Тавастшерна

1573 - двор Ивана Грозного

Григоръев Ивашко 28
Григорьев Володка Иванов сын 37
Григорьев Гриша 40
Григорьев Замятня 5 об.
Григорьев Истома 4об.
Григорьев Лешук 8
Григорьев Матюша 38
Григорьев Мещанко 32 об.
Григорьев Микифорко 18 об.
Григорьев Митка 30
Григорьев Михайло 21
Григорьев Олеша 36
Григорьев Олешка 34 об.
Григорьев Ондрюша 23 об.
Григорьев Онтонко 26
Григорьев Офонка 27 об.
Григорьев Петр 1
Григорьев Сенка 27 об.
Григорьев Соловко 33
Григорьев Тренка 30
Григорьев Третьяк 32 об.
Григорьев Фадейко 18
Григорьев Фегко 17 об.
Григорьев Филка 18 об.
Григорьев Шарапко

Государевы царя и великого князя задворные конюхи.

Михайло Григорьев . Денег 7 рублев. Поместья 100 четьи.

троице сергиева лавра-

Род Григорьевых/ Ильи'118', Симеона'119), Агрипины'120', Иакова'121'.

Об отпущении Королевых посланников (1556 год)

«Того же месяца отпустил государь Филипа короля Англиньского посланников Рыцерта [Ричарда] да Юрья, а с ними послал своего посланника Непею Вологжанина з грамотою; а писал х кролю о любви и о ссылке [т. е. посылке – отправке послов], и людем его царь и великий князь пожаловал, в своих государьствах велел учинити пристанище корабелное на Двине, и торг по всему государьству повольной дал, также и на Москве двором устроил».
ПСРЛ.Т. 13. С. 270.

Осип Непея Григорьев
Дьяк Посольского приказа, первый российский посланник в Англии (1556–1557)

В мае 1553 года из устья Темзы вышло три корабля под командованием адмирала Хью Уиллоуби с целью пройти северными морями до Китая и Индии. Этот возможный (как тогда казалось), но неведомый для западноевропейцев путь был выбран в связи с тем, что известный после экспедиции португальца Васко да Гама 1498 года южный путь в Индию был в руках Португалии. Однако сказочные планы не сбылись. Два корабля вынуждены были остаться на зимовку в Нокуевой губе Кольского полуострова, где весь экипаж замерз вместе с адмиралом зимой 1553-1554 годов. Весной эти корабли были обнаружены русскими промышленниками, а в следующем году товары с них и сами корабли были доставлены в устье Северной Двины и переданы англичанам.
Лишь один из английских кораблей, Ричарда Ченслера (Чен-слора), 24 августа 1553 года добрался до устья Северной Двины и бросил якорь близ Николо-Корельского монастыря. В Холмогорской летописи сказано: «24 августа прииде корабль по морю на усть Двины реки, и обослався, приехали на Колмогоры в малых судехи нарекся послом от аглинского короля Едварта [Эдуарда VI]: "При-идох к великому князю"». После переговоров в Москве с Иваном Грозным, в марте 1554 года английский капитан был отпущен из Москвы к себе на родину.
Несмотря на неудачу экспедиции, снарядившая и направившая ее компания, ознакомившись с обстоятельным отчетом Ченслера, в котором четко излагались выгоды торговли с Россией, решила продолжить свою деятельность. Вскоре она стала именоваться Московской торговой компанией и сосредоточила в своих руках монополию торговли с Россией.
В октябре 1555 года Ченслер снова оказался в Москве, теперь уже как английский посол. Получив жалованную царскую грамоту на право свободной торговли англичан в России и открытие английских факторий в Холмогорах, Вологде и Москве, он отбывает в марте 1556 года к устью Северной Двины, а оттуда – в Лондон. Вместе с Ченслером в Англию направляется и первое русское посольство во главе с Осипом (Иосифом) Непеей. Из четырех английских кораблей два погибли на полпути, корабль Ченслера – у берегов Шотландии. Погиб и Ричард Ченслер со своим старшим сыном.
Чудом спасшийся Непея из Шотландии был доставлен в Англию и принят торжествен но и пышно членами торговой компании, королем Филиппом и королевой Марией I Тюдор. Московская компания дала для него бал, а во время тоста за здоровье Непеи ему было объявлено, что компания берет на себя все расходы его пути и пребывания в Шотландии и Англии. Один из англичан, описавший прием Непеи, отмечал, что «ничего подобного не бывало в прежние времена». Русский посол, как отмечается в королевской грамоте, произвел при дворе самое лучшее впечатление своей рассудительностью и степенностью.
В мае 1557 года Непея вместе с новым английским послом Антонием Дженкинсоном отправился в Россию. Через два месяца они высадились в устье Северной Двины. Через шесть дней после этого, когда перегрузили вещи и королевские подарки наречные суда, Непея поплыл вверх по Северной Двине через Холмогоры и Устюг в Вологду. Здесь всё было перегружено на телеги, и русский посол выехал в Москву, куда и прибыл через две недели. Непея привез в Россию «мастеров многих, дохторов, и злату и серебру искателей, и иных многих мастеров», и доктора Стандиша. Царю он передал подарки из Англии, среди них «лва и лвицу живых», и две грамоты английских купцов.
Так в 1553–1557 годах установились дипломатические и торговые отношения между Россией и Англией.
Закончив посольские дела, Непея занимается повседневными делами в Посольском приказе. Во время второго посещения России Дженкинсону пришлось почти год ждать аудиенции у царя. Он уже хотел уезжать в Англию, но его посетил Осип Непея и убедил набраться терпения и подождать. Вскоре англичанин был приглашен на обед к царю и, получив от него разрешение, в апреле 1562 года отбыл в Персию с послом этой страны.
В августе 1566 года дьяк Осип Непея присутствовал на заседаниях Земского собора, решавшего вопрос о Ливонской войне.
В 1570 году, при отпуске из Москвы послов польского короля, Иван Грозный заверил их, что вскоре от него к польскому королю будут отправлены «послы великие» во главе с князем Иваном Канбаровым и дьяком Осипом Непеей Григорьевым . Однако, как свидетельствует «отпуск» послов от 10 января 1571 года, в составе посольства в Польшу значился уже дьяк Петр Протасьев. Следовательно, по каким-то причинам дьяк Осип Непея Григорьев был отстранен от этого посольства.
Такие сведения имеются об этом человеке в источниках и литературе. Они, однако, порождают ряд вопросов. В частности, почему в Никоновской (Патриаршей) летописи Осип Непея записан «вологжанином», – и какова его судьба после 1570 года?
Ни в литературе, ни в известных нам источниках не имеется данных о дальнейшей судьбе Осипа Непеи Григорьева . Однако есть основания на этот счет высказать, на наш взгляд, аргументированные предположения.
Известно, что опричный разгром Великого Новгорода явился толчком к казням в Москве, прошедшим летом 1570 года. Жертвами репрессий стали многие представители знати, высшей приказной бюрократии – дьяки московских земских приказов, даже опричной верхушки. Опале подверглось и руководство Посольского приказа. Глава приказа и печатник (хранитель государственной печати), талантливый дипломат Иван Михайлович Висковатый и близкие к нему дьяки ряда земских приказов были казнены.
Не лег ли царский гнев и на плечи дьяка Посольского приказа Осипа Непеи? Но среди казненных в Синодике опальных Ивана Грозного имя этого дьяка не значится. Возможно, он был сослан в Вологодский край, поэтому в Никоновской летописи Непея и фигурирует как «вологжанин». И, по всей вероятности, это определение было внесено в летопись «задним числом» – в ходе известной правки ее текста в 1570-е годы.
Еще один штрих из начальных русско-английских отношений. Англичане добивались исключительного права торговли с Россией северным путем, чтобы здесь «никакие другие иноземцы не были допускаемы и не имели дозволения приставать или торговать». Объясняли они это тем, что путь открыли будто бы именно англичане. Однако это не так. Уже в XV веке поморы Севера России на лодьях ходили для промыслов на Грумант (остров Шпицберген). Северным путем шли дьяк Василий Далматов из Дании (1501 год), толмач (переводчик) Григорий Истома в Данию (1507 год), посол Дмитрий Герасимов в Рим (1525 год). Описание этого пути по рассказу Григория Истомы дал Сигизмунд Герберштейн, дважды побывавший в России послом Германии, в своих «Записках о Московитских делах», публиковавшихся с 1549 года и широко известных в Европе.
Число кораблей, прибывавших из разных стран Европы в устье Северной Двины, росло, особенно с основанием Архангельска (1584). Возрастало и значение Вологды как важнейшего пункта, находившегося в начале Сухоно-Двинского пути, по которому шла основная масса товаров заграничной торговли.
Ю. С. Васильев


