satisfaction is given heretofore They do not like at all this expression of my Lords where he saies that they seeme to weigh the generous actions of Princes by Salotnicks As to the several Demands contained in another paper none but the second demand had a satisfactory answer The demand is this that all English Merchants desiring to repair home might have their passes to go over sea with their wives and families without any molestation But it is frustrated by reason of the next following article that justice might be done the English Merchants for their debts for of this there was no care at all taken The next demand to that which is of a great moment and much against the custome of Russia that all his Royal Majesties Subjects of what condition soever might upon their desire have full liberty to return is left without an answer Now concerning some particular subjects of the Kings who looked for the Tzars favour or justice upon this occasion by my Lord Ambassador they were all either rejected or put off The 27. of May the Commissioners sent to my Lord Ambassador their Answer to his Speech said at the private Audience the 22. of April but as to his Complaints against Pronchissof who as in spight of his Excellency was still in his Pristafs office there was not one word said to that nor to the other Memorial And indeed they might as well have left the speech unanswered seing their writings signify no more than their silence For as heretofore so concerning this speech that perhaps might have had any where else a favourable answer they say amongst many words very litle or noting to the purpose Their whole business it seemes is to catch at some expressions which interpreting alwaies to their disadvantage they take thereby occasion to give his Tzarskoy Majesty an ill tast of his Excellency and so to obstruct his business To that purpose they alledge first that in a place of his speech he calles them persons of great wisdom and experience whereas there is of great nobility and experience and that in another place he writes as if they could not shew in all their answers one certain or solid reason for the denyal of the propounded Privileges They do extreamly wonder at such an expression and that being a man of great understanding he would sometimes praise them which they take in very good part and sometimes vilify them But whereas my Lord saies in another place of his Speech That he received from his Commissioners so unexpected an answer that had Heaven fallen as the windows of the Councel-Chamber broke in twice at the recital it could scarce have been more strange or miraculous to him they are pleased to say that it was not fitting for him to speak so to his Tzarskoy Majesty But here is the grand scandalous and unhandsome expression as they take it that stickt to the Tzars very heart when his Excellency speaking as from the Kings Majesties own mouth concerning that unproportionable sum of money that his Tzarskoy Majesties Ambassadors demanded of his Royal Majesty in England said I hope so impossible a sum to the greatest Prince of Christendom was not demanded on purpose to have a pretext to deny the Priviledges and by proposing an impossibility to refuse what is rational The Commissioners answered that this unhandsome expression was an indignity not only to the friendship between both Princes but chiefly to the person of his Tzarskoy Majesty that such a Declaration was far from his Royal Majesties meaning and that therefore their Great Lord would write about it to the King As for the Priviledges they put them off till the wars be put to an end and then the Merchants must stand upon the Tzars courtesie Lastly his Tzarskoy Majesty doth indeed acknowledg the Kings affection to him where it is spoken of those fit opportunities that his Royal Majesty had and might have afterwards of assisting Him upon all occasions of War The Commissioners said that their Great Lord received these Declarations of the Kings in brotherly friendly amity and love Therefore they desired my Lord Ambassador to declare them against which of his Tzarskoy Majesties Enemies his Royal Majesty would assist their Great Lord and whether with warlike men and ammunition and if so with how many warlike men and armes and with what ammunition and whether his Royal Majesty would give this Assistance out of his own Treasury and for what time and to what place these his Majesties men were to come To that my Lord Ambassador gave them this answer that in all these things he was not at all limited but that they were left at his own best discretion provided first that his Tzarskoy Majesty would shew a just value of his Royal Majesties constant brotherly love and friendship But what concernes the propounded Mediation betwixt the Tzar and his Majesty of Sweden it was answered by the Commissioners that there was an Everlasting Peace concluded between Them and that those things that fell out after the Conclusion might be quieted by Messages on both sides As to the Additional Memorials presented to the Tzars Majesty against Pronchissof my Lord had at last an answer after