Richard Chancellor
Richard Chancellor | |
---|---|
Born | c. 1521 |
Died | 10 November 1556 |
Richard Chancellor (c. 1521 – 10 November 1556) was an English explorer and
Life
Chancellor, a native of Bristol, was brought up in the household of
Sir
When Tsar Ivan the Terrible heard of Chancellor's arrival, he immediately invited the exotic guest to visit Moscow for an audience at the royal court. Chancellor made the journey of over 600 miles (over 1000 kilometres) to Moscow by horse-drawn sleigh through snow and ice-covered country. He found Moscow large (much larger than London) and primitively built, most houses being constructed of wood. However, the palace of the tsar was very luxurious, as were the dinners he offered Chancellor.[5] The tsar was pleased to open the sea
When Chancellor returned to England in the summer of 1554, King Edward was dead, and his successor, Mary, had executed Northumberland for attempting to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne. No stigma attached to Chancellor, and the Muscovy Company, as the association was now called, sent him again to the White Sea in 1555. On this voyage he learned what had happened to Willoughby, recovered his papers, and found out about the discovery of Novaya Zemlya. Chancellor spent the summer of 1555 dealing with the tsar, organising trade, and trying to learn how China might be reached by the northern route.[1][3]
In July 1556 Chancellor departed for home, taking with him the first Russian ambassador to England, Osip Nepeya. The fleet consisted of four ships, the Philip and Mary, the Edward Bonadventure and Willoughby's relaunched ships, the Bona Confidentia and the Bona Esperanza. Along the coast of Norway the weather turned bad and the fleet sought shelter in
In fiction
Chancellor appears as a major character in the novel The Ringed Castle (1971), fifth of the six novels in Dorothy Dunnett's historical fiction series, The Lymond Chronicles.
See also
Notes
References
- "Richard Chancellor", 1997, in Encyclopedia of World Biography, Detroit, Gale
- Dulles, Foster Rhea. Eastward Ho! The First English Adventurers to the Orient: Richard Chancellor, Anthony Jenkinson, James Lancaster, William Adams, Sir Thomas Roe, 1931, London, John Lane.
- Dunnett, Dorothy. "The Ringed Castle," 1971, New York, Vintage Books.
- Evans, James (2014). Tudor Adventurers: An Arctic Voyage of Discovery. New York: Pegasus Books.
- Hakluyt, R. "Voyages" "The Voyage of the Bark Aucher to Chios and Candia"
- Howarth, David, 2003, "British Seapower", Robinson, London.
- Koerper, Phillip E. (1996). "Chancellor, Richard". Historical Dictionary of the British Empire. Vol. 1. Greenwood Publishing Group.
- Laughton, John Knox (1887). Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 10. London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In
- Loades, David, ed. Reader's Guide to British History (2003) 1: 245–46, historiography
- McDermott, James (2004). "Chancellor, Richard (d. 1556)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5099. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Wright, Helen Saunders (1910). The Great White North: The Story of Polar Exploration from the Earliest Times to the Discovery of the Pole. The Macmillan Co.
helen wright great white north.