Царя и великого князя посланник пришел
(1557 год)
«Того же месяца [сентября] пришел посланник царя и великого князя Осиф Непея от Филипа, короля Изшпаньскаго и Англиньского и от королевы Марии. А сказал Непея, что едучи в Англиньскую землю, розбило их корабли в море, и королев посланник Рыцерт [Ричард] с товарищи утонул в море, а их прибило в Штоцкое [Шотландское] королевъство, и оттоле его выпустили в Аглиньскую землю, и король Филип принял царя и великого князя присылку с великою любовию и честию и х царю его великому князю отпустил. А писали с ним король Филип и королева Марья с великою любовию и почестию и в поминъках прислали лва да лвицу живы, да король прислал доспел свой полной да скорлаты и отласы многие, и Непее во своем жалованьи дачку учинили великую, и царя и великого князя гостем путь чист учинили и двор им в болшем своем городе в Дуньском дали и безо всяких пошлин торговати велели. Да отпустил с Непеею мастеров многих дохторов, и злату и серебру искателей и делателей, и иных многих мастеров, и пришли с Непеею вместе».
ПСРЛ. Т. 13. С. 285-286.

Однако Годунов не остановился перед тем, чтобы отправить русских юношей в Европу для обучения языкам. Так, при нем впервые были посланы в Европу несколько молодых юношей: в 1602 г. в Англию из Архангельска отправились «Микифорка Олферьев сын Григорьев, Софонко Михайлов сын Кожухов, Казаринко Давыдов и Федька Костомаров». Они должны были обучаться в лучших английских учебных заведениях: Винчестере, Итоне, Кембридже, Оксфорде.
Много лет сведений о них нет: царь Борис умирает, в стране начинается Смута, на престоле меняются самозванцы и до русских юношей никому не было дела. С установлением относительного порядка в России о них все-таки вспомнили: в каких-то приказных бумагах отыскались записи. Русское правительство забеспокоилось и наказало своему послу узнать о них. Как выяснилось, после обучения в университетах один из них стал англиканским священником в Лондоне, другой жил «в Ирлянской земле от короля их секретарь», третий и четвертый «в Индейской земле от гостей в торговле [т. е. в Ост-Индской компании]».
Оказалось, что они, «позадавневшие» в Англии, совсем не рвутся назад. Как сообщал посол, Никифор Григорьев «на нашу православную веру говорит многую хулу и боится, чтобы его вместе с товарищи не выдали снова в Московское государство». Его все-таки удалось привести к русскому послу и уж хотели насильно вернуть в родное лоно, да не вышло – удалось ему убежать. Англичане, за помощью к которым обратился посол, категорически отказались помогать в высылке – уже тогда Англия не выдавала беженцев и уважала достоинство частного человека, ни в грош не ценившегося на родине. Через несколько лет другой посол опять пытался вернуть беглецов. Он встретился с тем же Никифором Григорьевым, убеждая его, чтобы он «поехал бы в Москву, и государеву милость ему сказывал, и не боялся, и всякими мерами ему разговаривал». Но Никифор, зная, конечно, какими «милостями» он будет награжден на родине, отказался вернуться, и, как возмущенно записал посол, Никифор от него «пошел, а образом [т. е. так, как следует перед царским послом] не кланеетца». Так и не удалось, несмотря на неоднократные настойчивые попытки русских послов, вернуть обратно русских беглецов, одних из первых в длинном ряду невозвращенцев.
Недавно историк Кэти Шулински (Cathy Czulinski) сумела выяснить судьбу тех, кого 400 лет тому назад русский царь и судьба забросила так далеко от родины. Рассказ о них очень занимателен и, как замечает автор, мог бы послужить основой захватывающего приключенческого романа.
Итак, двое оказались «в Индейской земле» – это были Казаринко Давыдов и Софонко Михайлов, завербовавшиеся на службу в английскую Ост-Индскую компанию и отправившиеся на остров Яву в качестве торговых агентов. Кассариан Давыд и Софоний Кожушке, как они именовались там, много лет провели на разных островах индонезийского архипелага, скупая и отправляя в Англию пряности и алмазы. Судя по их донесениям, обнаруженным историком в архивах, им пришлось несладко: тут и жестокая конкуренция со стороны голландской Ост-Индской компании, и воинственные племена, отнюдь не приветствовавшие незваных пришельцев, и плен, и заточение, и настоящие военные действия, и неожиданные встречи с друзьями…
Но чем и как окончилась их жизнь, так и осталось неизвестным…
Третий студент – Федор Костомаров, как мы знаем из посольских донесений, стал «королевским секретарем» в Ирландии, т. е. одним из многих английских чиновников. В Ирландии он женился и более о нем ничего не известно. Автор предположил, что все сведения о нем исчезают из ирландских источников потому, что он мог уехать, как сделали многие ирландцы, в далекие земли Нового Света.
Более всего мы знаем о последнем студенте – Никифоре Олферьеве сыне Григорьеве, известном в Англии как Mikipher Alphery. Он окончил Оксфорд, защитился на степень бакалавра, стал сначала дьяконом, потом англиканским священником. Он женился, в семье родилось 8 детей, в 1618 г. стал настоятелем церкви в деревне Woolley недалеко от города Huntingdon в Восточной Англии (примерно в 100 км к северу от Лондона [15]). Во время преследований войсками Кромвеля господствующей церкви Никифора буквально выкинули и из церкви, и из церковного дома. Он пережил немало трудностей, пока наконец, с возвращением на престол династии Стюартов, зажил более спокойно. В последние годы он жил в Лондоне, в районе Хаммерсмит, а в 1668 г. скончался.