a long sollicitation but it was too much like their Reparation about the miscarriage of our Entrance at Mosco They said that my Lord ought not to complain against him that whatsoever he was told by him in familiar discourses it was not out of malignity but after a friendly way so that his Excellency might take care of himself and of his affaires As to the Reparation promised upon his Entrance at Mosco they do not so much as speak one word of it And now to put an end to a Negotiation where so much is said and so little effected I shall add another important business that passed betwixt his Excellency and his Commissioners My Lord having newly received power and authority from the King to offer his Mediation betwixt the Tzars Majesty and the King of Poland thought that so kind an offer might perhaps bring his business to a better end than he had done hitherto He acquainted his Commissioners with it and offered himself to do his uttermost in prosecution of that affair in what manner his Tzarskoy Majesty should direct for his Service Provided that He would first manifest a just value of his Royal Majesties most sincere and constant brotherly affection by the grant of his former demands The offer did please them very well because it came in very good time but the condition annexed was too hard seeing they had doubtless resolved not to grant the Priviledges Yet they desired my Lord Ambassador to give this matter in writing at a Conference which they agreed upon to be had the first of June and the mean while the Tzar appointed for that purpose new Commissioners to treat of this matter that newly was come in hand So that at last his Excellency was rid from Pronchissof whom the Tzar had still
time from my Predecessors They discovered the port and opened you the Trade and Market of all Europe at Archangel They fought your Enemies ships in the Eastern-seas when the Princes there adjacent had leagued together to shut up the Narve and delivered the prisoners to the Russian Governours at the Narve They lent summs of mony for the wars they furnished Souldiers and Commanders to fight your Enemies they made peace for you with neighbour Princes They suffered the Merchants to supply the Country in the times of great dearth with corn who sold it to the Nation â—t the rate it cost them and several other things to be transported hither for your accommodation in peace or warr prohibited to all other Nations I could mention yet an higher Obligation than all these upon the desire of one of your Tzarskoy Ancestors were it so seasonable to relate it And I my self who ordered my Ambassador to tell You that herein I desired to exceed all my Ancestors yet am refused the Privileges the purchase of my Subjects industry and their vast expense and great losses in finding out and carrying on the Trade to this present I my self at my first coming to the Crown granted to Sir John Hebdon without Credentials three thousand horse and foot of the flower of the English forces for Your service which what they can do and are let the world witness And had your Ambassadors either demanded any thing of me but an unproportionable and unseasonable summe of mony or had they but acquainted me with the posture of your Tzarskoy majesties affaires in any measure You should not have found me wanting However before I sent my Ambassador over I did my best to inform my self otherwise I found that the Pole was likely still to molest You and that notwithstanding the late Peace with Sweden some points remained yet undecided Reflecting upon which I thought for the reasons Your Majestie knowes as concerning the Pole that he would not think me a competent Mediator betwixt You seeing besides that the King of Poland only hath not yet sent me any Ambassage to congratulate my happy Return For the Swede I saw no reason why mine interposition betwixt your Tzarskoy majesty and Him might not be acceptable and seasonable on all sides if your Tzarskoy majesty â—hought it necessary to quench any parks of contention before they broke â—ut further Moreover I consider the opportunity that I have and shall always of assisting You with Commanders and Souldiers ships armour and ammunition against any Enemies You might have for the future and the influence and authority that I should have from time to time with most Princes of Europe or out of Europe that could annoy You for the composing of any differences And upon all these things I had given such order as I thought fitting to my Ambassador And doubtless considering mine own Obligations to your Tzarskoy majesty and the promise I had made You in mine own Letter formerly which I took my self bound to accomplish and the choice of the person of my Ambassador You would not have found me ungrateful in any thing of this or other nature which could not occurre to me Having represented these words as from his Royal majesties own mouth to your Tzarskoy majesty it becomes me not to continue them with any of mine own further than to desire that your Tzarskoy majesty will seriously and speedily according to your great prudence wherewith God hath