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Part Three: Mekepher Alphery

What, meanwhile, has become of Mekepher Alpheriev syn Grigori? We last saw him departing for one of the four top schools of seventeenth-century England, and it was said then that he was the only one of the four young men whose whereabouts were known during those years.

Historically speaking, more has been known about Mekepher Alphery than about any of his three compatriots. He achieved a degree of posthumous fame when his story appeared in a book, snappily entitled 'An Attempt towards Recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England who were Sequester'd, Harass'd, &c in the Great Rebellion' - Walker's 'Sufferings of the Clergy', for short - published in 1710. It is from this book that all other accounts, down to the nineteenth century, derive, and we shall have to examine its claims in some detail.

Mekepher's story, as told by John Walker half a century after his death, has fired a surprising number of imaginations. He appears in the eighteenth-century Biographica Britannia, in the Biographical Dictionary compiled by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and again in the Dictionary of National Biography. In Craik's 'The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties', he is somewhat tenuously compared with Marcus Aurelius. References to and questions about him abound in nineteenth-century periodicals, English and Russian - the Russians have been no less fascinated than the English. One exchange from 'Notes and Queries' is worth quoting. In response to a query in the preceding issue, a scornful correspondent writes, 'How could this young Russian, sent... to England for his education, hold a living in Cambridgeshire?... Is he supposed to have changed his name and religion and to have remained in England, or what?' Amazingly, that is exactly what did happen. Meanwhile a few avid parish-record searchers of the same period were busy attempting to trace his story through their local registers.

Mekepher even appears in a 1930s novel set in Wellingborough, Northants - miles from his Huntingdonshire parish and in the neighbouring county. Nor is it over yet. I have already acknowledged a debt to Ian and Marina Burrell, who as I write are engaged in drawing up a comprehensive family tree of his descendents, not to mention searching for his ancestors.(1) In looking for Mekepher Alphery, I feel I have uncovered a hive of Mekepher Alphery industry.

One of Walker's details has particularly fascinated people. That is his claim that Mekepher was the descendant of (an unspecified) Russian royal dynasty. Unfortunately, nothing about this romantic claim adds up, whether we imagine him to be of the dynasty of Rurik, of Godunov, or even of Romanov. Even the form in which the four youths' names are given in the Russian documents argues against it. A member of the royal house would surely have been given the patronymic 'Grigorievich' rather than 'syn Grigori'. Quite where the story originated is not clear, but it seems to have had currency as a local legend. As late as 1764 - almost a century after the death of Mekepher - a cutler's wife from Huntingdon was being treated with special respect by her neighbours, on account of her supposed descent from the Tsars of Russia.

So much for romance. It is the records of St John's College, Cambridge which provide our first trace of Mekepher - not those of Oxford, as Walker leads us to expect. In 1609 he matriculated from St John's and transferred to Clare College to study for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. It isn't clear where the money for all this expensive education is coming from - surely, not still from the Muscovy Company - but there are some clues. As we shall see, Mekepher is connected with a man by the name of John Bedell - the younger son of a Huntingdonshire squire and, at least by the time of his death, himself a wealthy Muscovy merchant.

The exact details of their connection are obscure. They are near- contemporaries, Bedell being slightly the elder. The two young men may well have been friends. At the time that the young Russians were being brought to England, Bedell would have been of about the right age to be finishing his apprenticeship, which he would have spent under the supervision of John Merrick in Moscow. It may be that they were acquainted in Russia, or even that they met on the voyage. On the other hand, they may only have been introduced in London - nothing about this question is certain.

In most accounts of Mekepher's life, derived from Walker, John Bedell plays a prominent role. He is credited with having brought Mekepher to England, together with his two brothers, with the aim of preserving his life from a powerful faction at the Russian court. The brothers, according to the story, later died in a smallpox epidemic while all three were at Oxford.

This is another nail in the coffin of royal dynasty theory, for we know the true nature and reason for his appearance in England. In the two brothers, it is easy to see the distorted shadow of Sofon and Kazarin, dead in the East Indies. Many of Walker's details, whilst not being entirely accurate, do ultimately prove to bear a certain relationship to what can be established. He may yet be correct in asserting that it was John Bedell who 'sent' him to the University - if by 'sent' we understand 'supported him whilst he was there'.

Early in 1612, Mekepher graduated from Clare. At what point he decided that his future lay in the Anglican church is hard to determine, but certainly he must have formed the idea by this time, for he now went on to study for the degree of Master of Arts. At the time, this was a more or less cast-iron statement of the intention to become a clergyman - the MA was almost a professional qualification for the church. It seems highly unlikely that he was merely filling in time, awaiting an opportunity to return to his homeland. Very clearly, Mekepher was already at this date an English Protestant.

The opportunity to return, however, was looming. In Russia, the darkest hour had proved to be the one before the dawn. A remarkable national recovery, under the able direction of the Patriarch, Hermogen, was drawing the country slowly back from the very brink of disaster. As part of that recovery, a new young Tsar was soon elected. There were high hopes of Tsar Mikhail, the son of Fyodor Romanov. No-one then knew how durable the Romanov dynasty was to prove, but at least an end to the Troubles seemed in sight.

What brought the four young men to the attention of Tsar Mikhail is unknown to me. It may merely have been the recovery of old records as Russian society gradually returned to normality. John Merrick certainly returned to Moscow at around that time, but it seems unlikely that he would have raised the issue - knowing, as he must have, that two of the young men were then contracted for seven years' employment with the East India Company.

In October, 1613, the first Russian ambassador for over a decade set foot on English soil at Gravesend. He was Aleksei Ivanovich Zyuzin, described as a young man, accompanied by his secretary, Aleksei Vitovtov. Their main task was formally to introduce the new Tsar to King James, but somewhere low down their agenda came a friendly request for the return of four young men sent over to England eleven years previously. It appears that, with what must by then have been a very broad knowledge of English, they were wanted as interpreters in Mikhail's 'Foreign Office' (Posolski Prikaz).