The First Russian Students in England

Cathi Szulinski

Introduction

This extraordinary story was brought to my attention by an intriguing footnote. It told me only that four young Russian men had been sent to England by Tsar Boris to learn English, but that the Time of Troubles had prevented their return.

What initially intrigued me about this remarkable early foreign-exchange project were the individual stories. If the young men had not returned to Russia, then what had become of them? I decided to try to find out. The quest has led to some surprising places.

Three of the four have obligingly revealed their life histories, all instructive in their own way. Two led adventurous lives which might have come straight from the pages of an historical novel. Both fought and died for the interests of their adopted country. A third disclosed some strikingly modern issues in international relations. Meanwhile, the fourth as yet remains vague and obscure - though I have far from given up looking for him.

Please feel free to copy and distribute any of this material. I would also be very grateful for any response - comments, corrections, criticism, pointers to new leads? - to this account of three-and-a-half lives.

Cathi Szulinski email: elpenora@yahoo.co.uk

On the same subject an article of Kuznetsov, 2000, in Russian___

Part One: The Four Young Russians

In England in the year 1668, an elderly clergyman made his will and died. Since his wife had long predeceased him, he left the bulk of his possessions to his eldest son, whilst small amounts went to his other remaining children. The will was short, to the point, and unremarkable. Nothing about this very ordinary document indicated that this man, the Anglican rector of a rural Huntingdonshire parish, had an extraordinary life story to tell.

The man who on his deathbed called himself Mekepher Alphery had started life thousands of miles from the gently-rolling countryside of England's Eastern Midlands. Mekepher Alpheriev syn Grigoriev was born into a Russian lesser gentry family, and the story of how he came to end his life an Anglican clergyman has intrigued the historically curious for over three centuries.

Mekepher was one of four young men sent to England by Tsar Boris in the year 1602. His early life is a blank to history, but it is possible his family included Tsar Ivan Grozny's 'pechatnik' or official printer (1). Of the other three young men - Sofon Mikhailov syn Kozhukhov, Kazarin Davydov, and Fyodor Semyonov syn Kostomarov - even less is known. Perhaps the most we can say is that all four belonged to the 'deti boyarski', that class of service gentry who provided the Russian state's military leaders and administrators, and could have looked forward to lives spent in battle or in official service. In fact, life had something quite other in store for these young men. The only other thing we know for certain is that all were between 18 and 20 years old when they were selected by the Tsar to make a journey to England. Mekepher seems to have been the youngest of the four.

To understand the outcome of Tsar Boris' bold experiment, it will help to look back still further, to the year 1553. In that year, three ships had set sail from London in search of the fabled North-East Passage to China and the Indies. It was to be an epic voyage of trade and exploration, carrying English cloth to be bartered for the spices and silks of Cathay, but it was destined never to reach the mystic east. The North-East Passage was to resist discovery for a further three centuries. Instead, the ships became separated in a storm off the Northern cape of Norway. Two of them stumbled upon Novaya Zemlya before veering wildly back towards Lapland, where they were trapped off Arzina by the ice. No-one saw them - alive - again. They were discovered by Russian fishermen in the Spring, each man frozen solid. The Russians, it seems, preserved their goods until they could be reclaimed.

The third ship, meanwhile, had avoided the treacherous weather and sailed into the comparative calm of the White Sea. Her Captain, Richard Chancellor, was astonished to learn that all this vast land belonged to the Great Lord Ivan Vasilyevich, and once in Moscow, he was even more overwhelmed by the magnificence of this unknown sovereign's court. He presented his letters of introduction from Queen Mary I, which, fortunately enough, included a Greek translation. When he returned to England, Chancellor had to admit that although he hadn't found the North-East Passage, he did have a document signed by the hand of Tsar Ivan 'the Terrible' granting generous trade privileges to English merchants throughout the whole of Russia. It was the start of the English Muscovy Company, the first of the great trading companies that were - with somewhat mixed results - to help shape British history over the next four centuries.