inspired You reflect upon them and give me a quick dispatch one way or other that I may not lose the very first season of the year to depart hence as his Royal majesty hath given me positive order Given at Mosco 22. April 1664. CARLISLE This speech being thus ended my Lord Ambassador added four Memorials which he gave also in writing but in a paper by it self Three of them were against Pronchissof who endeavoured by all meanes to obstruct my Lords affaires and to make him odious to this Court. It seemes he had told my Lord that his Royal Majesties affaires were in a dangerous and weak condition so that my Lord being confident that he had strove to instil this false report into the Tzars ear thought himselfe bound upon this occasion to inform his Tzarskoy Majesty that what he said therein was contrary to the truth and maliciously invented by Enemies of his Royal Majesty and that the King was in as good condition of quiet at home and power abroad as any Prince in Christendom Another time the same Pronchissof told my Lord Ambassador at his house in the presence of Dementè Bashmacof and of a Colonel van Staden their Interpreter that it was reported his Excellency had received a great summe of mony of the Merchants to recover the Privileges and upon the effecting thereof was to receive yet greater from the said Merchants whereupon my Lord requiring his author he would or could name none so that his Excellency took him for the Author himself as it was very likely Therefore upon this occasion he acquainted the Tzar with it and desired his Majesty to cause Reparation to be given him by the said Pronchissof for so malicious and high a slander Besides the said Pronchissof at several other times spoke to my Lord Ambassador as if he had neglected his Royal Majesties business in respect to the Merchants and threatned him with the Tzars displeasure that he should not depart with honour and as if his Tzarskoy Majesty would complain of his conduct to his Royal Majesty whose instructions he said that my Lord had transgressed In all which things he much diminished the respect due to his Excellency and doubtless exceeded any Commission from his Tzarskoy Majesty My Lord did not neglect to informe his Majesty of all these things upon this present occasion and to tell Him that for these and for the former reasons he takes the said Pronchissof who was at this Audience to be an Enemy to the good correspondence betwixt his Royal Majesty and his Tzarskoy Majesty and consequently no Friend to himself And that therefore whatsoever he might have reported at any time or would afterwards concerning him to give his Tzarskoy Majesty as he had all reason to suspect an ill taste and impression of him He desires his Tzarskoy Majesty to hold it for falshood as he himself was ready to prove it if his Majesty had thought fit at any time to communicate any such thing to him for his own satisfaction He put moreover his Tzarskoy Majesty in minde of the former Reparation promised which still his Commissioners had neglected hitherto The 24. of May my Lord received his Commissioners answer to his papers given at Conference the 22. of March wherein first they blame his Excellency for saying in the beginning that they misunderstood his words as if he had a mind thereby to tell them that they were not able to understand his meaning But for the Posts innocent mistake as they call it they say that
And it extended no further than a bare treaty of Amity for the security of both the Allies and as my Lord Ambassador was assured aimed not at the prejudice of any Prince much less of the King of Great Britain who was expresly comprised therein and might have been received into the Alliance if he pleased himself Mr. de Treslon staid in this Court not above three weeks and on the fifteenth of November he departed from Copenhagen for Stockholme where he had another Embassy to make from the King his Master But besides the feasting that was occasioned by the intimacy of these two Ambassadors there was one more than ordinarily remarkable on the seventeenth of November which was at the Christening the child of my Lady Ambassadress who was brought to bed about a fortnight before of a Son It was Christened by the King the Queen and his Royal Highness and was named Frederick Christian on a Sunday at night in the House where his Excellence resided As soon as our Chaplain had administred the Baptism according to the Liturgy of the Church of England the King went to salute my Lady Ambassadress in her Chamber which was near the Room where the Infant was Baptized The Queen accompanied the King in this Visit his Royal Highness with the two Princesses his Sisters several Ladies of the Court following them There were several of the chief Ministers of State came in also to congratulate her Ladiship upon her happy delivery From this Visit their Majesties past into a large Room where his Excellence had prepared a Noble and Magnificent Collation for them The King would not sit down but choose rather to stand on one side of the table as her Majesty did also on the other with the Prince