The English Privy Council considered the ambassador's request. He had spoken movingly of the youths' parents, who had parted from their sons with great reluctance and now feared that, staying away so long, they would lose their religion. No doubt the Lords of the Privy Council were moved, as devout men and as fathers, but they had bad news for the ambassador. They informed him that three of the four young men had since left the country, two for the East Indies, and one for Ireland. One, however, remained, and would be brought to London to speak to him. John Merrick undertook to 'seek him out', and seems also to have agreed to bring Fyodor Kostomarov from Ireland before the ambassador left. For the other two, they were eight months' journey away on the other side of the globe; Merrick told the ambassador that even if a message could be got to them, Zyuzin would have long returned to Russia before any word of them could reach England.

Some time in early 1614, Zyuzin interviewed Mekepher Alphery. The young man clearly had no intention of going home. For three days they argued about the matter. Zyuzin wasn't prepared for this. His instructions were to assure the young men that their plight had not gone unnoticed in Moscow, and that all possible efforts were being made to secure their release. Clearly, the Russians suspected the English of detaining the Tsar's subjects against their will.

We have, in this encounter, our first clue as to the character of Mekepher Alphery. It must have taken courage to appear before the representative of the Tsar and to refuse to go back with him - courage, and an outstanding ability to argue. Evidently he was a self-assured young man - no shrinking violet. A Cambridgeshire proverb of the time runs: 'A Royston horse and a Cambridge MA give way to no man'. The horse referred to was one of the heavy-set working type that drew the malt wagons for which Royston was known. Rather like juggernauts on our modern roads, they commanded respect from other road-users. Mekepher, it seems, though not quite yet a Master of Arts, would have illustrated the second part of the saying admirably. After three days' argument with him, Aleksei Zyuzin threw in the towel. Mekepher was free to return to his studies.

He returned to a Cambridge in ferment. It is hard to imagine, in secular Britain, just how much importance the men of the seventeenth century attached to religious questions. The nearest modern equivalent is perhaps, the radical political position adopted by some students in Europe and North America during the 1960's. But instead of free love, Marxism and nuclear disarmament, the students of early seventeenth-century Cambridge were discussing Calvinism and Arminianism in the English church. Instead of political rallies and marches, they were attending rival sermons and Sunday lectures and discussing them avidly afterwards. Controversies were raging over such issues as Predestination, the status and duties of the clergy, transsubstantiation, and the use of images in church. There were even isolated outbreaks of violence - Puritan students in 1609, for instance, had attacked the hall in which a play was being performed, using crossbows and muskets - but leaving aside these extreme responses, the level of debate was intense. It was keener in the Universities than anywhere, even twenty-five years before the rival factions came to blows in the Civil War. It is worth remembering that within a very few years of Mekepher's time at Clare College, the young Oliver Cromwell would be lodging a few streets away at Sidney Sussex - a college specifically founded to provide a Puritan education.

Mekepher, an Anglican cleric in the making, could not have stood aloof from all this. We cannot look inside his soul, especially at a four-hundred year distance, and know exactly where his sympathies lay on all the controversial issues, but we will be able to make some surmises from the events of his later life.

In 1615, he obtained his Master's degree. Shortly afterwards, he was ordained deacon, then priest. What became of him after that isn't clear. Employment prospects for newly-ordained men were fairly grim, in the short-term. In the long-term the horizon was brighter, and for the most part they found beneficed livings. Meanwhile, most either found a curacy or taught school while they waited for an opportunity to arise.

Neither curates nor teachers then made much impression on official records, and thus far, I have been unable to find trace of Mekepher. We don't, then, know where he was or what he was doing when Ivan Gryazev came to England early in the following year. Gryazev wasn't dignified with the title of ambassador, and had come merely to bring a message regarding the peace talks between Russia and Sweden. He made no request to the Privy Council about the four young men, but he did speak to members of the Muscovy Company about them. The newly-knighted Sir John Merrick was back in Russia at the time - taking part, in fact, in the peace talks - but in his absence the matter was dealt with by Sir William Russell, Merrick's brother-in-law and fellow-investor in the Company.

But Gryazev fared no better than Aleksei Zyuzin. Russell merely repeated the same story: two of the young men were in the East Indies, one was in Ireland acting as the King's Secretary, and the last, Mekepher Alphery, would be brought to meet the envoy. In Gryazev's opinion, the English were 'hiding the State's men'.

The interview with Mekepher did not go well. Both men lost their tempers. Gryazev doesn't seem to have been a man to mince his words; he may have blustered or threatened. In an extraordinary outburst of petulance, the newly- ordained cleric declared that he prayed to God for the Englishmen who traded with Russia, in gratitude for their having brought him here. He wished they would bring all Russians out of their darkness and into the light of true faith. As Mekepher went on in this vein, Gryazev could hardly believe his ears. He was shocked to hear his religion called 'backward' and described as a prison. He quickly brought the interview to a halt, more in bafflement than in anger, wondering whatever could have caused a young man from a respectable family to make such wicked remarks. Sending his interpreter to speak to Mekepher privately, he discovered that the situation was even worse than he had imagined. Not only had he abandoned his Orthodox faith, he admitted to hiding from the envoy. He was most unwilling to return to Russia, and quite determined that none of the others should be forced to go either.

This was all too much for Ivan Gryazev. Clearly, the young man had been coerced into changing his religion. On his next meeting with Russell, the envoy taxed him with this suspicion. Russell, not surprisingly, denied it, saying that all four young men had voluntarily become Protestants. He ended by reminding Gryazev that Mekepher had gone so far as to take Holy Orders.

Gryazev remained unconvinced. He might accept that no-one had forcibly converted the four Russian youths. All the same, it was dishonourable of the English to entice to their religion young people - half-formed children, as he called them - sent to them in good faith for an education. Young Englishmen, he pointed out, had gone to Moscow to learn Russian and had returned with their religious convictions undisturbed. Finally, he asserted that it would profit the English little to be in disfavour with the Russian government. Sadly, it was starting to look as though Tsar Boris' bold experiment in international co-operation was about to result in a major diplomatic row.