By the time of Tsar Boris, English trade was a well-established fact in Russia. Each year, a number of English ships would arrive at the mouth of the Dvina, close to what would soon become the thriving port of Archangel. There, they unloaded their goods for distribution and loaded up with Russian cargo for the return voyage. The single most important item of Anglo-Russian trade was naval cordage. Russian cable and rope supplied the ships that defeated the Armada, and the great voyages of the East India Company - of which, much more later - couldn't have taken place without them.

In the fifty years since the trade began, there had grown up in Moscow, Archangel, Vologda and other places a generation of Russified Englishmen, sons of the Company's agents, bred to follow their fathers into trade. These men spoke good Russian, had a deeper understanding of the society and its customs, and were able to avoid many of the cultural misunderstandings that had dogged their fathers' generation.

One such man was John Merrick. Merrick is ubiquitous in the literature; it is impossible to read anything about Anglo-Russian trade and diplomatic relations in the early seventeenth century without tripping over his name. In Russian documents he appears, thinly disguised, as Ivan Ulyanov, the name and patronymic he himself used in Russia. William Merrick had been a well-known Company Agent in Russia for many years, but his son now eclipsed even his reputation. John Merrick not only enjoyed an excellent relationship with the Tsar - some of his letters even betray an unsuspected degree of intimacy - but everyone who has left written record of him seems to have liked him.

Besides acting as Senior Agent of the Muscovy Company, the personable and intelligent Merrick wore many other hats: he translated for Queen Elizabeth and acted as her ambassador; he escorted home to Europe two foreign youths who had been studying Russian in Moscow, and once even signed himself Tsar Boris' 'hollope' - kholop, or bonded man. In 1617 he reached the pinnacle of his diplomatic career when, as Sir John Merrick, Knight, he helped to negotiate the Treaty of Stolbovo between 'the two proud princes' Tsar Mikhail Romanov and King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Meanwhile, he made his personal fortune in trade, not only in Russia, but also in the Levant and in the East Indies.

It is often said in the West that Tsar Boris wished to found a University in Moscow. That much is far from certain, but what is certain is that in the early years of the seventeenth century he sent a number of young men abroad to learn foreign languages. Even the number is obscure - there may have been eighteen in total. Some may have gone to France, although nothing more seems to be known about them. Certainly five went to the Hanseatic town of Lubeck, where they annoyed the Burgomeister by behaving badly and refusing to learn. They had been somewhat reluctantly taken on board at the last minute by the Hanse ambassador, who reports that since his embassy to Moscow had gone well, he didn't feel he could 'properly' refuse. Perhaps this goes some way to account for their apparent ill-demeanour abroad. But despite the efforts of the Lubeck Burgomeister and Councillors to repatriate them, none of these young men ever returned to their homes.

About the four young men in England, more is known. They were the first to leave Russia, departing from Archangel on 30 July, 1602 in the English ships. The object of their visit was to learn English and Latin, and although we don't know how long the Tsar imagined their education would take, it is clear they are expected to return within some reasonable period.

Given the omnipresence of Merrick, it seems almost natural to find him in charge of the youths' education and welfare in England. The whole project was to be conducted at the expense of the Muscovy Company, which was already accustomed to pay the costs of the Queen's embassies to Moscow and to find the living expenses of Russian ambassadors in London. Yet there is no note of reluctance about Merrick's acceptance of the task, and in fact, he seems to have taken the long view about English influence in Moscow.

The youths arrived off Tilbury in early September and came upriver with Merrick to London. By the end of September they had been presented to Queen Elizabeth at Oatlands, her Surrey palace, where they caused enough of a stir to merit mention in a newsgatherer's letter. Russians were something of an exotic, and slightly scary, novelty to the English, as the plays of Shakespeare and Thomas Lodge reveal. Londoners had been in awe of them since the first Muscovite Ambassador, Osep Napea, arrived in their city in 1557, with a dramatic tale to tell of shipwreck and loss of life off the Aberdeenshire coast. Even the London apprentices, notorious for their ill-treatment of the hapless foreigner, might have hesitated to hurl their clods of London clay at such daunting 'strangers'.

At their audience with the Queen, it appears she promised the youths that she would attend personally to finding schools for them. All the same, it wasn't long before John Merrick was writing to her Secretary, Robert Cecil, and tactfully enquiring whether he shouldn't go ahead and make some arrangement himself.

There, unfortunately, the trail goes cold for a while. There is one reference to their being dispersed to Eton, Winchester, Oxford and Cambridge, but, with the exception of Mekepher, I have found no record of their being enrolled in any of the schools there. However, school admission records for the period are scant, where they exist at all. Some of them, in those class-conscious times, list only pupils of a particular social class. Some have been put together piecemeal - and with painstaking effort - from a dizzying medley of bursars' accounts, punishment books, donation lists, matriculation records and the entrance lists of university colleges to which the schools were attached. Some have even been supplemented by collecting the names traditionally carved into the fabric of the building by pupils about to leave school! Given all this, it is by no means necessary to conclude that three of our four youths were not there.

It isn't until 1609 that the next trace of the Russian students appears in English records, and then, it comes from a very unexpected source. In the next part of this essay, we shall be following Sofon Kozhukhov, and his fellow Kazarin Davydov, to the Spice Islands of Indonesia.

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(1) A Huntingdonshire local historian and his Russian wife, Ian and Marina Burrell, are currently looking into this possibility. I have regularly compared notes and exchanged information about Alphery with Mr & Mrs Burrell, and should like to acknowledge their contribution to my knowledge and understanding of his story.

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Part Two: Sofony Cozucke and Cassarian David

In the record books of the English East India Company of March 1609 there appears the curious note that one 'Sophony, the Russe,' has been given the sum of ?20. On further examination, this proves to be none other than Sofon Mikhailov syn Kozhukhov, who has been taken on as part of the Company's Fifth Voyage. To the Company, he is Sofony Cozucke, hired as Purser's Mate on board the great ship The Expedition bound for Bantam in Java. Once there, he is contracted to stay in the Indies for a further seven years, acting as a Company 'factor'.

