russian ruler. Richard Chancellor and Clement Adams, whose writings are considered key evidence of the first English voyage to Russia in 1553—1554, chose not to report this episode. In the historiography of Anglo-Russian relations in the 16th century, the information provided by Richard Eden has not only been unverified but is even rarely mentioned. Based on an analysis of the texts of Eden, Chancellor, and Adams, the letters of Ivan IV, Russian chronicles and ambassadorial books, the correspondence of English and Spanish diplomats, and documents of the Muscovy Company, the author of article has determined the timing and some circumstances of the English presence in Moscow, identified the Persian ambassador, and established the source of the Persians’ knowledge of England. The results of this research allow us to consider Eden’s information reliable, and the participation of the Safavid ambassador in the Anglo-Russian negotiations of 1554 to be possible.