Fortunately, the affair didn't live up to Gryazev's bluster. The next Russian embassy to reach London was that of Stepan Ivanovich Volinsky and Mark Ivanovich Posdeyev, late in 1617. They had come chiefly to seek a loan towards the reconstruction of Russia, a matter of much greater importance than the retrieval of four young apostates. They were instructed to deal with the matter, but their approach was to be very different from that of the previous year's envoy. The four men, once the ambassadors had managed too find them, were to be treated 'kindly', not to be coerced or constrained in any way, and every attempt was to be made to please them. Unfortunately for Volinsky and Posdeyev, nothing very much had changed. The Privy Council once again repeated its earlier statement: two of the youths remained in the East Indies, one was in Ireland (and, moreover, had taken a wife there) while the fourth, still in England, simply didn't want to return. Their Lordships added, however, that they had now had time to consider his case, and had decided that Mekepher was at liberty to dispose of himself. He would be brought before the ambassadors, who might attempt to persuade him to return, but to send him away by force would be, in their words 'against the law of nations'.

The Russians show every sign of having been baffled by this decision. They were left wondering why their Lordships were so keen to hold onto these four young men. Truly, it was a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma. To them, the issues were clear. The Tsar's subjects were the Tsar's subjects. They had been sent away from home temporarily, and now their temporary period of absence was over. It would have been over much sooner, had not the Time of Troubles intervened. Moreover, the reason for their absence was to study, for the benefit of the state on their return - not to go off and make new lives for themselves. The young men had to return home, whether they wished to or not; their wishes barely entered into the question.

This was simply not the European way. To their Lordships of the English Privy Council, forcible repatriation might be permissable for felons and wrongdoers, but for honourable men - and gentlemen at that - the demand appeared utterly unreasonable. What had started as a minor diplomatic wrangle over four young Russian students had now brought two whole cultures into collision.

It was far, far too late for Volinsky and Posdeyev to persuade Mekepher of anything, and he was far too self-assured a young man to be 'pleased' into going back to Russia. Not surprisingly, they too utterly failed to achieve this part of their mission.

At about the same time that Mekepher was meeting with the ambassadors, something happened which made it even less likely that he would ever return to Russia. Evidently he was still in touch with his old friend John Bedell, for in the March of 1618, Bedell was at last able to offer him a living in the Church of England.

It may at first sight seem strange that a merchant - a layman - should be responsible for appointing clergymen. The explanation is largely historical. When Henry VIII had ordered the Dissolution of the monasteries in the preceeding century, the land belonging to religious foundations was sold off into private hands. Whole manors were bought and resold at profit. Attached to the land, however, were various rights - the rights to hold local manor courts, for example - which were sold along with it. Another of these rights was that of advowson - loosely speaking, the right to choose the next incumbent of the church. Advowsons, like all the other rights, were treated as property by the litigious folk of Tudor England, to be bought, sold, or even leased 'for the next turn'. Some patrons, of course, were responsible and even devout men, their candidates, excellent churchmen, and there were quite complex restrictions on who might be chosen. But by the early seventeenth-century so many advowsons had fallen into lay hands that the matter had become something of a national scandal - it was, in fact, one of the Puritan reformers' major grievances.

John Bedell had acquired the manor of Woolley in Huntingdonshire, along with the advowson of its rectory, in a very ordinary manner. He had inherited it from his father. It wasn't a particularly rich manor - his elder brother had inherited that - but it did now provide a very useful opening for John Bedell's ordained friend, Mekepher Alphery. When in March 1618 the aged incumbent of St Mary's, Woolley died, Mekepher was on hand to take his place.

There is barely a village at all today at Woolley, just a few scattered houses spread out along a narrow, single-track road. Most sadly of all, the tiny church has been demolished. Parts of the fabric, including a bell cast and installed during Mekepher's tenure, have turned up in neighbouring village churches, but St Mary's eighty-foot octagonal spire has been reduced to stumps of broken masonry, its churchyard to a muddy patch of grass and trees studded by a few tall gravestones. A church had stood on this site since the twelfth century, and had continued to stand until it was demolished in 1962.

St Mary's Woolley stood at the lowest point of a shallow valley enclosed by low, rolling hills. Opposite, by a slow, meandering brook, stood its parsonage- house, long vanished, but probably little more than a Tudor cottage with a stamped-earth floor and a small patch of vegetable garden. Like all of East Anglia, the village was liable to flood in the winter, when with virtually no provocation Woolley Brook would overrun its banks and turn the surrounding land into a quagmire. It was a remote and sleepy little place - yet within five miles from Mekepher's new parsonage-house there ran one of the major arteries of English trade. Ermine Street, the march road of the Roman legions, still did duty as the main road from London to Scotland and the North, and carried the varied goods brought in from the sea along the River Ouse. Six miles away was the county town of Huntingdon - a fact that was later to have dark significance in the life of Mekepher Alphery.

Woolley was not a particularly valuable living, but it was at least a Rectory, rather than a Vicarage - a distinction with financial implications. Sofon and Kazarin in the East Indies probably earned slightly more in wages than Mekepher drew from his tithes. But clearly it was enough to support a wife, for within months, Mekepher had married one.

Joanna Betts was a native of Pidley, a hamlet some miles away on the edge of the Great Fen. She was the daughter of a local farmer. Most probably, it was a love-match. We often suppose that all marriages at that time were arranged by parents with finance very much in mind, but in fact, this only tended to apply in aristocratic circles. Young people of other classes did have quite a high degree of freedom to choose their own marriage partners. How the two met, however, is a mystery. Pidley is some twelve miles away from Woolley, and there is no obvious connection between the two villages. No direct road links or has linked them in the past, and in any event, if they met after Mekepher arrived at St Mary's, it must have been a lightning courtship. These facts about his marriage make me suspect that during the 'missing years' between graduation and obtaining his benefice, Mekepher had found some employment in the area from which his wife hailed, perhaps as a curate or schoolteacher.

Children soon followed their marriage. Mekepher himself performed the baptism of his eldest son, proudly recording the fact in his parish register: 'Mikepher Alphery, ye son of Mikepher Alphery, was baptised October ye 7th by me, Mikepher Alphery'. A second son, Robert, was born the following year. If ever there had been any doubt about it, the matter must have seemed well-and-truly settled. Mekepher Alphery would not be returning to Russia.