It was seven years since the first ships of the East India Company had anchored off Bantam, and though business had at first been a little shaky, it was now booming. There was no shortage of applicants for the job Sofon had been given, for the very words 'East Indies' conjured up in the minds of ambitious young men a heady blend of adventure, exploration and untold riches. To the timeless lure of diamonds and gold were added the scented charms of nutmeg and cloves, the exotic luxury items of the day. If the reality of a job in the Indies often proved to mean near-death from scurvy after eight months at sea or malarial fever in the pestilential swamps of Indonesia, the prospect of vast fortunes to be made continued to attract the enterprising. The intense competition for places enabled the Company to choose its employees with care: they had to be able to demonstrate a relevant aptitude and be 'of blameless character'. Most had previous experience with one of the other trading companies or the Merchant Adventurers. Above all else, it was almost impossible to gain employment without being recommended by a patron connected with the Company.

So how had Sofon Kozhukhov come to be there? To answer this question, we shall have to return from the East Indies and turn direct our attention once more to Russia.

While Sofon and the three other young men pored over Cicero and baffled themselves with English grammar, their homeland was entering upon the undisputed darkest period of its history. Scholars disagree about the exact point at which the Time of Troubles began, but by 1609, it was certainly well under way. I don't propose here to outline the chaotic catalogue of pretenders, revolts, dynastic strife and foreign invasion that dogged these dark years, although it contains some fascinating history. It is enough for our purposes to say that the death of Tsar Boris in 1605 had left the four young men he had sent abroad in an invidious position. Boris had continued the policy of his predecessors in encouraging contact with the West, but many in Russia had found this policy hard to stomach. His tolerance towards Protestant ideas had shocked some; for others, there were commercial motives for wanting the much-favoured foreigners gone from the Kitaigorod. Now, with the country engaged in a struggle for its very survival, the return of four young men from hundreds of miles away in a foreign land must have been very far from the forefront of anyone's mind.

Anyone, that was, except for John Merrick, who we must remember had been charged with the welfare of the young men. Unlike most of his compatriots, Merrick had remained in Russia long enough to write an account of Bolotnikov's revolt, which reached its height in 1606. He negotiated trade charters with both the first False Dmitri and Tsar Vasily Shuisky who replaced him. He was well-aware of the situation in Russia. When he returned to England shortly afterwards, he must have been wondering what to do with his four young charges until they could return in safety to their country.

For two of them, it seems he found his answer in the East India Company. Mercantile London was a small world in the early seventeenth century, even more than it is today. A complex network of kinship, marriage-ties, common interests and friendship held together a small band of elite merchants, like Merrick, mostly living in and around the Leadenhall Street area of the City - the Square Mile, as it is now known. They - or their fathers - had banded together to invest in ventures, forming overlapping networks of investors in the various trading companies: the Muscovy, East India, Levant and Turkey Companies to name only the most famous. These were the fantastically-wealthy men who ran English overseas trade.

Like many other Muscovy Company investors, Merrick was also a member of the East India Company. He was certainly in England in 1609. There is no direct evidence, so far as I know, that he was the patron who introduced Sofon Kozhukhov to the Company, but as we shall see, the hypothesis does receive some confirmation a little later in our story.

However it had come about, 'Sofony' was on his way to Java. Bantam was the hub of East India trade, standing as it did at the nexus of many local trade routes. It had three miles of bustling waterfront, teeming with junks, prahus and other local craft, and no less than three long-established markets. Long before the Europeans - the English and the Dutch - arrived in their great ships, Indian, Javanese and Chinese merchants were meeting there to exchange goods: silks, indigo and diamonds, spices, sandalwood and opium. It also had a climate which Europeans found intolerable, and a mortality rate that made overcrowded London look like a health spa. Within six months, of three young men left in Bantam as factors by the Expedition, only Sofony remained alive.

This scale of mortality meant one thing: if you survived, promotion prospects were good. After three years in Bantam, Sofony was not only surviving, but embarking upon an illustrious career. It had been decided to send him out to Sukudan in Borneo, where a plentiful supply of diamonds had been found, to open up a new 'factory' (trading house) there. Before he could leave, however, there was a ripple of fresh excitement in Bantam: the ships of the Company's Eighth Voyage had been sighted off the coast. Among the newcomers was a man known by the name of Cassarian David.

It was Sofony's Russian countryman, Kazarin. When had they last set eyes upon each other? Was it when they parted for their separate schools a decade before? Or had there been contact between them since? We don't know, but there are strong hints that John Merrick was behind at least this arrival. In the first of his letters home, 'Cassarian' acknowledges Merrick's favours to him and promises his best endeavours for the Company. Clearly, Merrick has done something akin to providing him with a reference. Just as we suspected in the case of Sofony, he is the patron who has found Kazarin a job.

Unfortunately, this account would blossom into a full-scale book, were I to recount all that is known about Sofony and Cassarian's time in Indonesia. At times, we have almost a day-to-day account of their movements in the letters of the East India factors to their employers in London. The story, therefore, has had to be greatly condensed - at the expense of some lively detail, which I greatly regret. Someday, I hope perhaps to be able to cover the subject more fully.

We had better content ourselves with saying that both had eventful lives. Sofony, in Sukudan, found himself navigating the creeks and rapids of Borneo in search of trading partners, and coming to blows with the head-hunting Dyak people of the uncharted interior. Faced with hundreds of these fearsome warriors armed with deadly poison blowpipes and long knives, he seems to have kept his head long enough to seize up, prime and fire a musket - no split-second process. Sofony Cozucke seems to have been a dynamic, energetic man whose name was known all over the Indies - in a variety of creative spellings. Kazarin, or Cassarian, on the other hand, is more contemplative - if his letters are anything to go by. Where Sofony seems to crave adventure, Cassarian seeks peace. Unfortunately for him, the East Indies was the last place on earth he should have chosen for that.