Christian and the two Princesses His Majesty continued bare all the while drinking several Healths with the Ambassador and other great Persons of his Court amongst which the Lord Treasurer who had been lately his Ambassador to the King of England was one My Lord Morpeth his excellence's Son entertained the Queen all the time his Excellence taking only now and then opportunity to address himself to her Majesty The Gentlemen and Pages that were attending on his Majesty were in the same Room where they also had their share of this Entertainment as well as the rest of the more inferiour servants who remained in the Court below At length after about half an hours time his Majesty retired with the Ambassador waiting upon him Three daies after his Excellence treated his Royal Highness again very sumptuously and after dinner His Highness was pleased to divert himself in dancing some howers with his Excellence and his principal Gentlemen Besides these Collations and some others which I pretermit his Excellence had two or three daies recreation in hunting the Hare with his Royal Highness At other times he took a survey of whatsoever was most remarkable in the City and amongst other things the Arsenal and some other magazins for their Anmunition Instruments of War At our entrance into the Arsenal which we found very fine and in good order we were surprised at first to see a Coach passing before us as it were by a peculiar motion of its own but the motion was performed by wheel-work with a kind of rudder to steer it For which purpose there were two men placed secretly within it one to turn the wheels which was the reason it moved and the other to manage the Stern They shewed his Excellence the Rarities also in the Kings Pallace which were several very curious pieces of Mechanicks besides many Curiosities brought from the remotest Countries The Rareties were disposed in five or six several appartements on one floor and indeed were the only observable things almost we saw in that Pallace Amongst other things in one of these appartements we had a sight of an excellent piece of Art which was a little Ship ready rigged whose Mast Ladders Sailes and Cannon were all of Ivory But his Majesty having a particular desire to caress his Excellence he thought good to shew him his Pallace at Frederixburgh which without contradiction is is a most magnificent and exact Pile In the mean time the King had the Curiosity to go and see the Man of War which brought his Excellence from Stockholm and was then at Anchor in the Harbour attending his departure This Visit being made of a suddain and in the absence of the Captain and the greatest part of the other Officers of the Ship the Seamen were at no small loss to receive his Majesty as he ought to have been Nevertheless that hindered not but his Majesty left some tokens of his being there by a considerable Present which he sent to the Captain and all the Seamen The Captain at his return being desirous to publish his Majesties generosity thought he could not do it any waies more remarkably than by firing his great Guns which though in the Night he discharged so freely at his return to his ship that the noise gave the Town an alarm immediately the drums beating through the streets and all people running to their Arms till at last they understood the occasion and turned their apprehensions into laughter About this time my Lord Ambassador had advertisement from Mosco amongst other things that Calthof who was detained by the Tzar after our departure was constrained to re-engage himself for two Years in the Great Dukes service He had notice likewise that his Tzarskoy Majesty had dispatched an Ambassador to the King of Great Britain to complain of him as a person that had been deficient in his respects to the Tzar and his principal Boyars in the whole process of his Negotiation But the Ambassador having from time to time sent Copies into England of all that had passed betwixt him and the Commissioners and being otherwise well advised that the King his Master did well approve of what he had done he troubled not himself with what the Tzar should attempt being very well assured as indeed it afterwards happened that all his efforts would not be able to shake the reason and justice upon which his conduct was founded About the latter end of our Residence there there was a publick combat performed in the presence of the King with portable Pumps or Engins such as are used frequently in the quenching of great fires It was managed before the Pallace betwixt six or seven men one against another having several others appointed for the management of their Pumps and for supplying them with water from the Canal Every one discharged upon his adversary by lifting up the Pipe and levelling it against his Enemy exposing themselves to the force of the Engins within fifteen or sixteen paces and plying their business so well that they left one of the Champions but one eye to guide him back again to his House My Lord Morpeth departed for England on the first day of Dicember with four or five Gentlemen and some Footmen in