But in early 1622, while Joanna was pregnant with their third child, her husband received a sudden summons to London. A new Russian ambassador was in the country, and he was intending to pursue the matter of the four Russian students to the best of his ability.

The summons itself must have aroused local curiosity. In all probability, the inhabitants of Woolley would have noticed a well-mounted rider arriving in the village and making his way to the parsonage-house. And in the depths of January, through the mud and the sleet - clearly it was a matter of some importance. It is easy to see how wild rumours might have arisen about the true identity of their exotic foreign clergyman.

The message had come from Sir John Merrick, who had accompanied the ambassador from Moscow. He was becoming exasperated with requests for the four young men, and had already received something of a dressing-down from the Russian Boyar Council on the subject. In vain had he protested that he too wished to return the young men. The Boyars accused him, with some justification, of dragging his feet and doing nothing. By this time, word had reached England of the deaths of Sofon and Kazarin, which news Merrick passed on to the Boyars. We know, of course, that he is telling the truth - but the Boyar Council knew no such thing. What it did know was that these two untimely deaths were highly convenient, and that it would be no trivial matter for them to verify Merrick's statement. At this, the Englishman's patience finally snapped, and he brought the matter to a close saying that he had no commission to deal with the subject and was not sufficiently briefed.

So the matter had rested, until Isaac Samoilovich Pogozhev, Tsar Mikhail's Stolnik (Cupbearer), took up the baton. The Tsar sent him as ambassador to London, together with his secretary, Ulyan Vlassev(2), and a letter from the Tsar. The letter asserted that the four young men were 'deteyned and kept in England against their wills'. Clearly, the Tsar had been dissatisfied with the answers Merrick had given.

Pogozhev once more asked the Privy Council about the four young men. They didn't give him an immediate answer, but Merrick went through the whole story once more and agreed to send for Mekepher, the only one of the four still remaining in England. In February, the two came face to face.

Like his predecessors, Pogozhev had been told to handle Mekepher with kid gloves, and he seems to have stuck to his brief. He assured him that the Tsar would show him mercy if he returned, and would not punish him. Mekepher insisted that he was a true believer in the Anglican faith. In Russia, he would be unable to follow his religion. Taking the pulpit must have become something of a habit to him, for the ambassador reports that he 'went on and on, and not in a humble manner'.

When his ears had ceased ringing, Pogozhev admitted defeat - for the time being. He waited upon the reply of the Privy Council to his request. When this finally came, in May, it wasn't the answer he wanted to hear. Mekepher, he was told, was free to leave whenever he wanted. But to send him away by force, to a country where he would be unable to practice his religion, was out of the question. His Majesty had said as much on many occasions and now expected that the matter would be dropped.

Refusing to take the hint, the dogged Pogozhev appealed directly to the King. He went through the arguments all over again, trying to cast doubt upon both Mekepher's faith and his fears. These were, he said, excuses so that he could remain abroad. He also added a final argument, one which he considered quite compelling. Mekepher Alphery's wishes were irrelevant. He was the Tsar's subject, and as such, could be commanded back to Russia against his will.

King James, to his credit, didn't agree. At this point, the Russian state admitted defeat. It was the last time the matter of the four men's return was ever to be raised in diplomatic circles.

Mekepher took himself back off to Huntingdonshire in triumph, just in time to perform the baptism of his elder daughter, Joanna. His next years were to be those of a peaceful family man: in that time, five more children were born to the Alpherys. They were Stephen in 1624, Mary in 1625, John in 1628, James in 1630 and Gregory in 1635.

Meanwhile, the religious controversies that had been so hotly disputed at Cambridge had not gone away. In fact, they were fuelled by the accession of the new King, Charles I, in 1625. James had been skillful at playing off the two factions against each other, but his son Charles, a man of an altogher different stamp, had come down firmly on one side of the debate. Religion, for Charles, was a matter of ritual, of visual beauty, and of sacramental mystery. He naturally gravitated towards those churchmen who favoured images, who wished to keep the Communion table decently railed off, and who favoured keeping preaching to the priesthood, rather than allowing laymen to deliver sermons and lectures. To make matters worse, in Queen Henrietta-Maria he had married a Catholic wife, who worshipped openly among her attendants despite its being strictly illegal to do so.

In all this, Charles' Puritan opponents saw crypto-Catholicism, and that frightened them. No-one had quite forgotten the Gunpowder Plot, and the Thirty Years War, now raging across Europe, had come to be seen as a kind of millennial showdown between Protestant and Catholic forces. Meanwhile, the runaway bestseller of the day was - and had been since its first publication - Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which kept alive memories of the persecution of Protestants under Mary I. For the majority of English Protestants, Catholicism was the major bogeyman of the age, and anything that smacked of it was something to worry about.

Of course, the English Civil War was not solely a religious conflict. There were important political and economic dimensions to it. But these strands were in any case hopelessly intertwined, and since it was chiefly the religious conflict which affected Mekepher Alphery, it is this I shall choose to highlight.

We have already noted that remote Woolley was only six miles from the town of Huntingdon - birthplace and home of a young man named Oliver Cromwell, who was soon to make something of a name for himself. In fact, the whole of East Anglia was to gain a reputation as a hotbed of Puritanism, and indeed, it had already seen more than its share of unorthodox Protestant sects springing up, or drifting across from the Low Countries. But a mere five miles from Woolley, there was a religious foundation of quite a different temper. Little Gidding achieved both fame and notoriety in its day, and the revived community there in more recent times was immortalised by T S Eliot in one of his 'Four Quartets'.

The driving force behind the family community at Little Gidding was Nicholas Ferrar, the son of a London merchant, who turned his back on a number of possible careers in favour of an ascetic withdrawal from the world. Ferrar's life demands more attention than we can possibly give it here, and a precis will have to content us for now. He had been a precocious learner, entering Clare College in 1606 at the age of thirteen, where after graduating, he remained on a Medicine Fellowship until 1613. There, he and Mekepher would certainly have crossed paths, at the very least. After Clare, Ferrar spent five years travelling in Europe, soaking up a kaleidoscope of knowledge about the lands through which he passed. As a result, he came home with several European languages, trunkloads of books, and a variety of religious traditions to draw upon.