Before the joint-stock voyages which came later, each Company voyage was treated as a separate investment. What this meant was that between the men of the various Voyages, there was often intense rivalry. Instead of trading in concert as agents of a single company, factors from different voyages bid against each other, lowering profits instead of maximising them. By 1614, this rivalry had become personal - and bitter.

The English factories in Bantam were in a parlous state. Various rival contenders squabbled over the title of Chief Factor, a distinction which in any case no longer carried any authority. Half mad with fever, they attacked each other with drawn swords. Instead of working, they spent their time in drinking- dens downing arrack, a local rice spirit of fearsome strength, and consorting with native prostitutes. Amid all this chaos, Cassarian stood aloof. He ploughed a lonely furrow in a factory of his own and denounced the chief culprits to the Company by letter.

Cassarian's letters are interesting. They are florid, over-written, and wordy - even for the seventeenth century. His images are often Biblical, and in an age when men routinely speak of God, real religious conviction comes across in them. It is interesting to note that one of the things of which he accuses his quarrelsome colleagues is vanity - not, at that time, a mere unfortunate character defect, but a sin. He is pious, in the best sense of the word. It seems that Cassarian, at least, has made a serious religious conversion. He is no longer Orthodox, but Protestant. Returning to Russia, if it ever becomes a possibility, may present problems for him.

Meanwhile, there was adventure in store for him, too. Finding himself at Sukudan at around the same time as Sofony was becoming embroiled with the Dyak, he assembled a native crew and went exploring along the southern coast of Borneo in search of new markets. At first, all went well at Sambas, but as time went on, he became convinced that the local King was trying to poison him. After having turned down no less than three dinner invitations, he had all his goods packed up in the dead of night and fled with the first light. After a hair- raising voyage he returned to Sukudan, collected six English colleagues and set out once more to do business. His next port of call was Banjarmassin, where he at last found something of that peace he craved.

Banjarmassin is built on water. It is picturesque in the extreme even today, with its houses on stilts and its floating markets. It is easy to see why Cassarian might have found it so utterly charming. Waxing lyrical, he declares it 'as like as may be' to the Land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey. Food is plentiful and cheap, the people are hospitable, and there are trade goods in abundance. Cassarian sent away his six colleagues for supplies and stayed there alone, making arrangements. As was the case in all of coastal Borneo, the goods Englishmen desired were diamonds - plucked from the river beds when the water was at its lowest, in much the same perilous way as in other parts of the world men dived for pearls - alluvial gold, and perhaps the weirdest commodity ever to be traded between peoples: bezoar stones. Bezoar stones are concretions found in the entrails of goats, much prized in Europe as an antidote to various poisons.

Modern Indonesia consists of 13,677 islands, of which around 6000 are inhabited. The ones which are going to concern us now are tiny. Around one thousand miles east of Banjarmassin lie the South Mollucas: Ceram, and its smaller neighbour, Ambon. A hundred miles to the south of these are the Banda Islands. Lonthor, the largest of the six main Bandas, is barely eight miles long, and Pulo Run ('Run Island', one of the smallest, only two. Nevertheless, in the early seventeenth century, these pocket-handkerchief scraps of islands exercised an influence way out of proportion to their size. Vast fortunes were to be made there, and a great many lives were lost in pursuit of its riches. For nowhere else in the world did the nutmeg tree flourish so abundantly as in the Bandas, and more to the point, nutmegs and mace - the dried membrane surrounding the fruit - could be bought cheaply, shipped back to London in vast quantities, and traded at a staggering profit running into thousands per cent.

The Banda nutmeg trade was at that time almost exclusively in the hands of the Dutch. This was nothing new; English merchants had been beaten to Bantam by their great trade rivals, whose own East India Company, the VOC, had a five year head start on them. All the same, competition up until this point had been reasonably friendly. The men drank together in Bantam, occasionally getting into drunken brawls in the streets, but generally sticking together as Europeans a long way from home. Indeed, the Javans found it hard to distinguish between them. Any serious rivalry in the Indies had always fallen out along religious lines, between the two Protestant nations and the Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese. The English traded where they chose, and so did the Dutch, competing much as they did in other parts of the world - in Russia, for one example.

All that was about to change, and in part, the change was fuelled by the animosity between two men: John Jourdain, Chief Factor for the English in Bantam, and Jan Pieterzoon Coen, the future Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Even Dutch historians agree that Coen was no teddy-bear, and he shocked the more moderate of his colleagues at the time. His philosophy of commerce was simple: there could be, he said, no trade without war, nor war without trade. As for Jourdain, he was stubborn and a good hater. The two had first met in the Moluccas, when Coen had refused Jourdain permission to land at Ambon, and from there, things had gone from bad to worse. From then on, Jourdain hated Dutchmen. When the Company's factor on Butung, a staging post on the way to the Moluccas, reported back to him that the Bandanese were finding Dutch war-and- trade policy unpalatable, Jourdain had personal reasons for listening to his suggestions. No Dutchman was going to tell John Jourdain where he could and couldn't trade.

Jourdain looked around for a man with a cool head to be the English presence in the Bandas. His eye fell upon the adventurous Sofony Cozucke. It was the start of 'a hellish life' for the young Russian and the few men who went with him to the Banda Islands. They helped the islanders of Pulo Ay, one of the westernmost of the Banda islands, to repel a Dutch invasion force which outnumbered them by two to one. Their little stockaded factory on Ay was continually harrassed by the Dutchmen, who drew their swords in the house and repeatedly ordered them to leave the island.

Towards the end of the year, Sofony returned to Bantam with six of the 'Oran Kayas' or chief citizens of Ay Island. They knew only too well that their amazing victory against the Dutchmen was merely a temporary reprieve, and had come up with a plan they hoped would save their island from conquest. Sofony had translated into English a letter written by the Oran Kayas to John Jourdain. They now wished to go to Bantam in person to discuss it.

The letter offered the English merchants a monopoly of trade with Ay Island, in return for munitions and military aid against their enemies. But Jourdain, much as he might have loved to, could not by himself declare war on the Dutch. He agreed to provide ships and men to defend the English factory, and sent Sofony and the chiefs back again to Ay. It was a predictable response, from a European point of view, but all the same, the Oran Kayas must have been disappointed. Still worse was yet to come.