1625 was a Plague year in London, and with his whole family - his aged but still agile mother, his brother and sister and their spouses, fourteen children, two grandchildren and the household servants - Nicholas packed up and moved to Little Gidding. He had persuaded them to sell everything they had in London to buy and restore this depopulated village, its crumbling manor house and its semi-derelict church - then being used as a pigsty, much to the horror of devout old Mrs Ferrar. He visited London one final time, to be ordained deacon, though he declined to take the next step and be ordained priest. Then he returned to Gidding to start his family community.

But Little Gidding was much more than a retreat from the world. There was asceticism, prayer, and piety, but there were good works, too. Thirty to forty people lived there at its height, including three schoolmasters and a number of widows, there as almswomen. A Sunday school taught the children of the local poor - and provided them with a midday meal - while the sons of the local gentry came to learn Latin and arithmetic. The Ferrars ran an infirmary and dispensary for those who couldn't afford a doctor, and in times of hardship, bought in flax to provide work for the unemployed. In many ways, it functioned like one of the monastic foundations lost to the country at the Dissolution.

Like many hermits over the centuries, Ferrar soon found himself besieged by the curious, who wanted to see for themselves what being secluded involved. These he began, gently, to discourage, but genuine visitors were still welcome. The Bishop of Lincoln, John Williams, in whose diocese Gidding lay, was a friend and a frequent visitor, and neighbouring clergymen came to hear services or to take part in discussions on the issues of the day. It is surely not so unlikely to suppose that Mekepher Alphery, living five miles away at Woolley and an alumnus of the same Cambridge college, might have been among them.

There was one other thing the inhabitants of Little Gidding did, and did supremely well. They produced books: fine hand-bound New Testaments and concordances to the Bible, which were admired at the time and remain objects of great beauty today. Some found their way into the hands of the King and Prince Charles (later Charles II), and are preserved at the British Library in London.

Nicholas Ferrar never married and had no children, but his young nephew, also Nicholas, seemed set to follow in his uncle's footsteps. He had evidently inherited the propensity for learning foreign tongues, for by the time young Nicholas was eighteen, he had already produced a Polyglot Gospel of St John in several languages. One of those languages was 'Moscovite'.

So far as I know, no-one seems to have enquired where young Nicholas Ferrar learned his 'Moscovite'. His uncle certainly never claimed to it as one of his many tongues. So did Mekepher Alphery play some small part in producing this work of beauty and scholarship? Sadly, I do not believe we will ever know for certain, but with a mere five miles of gently rolling countryside separating him from the Ferrar household, there is surely room for speculation.

Little Gidding was not to fare well in the Civil War. The music, the objects of beauty and the ritual of its services made it a target for the soldiers' reforming zeal. Pamphleteers attacked it, calling it 'the Arminian nunnery' because some of the female inhabitants had apparently taken vows of virginity. Its roof also sheltered the fugitive King Charles, on one of the last nights of freedom he was to enjoy before giving himself up to the Scots army at Newark. None of this was likely to go down very well on Oliver Cromwell's own doorstep.

Mekepher Alphery and his family also fared badly in the cataclysm. When the Parliamentarians took it upon themselves to remedy the ill of 'scandalous ministers', he was one of the first clergymen in Huntingdonshire to be ejected from his living. It is difficult to say exactly why. So many reasons were given for the removal of ministers - 'lewd living', drunkenness, encouraging the playing of games after Church on Sunday, bowing to the cross or keeping images of the Virgin Mary were just some of a vast range of offences they were alleged to have committed. Later, 'disaffection towards the Parliament' and supporting the King became valid reasons for sequestration. The feeling one has is that in many cases, if a minister kept quiet about his personal convictions, he might well sit out the war in his parish, but if he insisted too strongly upon his rights and annoyed some vociferous opponent, he was likely to find himself sequestered or otherwise ejected from his living. Another strong impression one gets from looking over the evidence of sequestrations is that there was massive scope for revenge-taking by very small numbers of parishioners with grudges.

In Mekepher's case, there does not even seem to have been an official sequestration, with deponents giving evidence against him, until long after his ejection. I will let John Walker tell the story:

"On a Lord's Day, as he was Preaching, a File of Musqueteers came and Pull'd him out of his Pulpit, Turn'd him out of the Church, and his Wife and Children, with their Goods, out of the Parsonage-House. The poor Man thus Ejected out of his House, built an Hutt, or Booth, over against the Parsonage-House, in the Street, under the trees growing in the Verge of the Church yard, and there liv'd for a Week with his Family. He had procured Three Eggs, and gathered a bundle of rotten Sticks (in that time) and was about to make a Fire in the Church Porch, to boyl his Eggs, but some of his Adversaries (whose Names are known) coming thither, broke his Eggs, and kicked away the Fire."

This is a poignant picture - an elderly rector deprived of his livelihood, hustled from his church at musket-point by a troop of soldiers, his wife and children driven from their home. And could anything be less charitable, less Christian, than to deprive them, after all this, of a meagre supper?

But how far can we rely upon it? We have already seen that some of Walker's details have proved only approximations to the truth. It is now time to look at 'Sufferings of the Clergy' in a little more depth.

For one thing, it is a highly partisan work. Walker is replying to a work of Edmund Calamy, which deals with the ejection of Puritan ministers at the Restoration of Charles II. He is attempting to defend his High Church party by saying, effectively, 'tu quoque'.

Perhaps worse, much of Walker's research rests on what amounts to a survey, conducted by means of a postal questionnaire. It was perhaps the first ever targeted mailshot. He solicited personal accounts and sent out circular letters to hundreds of clergymen, enquiring about their predecessors. Sixty years had elapsed since the events of which he was inquiring, and in most cases, there would have been very few eyewitnesses remaining.

There were two replies concerning Mekepher, on which Walker based his account. Both are from Peter Phelips, the then Minister of Woolley St Mary. Two further incumbents separated him from Mekepher, and he could not possibly have had personal knowledge of the events he described.

Walker, however, did make attempts to check his facts wherever possible. He had access to some of the official papers of the plethora of Committees that had dealt with sequestrations, and did manage to confirm the bare bones of his story.

Not only this, it is a plausible story. There are many reported cases of similar ejections by troops of soldiers in other parts of the country. War is very rarely civil, and soldiers are soldiers. Mekepher's response, too, is credible. It is of a piece with the young man who stood his ground and argued with ambassador after ambassador. He was exactly the sort of man who, rather than meekly walk away, would remain on the spot and build a shelter for his wife and children. Very probably, he was exactly the sort of man who would refuse to take down his holy pictures or to remove the rails around the Communion table, and very probably it was this, in many ways admirable, character trait which had got him into trouble in the first place.

Naturally, we cannot know what Mekepher's exact religious convictions were, but it seems most likely that he was no Puritan. For one thing, his native religious tradition would have predisposed him to the more sacramental brand of religion favoured by the King and his Archbishop, William Laud. To leap from Russian Orthodoxy to radical Low Church Protestantism would have been, not an impossible journey, but an extreme one. For another, his college, Clare, had no Puritan tradition - rather the contrary. His involvement, if we are correct, with the Ferrars of Little Gidding would seem to argue against it. Finally, his patron John Bedell appears to have taken the Royalist side - which, while it doesn't necessarily indicate his religious feelings, is a strong clue. And since in that climate it would be a remarkably broad-minded patron indeed who appointed a cleric with whom he radically disagreed, we can assume that Mekepher broadly shared his convictions.

The largest single shred of confirmation, though, comes from a pair of newspapers of the day. On 20 April, 1643, the 'Perfect Diurnall' reported that Colonel Cromwell had 'done very good service in Huntingdonshire' disarming 'malignants' and others disaffected towards the Parliament. 'Mercurius Aulicus' on 7 May saw it differently. Cromwell, it reported, had been through the county 'robbing and spoiling' at will. In particular, it went on, he had made 'great havock' there among the clergy. There are journalistic exaggerations in both reports, but both sides agree that Cromwell and his soldiers have marched through Huntingdonshire doing something at exactly the time when it is claimed that Mekepher was being ejected. It looks as though the musketeers referred to are real enough, and they would seem to have been men of Oliver Cromwell's own troop. We do not know exactly who were the family members who, according to Walker, lived a week in this hut in the church yard. The younger Mekepher had married and was probably living in London at this time. His brother Robert had also married, but still lived with his wife and infant son in Woolley. Sadly, Joanna had died three years previously, not long before her eighteenth birthday. Stephen we know survived and was probably living at home, as were his brothers John and James, youths of fifteen and thirteen. It isn't clear whether Mary and the youngest child, Gregory, were still alive at this point.

However, this was still a large family to feed on no income. Under the new regime there was, in theory, provision for the wives and children of ejected ministers. They were entitled to one-fifth of the tithe income from their husbands' former parishes. Unfortunately, this depended on the new incumbent being willing to pay it to them - a requirement not all replacement ministers were keen on fulfilling. In fairness, sometimes this was not entirely the new incumbent's fault, for in many parishes, the parishioners withheld their tithes where they didn't approve of the change. The results were chaotic. Over the next few years, Joanna Alphery appeared time and time again before the Committee for Plundered Ministers to try to obtain her fifth. Mr Beale, the new minister, seems to have been most reluctant to pay up.

The great trading companies sometimes had openings for clergymen. Their ships and their men stationed in foreign ports required chaplains. What was more, some of the companies were defiantly employing men ejected from their benefices. But when approached, the Muscovy Company regretted that they were unable to offer Mekepher a living, and referred him to a charitable foundation for merchants. What came of this is unknown, but it seems unlikely that very much did. The call on charitable funds must have been great at this time, with the wholesale loss of property, plunder and destruction that the Civil War brought with it. Hardship was everywhere.

Somehow or another the Alpherys had found enough money to buy some land in Warboys, close to Joanna's home village on the edge of the Fens. There, they built a house. The land had to be kept in Joanna's name - as a sequestered minister, any property owned by Mekepher could have been taken from him to finance the war against King Charles. We know very little of how they lived there, although in 1650, Mekepher was able to earn a small amount of money by preaching at Easton, not far from Woolley, for two shillings and sixpence a sermon.

Joanna died in 1654. It may have been at this time that Mekepher went to live with his son in what was then a dormitory suburb of London. Mekepher the younger seems to have made, or married, money in the years he has been away from Huntingdonshire. Certainly he is describing himself as a gentleman, and he has amassed some property in London and its suburbs. Walker says he is living at Hammersmith, although I have found no trace of him there. At various later dates, he is certainly nearby in Ealing, and owns a tenement at Charing Cross, then a highly desirable inner suburb of the city.

Wherever in present-day West London Mekepher the elder found himself, he seems to have taken his son Stephen with him, for three years later, we find Stephen getting married in Wandsworth, where he settled and became a smith. Robert, the second son, continued to farm at Warboys with his wife and family. Both branches of the family continue into another generation.

At the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, like many ejected clergymen, Mekepher returned to his living. By this time he was in his late seventies. He remained at Woolley for a further six years before settling a curate in his living and retiring.

Two years later, in April 1668, he made his will and shortly after died. He left behind the land in which he had fought to be allowed to remain and have freedom of conscience. Sadly, it was a land which, even then, was not yet ready for religious toleration.

___________________________________

(1) Ian Burrell gives talks on Mekepher Alphery to local history societies in the Huntingdon area, at which he has been known to have descendents of Alphery planted among the audience. At the end of his lecture, he will then ask them to stand up - much to the delight of his hearers.

(2) Incidentally, this is the earliest instance I have found in Russia of the name Ulyan (William). I take it to have been an English import brought by traders like William Merrick. Since the Merricks, father and son, and the Vlassevs were acquainted, the connection may even be direct. It is interesting to note, in passing, that there has of course been at least one Russian of international reputation bearing the name Ulyanov.

Велецкие

1. Иосиф Велецкий, о нем в компуте Гадячского полка за 1731-й год оказано: "Служовал в войску полском королевскому величеству полскому в чину полковничества и забит на баталии в войску Хмелницкого року 1651".

II.

2. \ 1. Василий Иосифович, "пришедши с польских краев", в службе с 1672 г.; войсковой канцелярист (1689–1690); Гадячский полковой судья (1697–1709, был Гадячским полковым судьей еще в апр. 1711 г.