Just as the little fleet was about to sail, two more English ships appeared in Bantam road. Jourdain happily added them to the expedition, but as things turned out, it was a fateful addition. Samuel Castleton, who commanded the two newly-arrived ships, was put in charge of the fleet over Sofony while it was at sea - on land, Sofony was back in charge. Castleton's past was about to alter the history of the Banda Islands.

When the little fleet reached the Bandas, almost the first things they saw in Neira harbour were nine Dutch galleys and a very warlike sloop. In any engagement there might be, the English were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. Castleton prepared to go aboard and parley with the Dutch commander. Hostages were arranged, and a ship's boat brought him to the Dutch flagship. But when the two men came face to face, something astonishing happened. Admiral Jan Dirckszoon van Lam was as surprised to see Sam Castleton as Castleton was to see him.

Some four years earlier, Castleton had been watering at St Helena when he was attacked by two Portuguese ships. He was forced to cut his cables and put to sea, leaving half his men on the little rocky island. They must have thought he had abandoned them - but Castleton knew that two Dutch vessels had just left port, and he had gone to enlist their aid. Sure enough, the Dutch captain turned back and came to Castleton's rescue, saving his life and those of his stranded men. The Dutchman, of course, was Jan Dirckszoon van Lam.

These two old friends now sat down and settled the matter of Ay Island like gentlemen. Van Lam called off the invasion for the time being, while Castleton promised not to interfere with any future invasion plan. The English factory was to be left alone so long as its men remained neutral. It was a sell-out for the Ay Islanders. Sofony went ashore to communicate the agreement to his assistant Richard Hunt, who all this time had been bravely remaining on Ay. Both he and Hunt must have known exactly how the islanders would react. Sofony then left, as he had been directed, with the ships for Bantam.

To his credit, Richard Hunt broke this charming gentlemen's agreement almost as soon as the ink was dry. Within days, he had met the Oran Kayas of Ay and of neighbouring Pulo Run. When the Dutch invaded, he fled to Bantam bearing a remarkable document. The Oran Kayas of Ay and Run had voluntarily granted sovereignty over their land to King James I of England. These pocket- handkerchief islands were some of the first far-flung corners of the globe to call themselves 'English soil', and it had been done to prevent, rather than as a result of, bloodshed.

Unfortunately, the Bandanese surrender counted for little with van Lam. He went ahead and invaded all the same. The vanquished Ay islanders fled to Run, to which the Dutch, as yet, had paid little attention.

At this point, a man named Nathaniel Courthope must enter our story. Courthope was the man charged with the defence of Run from the Dutch, and there was no possibility whatsoever of his entering into a gentlemen's agreement with Admiral van Lam. His incredible story reads like a Boys' Own adventure - and it is also the story of Sofon Kozhukhov and Kazarin Davydov.

Sofony Cozucke was among the men who sailed with Courthope for Pulo Run. He was Chief Factor, in charge of trade matters, while Courthope commanded the two ships - the mighty Swan, and a smaller vessel, the Defence.

Pulo Run is a small, rocky island some two miles long and three quarters of a mile across at its widest point. Midway between its two precipitous extremities lies a small natural harbour, but apart from this, its steep cliffs and dangerous reefs make it an easy place to defend. Its great demerit, however, was that there was no fresh water and no food grown on the island - apart, that is, from seven hundred acres of nutmeg. Without supplies, no defence would be possible. The island, with its sole safe landing-spot, was extremely ill- equipped to withstand a blockade.

The Oran Kayas of Run and Ay came out in small boats to meet the English ships. Sitting down with Courthope, Sofony, and a third man, they repeated their former surrender. On board the Swan, they once more presented a letter stating that they freely gave their land, its people, and their produce to the English king. "And as it hath beene done heeretofore," read the closing lines of the translation, "so at this time we doe renew it with Nathaniel Courthop, Sophon Cozocke, and Thomas Spurway." For the Russian youth sent abroad to learn his Latin, it is quite a leap to be named in one of the earliest colonial documents of his adopted country.

Meanwhile, there was work to be done on Pulo Run. The men dug in, fortifying their positions and building look-out posts. They hauled some of the heavy guns from the ships and mounted them on the cliffs overlooking the harbour. Barely had they finished when right on cue, the Dutch arrived to see what they were doing. After a hasty Council of War consisting of five men, including Sofony, they met the commander, Cornelius Dedel. Courthope showed him the islanders' surrender and gave him a midnight deadline to remove his three ships from Run's tiny harbour. Dedel chose to concede the point, for the time being.

Some three weeks later, water supplies were running low. Courthope and the Swan's master, John Davis, argued about how more was to be brought in. Courthope favoured asking the islanders to bring it from Lonthor, but Davis disagreed. He said they would bring collected rainwater, which would make them all sick. Instead, he proposed taking the Swan to a watering-place on Lonthor. Davis, despite a fondness for drink and a querulous nature, was a formidable veteran seaman whose sailors respected him. Fifty-two of them volunteered to go with him. Courthope, who was sick and in no mood to argue, relented.

Just as the Swan was about to sail, word reached Run that the inhabitants of Rosengin, the remotest of the Banda Islands, had also given their surrender. Now it was arranged that the Swan should first call at Rosengin, taking Sofony to receive the necessary documents.

Why this plan wasn't carried out is a mystery. No explanation appears in the records. Davis sailed as arranged for Rosengin, and Sofony even conducted some trade there. But instead of then setting a course for Lonthor to water, he steered the Swan instead towards Ceram, a day's sail away from the Bandas. It was a fatal error. Leaving Gulagula on Ceram on February 2, 1617, the Swan encountered the warlike Morgensterre, under the command of Cornelius Dedel. In little over an hour and a half, she and her crew had been taken. Five men had been killed, three were maimed and unlikely to survive, and eight less seriously hurt.

The stout-hearted Sofony Cozucke was on deck when the action began. Of the first three shots fired by the Dutch cannon, one came straight at the Russian. He was the first man to die in defence of English territory in the East Indies, 'torne in pieces by a great shot'.