); знатный товарищ войсковой (1711–1716); наказной полковник Гадячский в походе 1705 г.; "послан был от гетмана Мазепы по указу Царского всепресветлейшаго величества в посельстве до Кримского хана два рази в поважних и потребних делах всему государству Российскому: первий раз был в Кримском ханстве року 1692 послом, а оттоль повернулся 1695 року; другий раз року 1699 в Кримском ханстве был же и того ж року оттудова и повернулся"; 10 дек. 1688 г. гетман Мазепа, "з певных респектов заховуючи на далший час до услуг войскових пана Василия Велецкаго", взял его под "реймевтарскую оборону, абы он яко до войска и где поход военный окажется – при боку гетманском под бунчуком найдовался, так и до суда войскового, а не до полкового, належал в прилучающихся росправах"; в сент. 1711 г. послан гетманом Скоропадским в нужном деле к ближнему боярину и воеводе князю Михаилу Григорьевичу Ромодановскому; 21 нояб. 1711 г. взят гетманом Скоропадским в его протекцию "зо всеми кревними его, в Гадячу мешкаючими, докладаючи, яко он п. Велецкий когда случай военный позовет, меет при боку гетманском завше под бунчуком найдоватися и в той час даби волно ему было в свой курень козаков из села Сениовки брати, так аби из своими кревними не до полкового, лечь до

нашого Суду Войскового Енералного в прилучаючихся росправах належал". – 13 июля 1689 г получил гетманский универсал, коим "войтове и всем мужам с. Юсковец, в уезде Лохвицком зостаючого", приказывалось, чтобы они "пану Василю Велецкому, канцеляристе войсковому, в селе их мешкаючому, в кошеню сена, в зниманю збожа и в воженю из поля того всего чинили помощ и послушними были во всем, тепер и впред до ласки нашой, а то з тех мер, же оний как тепер, в Кримском походе будучи, при боку нашом в Канцелярии справ войскових помогал охочо отправовати, так и впред готов бути мает до тих же дел помощник"; 21 мая 1690 г. ("славетный пан, канцелярист войсковой, житель значный Гадяцкий") купил у Мардария Павловича, жителя Кролевецкого, под с. Броварками на р. Псле, "юж на стеранной гребле, млин, чтире ставидла, каменей три, а четвертое ставидло ступное, с колесами, валами и инними там в млине знайдуючимися речами, гулячии а нерабочии", за 200 золотых; 28 апр. 1699 г. получил гетманский универсал на с. Сениовку (Гадячской полковой сотни) с млинком об одном коле, прозываемым Говорушиным; 14 марта 1704 г. получил универсал гетмана на мельницу на р. Псле в с. Броварках; 10 июля 1709 г. получил гетманский подтвердительный универсал на с. Сениовку с млинами-вешняками, прозываемыми Яцковым, Красныковым, Друковым и Говорушиным, около того же села и млин на р. Псле на гребле Броварковской о шести колах; 21 нояб. 1711 г. получил подтвердительный гетманский универсал (см. выше) на с. Сениовку, хутора, фольварки, млины, солодовни, бровары и другие его грунта; 30 янв. 1713 г. получил подтвердительный гетманский универсал на с. Юсковцы (Лохвицкой сотни); 4 окт. 1716 г. получил гетманский универсал на с. Броварки (Гадячской полковой сотни); жил в Гадяче (1690); † 1721.

Ж. – Стефанида Михайловна ___; 23 апр. 1693 г., по жалобе своей, получила гетманский лист к Лохвицкому сотнику с урядом, коим приказывалось, чтобы они людей села Юсковец, наданного ее мужу п. Василию Велецкому, в "посланничестве от нас в Криму будучому и вже чрез два рока там в задержаню знайдуючомуся", – "до своих меских тяглостей не потягали и жадних поборов из него на свой меский росход не брали, якобы она могла мети из тих людей собе послушенство;" в 1726 г. – вдова, владела селами Сенявкою (161 двор) и Броварками (61 двор); в 1730 г. – вдова, владела, по
конфирмации гетманской, одним только с. Сенявкою (180 дворов) с двумя младшими сыновьями, а Броварки принадлежали в это время ее старшему сыну Василию (№ 3)

3. \ 2. Василий Васильевич, в службе с 1702 г. в Гадячском полку, когда ходили под Быхов; в 1705 г. – в числе значкового товариства в Польском походе под Замостье при отце; в 1706 г. – в том же походе к венгерской границе; в 1706 г. – во втором походе на том боку Днепра под Погребищами и когда делали Киево-Печерскую крепость; в 1707 г. – на работе Киево-Печерской крепости; в 1708 г. – в походе под Борщаговкой, на страже в крепости Киево-Печерской и в Польше под м. Песками; в 1709 г. – на баталии под Полтавой уже был обретающимся при гетмане под бунчуком; в 1711 г. – при гетмане под бунчуком в зимнем походе, в Лубнах и других местах, и летом – под фортецами Каменным Затоном и Самарью на страже; в окт. 1712 г. послан "от боку гетманскаго" в Лубны на розыск о млинах Мацковских; в 1713 г. – в походе при гетмане под бунчуком в Киеве; в 1718 г. – за избранием согласным от всей старшини полковой и товариства сотенного пожалован гетманом чином сотничества во вторую полковую сотню полку Гадячского; 27 янв 1719 г. "за сполним товариства сел второй сотни Гадячской согласием и з ведома пана полковника своего состоявшимся, избран и поставлен сотником тамошним", на что и получил универсал гетманский; в 1719 г. – с сотней своей в походе на линейной работе между Паншиною (?) и Царицыном и был здесь при наказном гетмане Милорадовиче за генерального есаула, ибо настоящий полковой есаул Мартин Стишевский правил в том походе за обозного генерального; в 1722 г. – был на канальной работе между Дубном и Кубанью; в 1723 г. – в походе у Буцкого брода на Коломаке, на страже два месяца; в 1723 г. – подписал Коломацкие челобитные; в 1723 и 1724 г.г. правил за полковника Гадячского, в дому будучи, под небытность в дому настоящего полковника господина Милорадовича; в 1724 г. – в Низовом Сулацком и Терковском походе при крепости св. Креста на работе, где был за генерального комиссара и откуда прибыл домой в 1726 г.; в 1731 г. – в походе при Бузовом плесе у р. Береки (?) на линейной работе с 20 мая по 20 окт., где был и за полковника;

был Гадячским сотником второй полковой сотни еще в 1737 г.; на него показывал "вор Антон Щербиненко, якобы он пойманного в Гадячах шпиона изо взятков отпустил и убил драгуна"; донос этот оказался несправедливым и Щербиненко по указу Кабинета Министров от 21 июня 1737 г. был казнен; в 1730 г. владел с. Броварками, Гадячской полковой сотни, в 73 двора.