Word of Sofony's death spread through the Indies like a shock wave. For months after that day in February 1617, the letters of factors dotted all over the region repeat again and again the news. The same two facts recur and recur: the mighty Swan captured by the Dutchmen, and Sofony Cozucke 'slain with a great shot'. Four other men died that day, but always it is 'Sophonie', 'Mr Suffone', and even 'your servant signor Shophie Cossicke' who is mentioned in tones of outrage and horror. This last came from a factor who spent his days in the distant factory at Yedo, in Japan. Evidently the Russian was extremely well- known and liked among his colleagues.

We are not, however, done yet with the extraordinary story of Pulo Run. The next disaster to hit Courthope and his men was the loss of their remaining ship, the Defence. Nine disaffected sailors cut her loose in the night and turned themselves over to the Dutch. The men on Run were now entirely dependent on small native craft and on supplies from Bantam, which were due to arrive any day.

But the supplies from Bantam never arrived. John Jourdain had gone home at the end of his contract, and the new Chief Factor, George Ball, cared more for lining his own pockets than for the defence of Run. He neglected to send any ships for the Bandas until it was too late. The monsoon turned, and another six months would have to elapse before any ships could sail - for half the year, the prevailing winds blew in the wrong direction for the journey. Meanwhile the stubborn Courthope continued to hold the island with his company of thirty-nine men, despite being offered terms by the new Dutch Governor-General. For food, they survived on credit extended to them by the islanders, and sold their own personal possessions.

By mid-March 1618, they must have been close to desperation. Another year had drifted by, the monsoon had turned, and soon it would turn once again. Mere days of westerly wind remained to bring their much-needed supplies. It wasn't until the morning of March 25 that the lookout raised the alarm: two English ships, flying in their maintops the cross of St George, had appeared with the very last of the westerly monsoon. Courthope and his men lined the cliffs and cheered for joy.

The vessels were the Solomon and the Attendance, and the man in command of them was none other than Cassarian David. They were not having an easy journey. Already, they had lost contact with the third vessel of their fleet, the Thomas, in a storm. Both were heavily-laden with rice and other essentials, and the Solomon rode so low in the water that the lower tier of her ordnance couldn't be used. Cassarian and his sailors must have been as pleased to see the cliffs of Run as the men lining them were to see them.

But there was still some way to go to reach harbour. Five leagues off, they waited for the wind to bring them in. One more day of favourable weather would be enough. Both the men on the cliff and those on board would have seen the four great Dutch vessels to the east of them. They were some distance off, and posed no danger while the winds remained from the west.

The winds, however, didn't remain from the west. The monsoon chose that very day to change its direction. That afternoon, a good strong gale arose, delaying the English ships and bringing the Dutch bearing down upon them with alarming speed. Three leagues off Run, in full view of Courthope and his men, they came within range of Cassarian's two ships. This time, the battle lasted for some seven hours.

Outgunned and surrounded by enemy ships, with three men dead and fourteen wounded, Cassarian saw little point in continuing the fight. When the Dutch ship the Trow came alongside, he agreed to strike his flags and go aboard for a parley. He never returned. By nightfall, the men of the Solomon and the Attendance were stripped of their clothes and valuables, dispersed in irons between the four Dutch vessels. Cassarian, with one English boy to serve him, had been taken to the grim Castle Revenge - as the Dutch had named their newly-built fort - on Ay. Though a prisoner, he was well-treated - for Laurens Reaal, the Dutch Governor-General, had high hopes of his captured commander. He was to be used to persuade that mulish Englishman on Run to abandon his stubborn resistance.

The same could not be said for the other prisoners. Graphic complaints emerge about their treatment: they were kept in a dank, dark dungeon under Castle Revenge with nothing to eat but dirty rice and stinking water. The only light came from a grating, which if it let in the sun's rays, also let in much worse things. Down through it, the Dutch soldiers - said one Bartholomew Churchman in rather riper language - defecated on them 'until we were broken out like lepers'.

But Reaal had misjudged the mulish Englishman completely. Cassarian wrote to him often from his honourable prison, urging him to come to terms. Courthope merely commented mildly that his words showed what hard imprisonment and fair words could do to impatient men. He hadn't always been so tolerant, for on first hearing how Cassarian had struck his flags, he had reacted furiously. He himself, he declared, would have sunk before he surrendered. This was harsh, considering that the Solomon and the Attendance - which was, in fact, a mere pinnace - had held out for some seven hours against a greatly superior force. The difference of temperament between the two men is evident. Men like Courthope are rare, and his sailors judged him when they ran away with the Defence. Cassarian, a practical man, saved the lives of his men when he surrendered his ships. They may have lain in a stinking hole in the ground, but at least some of them were to live long enough to see their homes and families again.

Incredibly, the deadlock on Run was destined to persist for a further two and a half years - until, in fact, the death of Courthope. His death was certainly in character. He was shot by the Dutch while rowing back to Run in a small boat, but rather than surrender, leapt into the sea and swam for it. He never reached land.

After Courthope's death, the Bandaneses' surrender of their land to King James was a dead letter. Run remained, in theory, English territory until in 1674, it was ceded in exchange for Manhattan, under the terms of the Treaty of Breda.

Laurens Reaal's successor, meanwhile, was the bellicose Jan Pieterzoon Coen, who at the ripe old age of 31 had finally arrived at the top job at he'd been aiming. At what point he realised that Cassarian's letters would have no effect on Courthope isn't clear, but at some time before March 1619, the Russian was removed from his relatively comfortable position. The last we hear of him is in a heart-rending complaint from Monawoka, one of three tiny islands comprising the Gorong Islands, east of Ceram. There, say he and two other captives, they have been kept starving and chained up, in the open air, receiving worse treatment than Coen's pigs. Their complaint did them little good.

What became of Cassarian after that, we do not know. Eighteen months later, his fellow-captives were released as a result of the peace signed in London. Both ultimately came home to tell their story - and to claim their arrears of pay. But of Cassarian David, there is no further mention in the records of the East India Company.

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