6. \ 3. Иван Васильевич, в 1727 г. ученик грамматики Киевской Академии; в службе с 1737 г. войсковым канцеляристом в Генеральной Войсковой Канцелярии; 22 дек. 1741 г. за службы деда и отца – бунчуковый товарищ; 13 июля 1751 г. ему с бунчуковыми товарищами Петром Лащинским, Григорием Богдановичем, Романом Затиркевичем и Петром Андреяшевичем приказано было присутствовать при церемонии чтения грамоты на гетманство Разумовскому и выносе гетманских клейнотов в церковь "в добром убранстве на конях верхами", при чем они должны ехать рядом с "паратной лошадью его ясневельможности з серебрянними литаврами" † 1763.

Ж. – Анастасия Павловна ___, род. 1716; в 1786 г. – вдова живет в с. Сениовке.

Максим Иванович, род. в 1746 г. в с. Сениовке; в службе с 1767 г. коллежским канцеляристом; 25 окт. 1771 г. – Гадячский полковой хорунжий на место уволенного от службы хорунжего Кондискалова; в 1772 г. содержал форпосты на линии; из полковых Гадячских хорунжих 7 мая 1781 г, – бунчуковый товарищ; Гадячский уездный предводитель дворянства (1782–1784); в 1782 г. послан был в числе прочих дворян в Петербург "для принесения Ея Импер. Величеству должной благодарности за матерния Ея Величества в подании спасительных учреждений щедроты"; коллежский асессор (1786–1798); в 1798 г. был в отставке; в 1782 г. за ним Гадячского уезда: в Синевке – муж. пола 417, жен. пола 416, в Броварках – подсоседков муж. пола 75, жен. пола 92, в с. Книшовке – муж. пола 9, жен. пола 2, хут. Краснокутском – муж. пола 4, жен. пола 6 душ; в 1786 г. он владел в Гадячском уезде тремя селами и двумя хуторами, в коих было 1011 душ; в 1795 г. за ним в Броварках – муж. пола 75, жен. пола 100, с. Книшовке – мужск. пола 9, жен. пола 7, и с. Синевке – муж. пола 456, жен. пола 519 душ; за ним наследственных: в с. Сениовке – муж. пола 348, жен. пола 386, купленных – муж. пола 108, жен. пола 118; в с. Броварках – муж. пола 75, жен. пола 85, с. Книшовке – мужск. пола 9, жен. пола 7, всего муж. пола 540, жен. пола 596 душ, обоего пола 1136 душ (1798); жил в с. Сениовке (1791–1798); † до 1811.

Ж. – Елена Алексеевна Евреинова, род. 1758, дочь полковника.

__________

16. \ 9. Иван Максимович, род. 24 июня 1791 г. в с. Сениовке; восприемник житель города Гадяча Николай Космин Савич; по окончании курса наук в Петербургском Иезуитском Институте, где обучался немецкому, французскому и латинскому языкам, 6 июня 1812 г. в службе в канцелярии Гадячского поветового маршала губернским канцеляристом; 31 дек. 1815 г. – коллежский регистратор; 31 авг. 1817 г. – в канцелярию Малорооссийского губернатора; 31 дек. 1818 г. – губернский секретарь; там же служил и в 1820 г.; губернский секретарь (1845); за ним в 1811 г. в с. Синевке – дворовых 9, крестьян 630, с. Броварках – 88, с. Книшовке – 13, х. Дрюковском – 22, хуторе дач Краснокутских – дворовых 3 души; в 1816 г. за ним в хут. Дрюковском – муж. пола 18, жен. пола 15, хуторе дачи Красная Лука – муж. пола 1, жен. пола 3, с. Броварках – муж. пола 56, жен. пола 63, с. Книшовке – муж. пола 2, жен. пола 2, с. Синевке – муж. пола 449, жен. пола 441, х. Дахновском – муж. пола 24 души; в 1820 г. за ним в Гадячском повете – муж. пола 526 душ; помещик Гадячского уезда (1845).

Ж. – Варвара ___, за нею в с. Синевке в 1811 г. – муж. пола 8 д., в 1816 г. – муж. пола 6, женск. пола 5 душ.

____________

27. \ 16. Михаил Иванович, род. 1814 г.

28. \ 16. Николай Иванович, род. 9 мая 1815 г. в с. Синевке, Гадячского уез.; восприемник поручик Василий Васильевич Велецкий (№ 15) и коллежская советница Розета Андреевна Бугаевская; 1834 г. – определен в военную службу.

29. \ 16. Иван Иванович, род. 1816, † 1822 г.

30. \ 16. Исаак Иванович, род. 1817 г.

31. \ 16. Флор Иванович, род. 16 мая 1822 г. в с. Синиовке; восприемник помещик Михаил Митлош (?), житель г. Полтавы (1850 г.).

– \ 16. Анастасия Ивановна, род. 1811 г.

– \ 16. Анна Ивановна *), род. 1816 г.

Интересное собрание Евреиновых вокруг Петра Третьего и Екатерины Второй.

Петр Герасимович Евреинов - камердинер Петра Федоровича с 1754 года,
Тимофей Герасимович Евреинов - камердинер Екатерины Алексеевны. В 1751 году под влиянием интриг камердинер Тимофей Евреинов получил отставку и был сослан в Казань

Петр Герасимович Евреинов, камер-лакей, с 20.09.1754 – камердинер Голштинской службы, бригадир, гардеробмейстер, возведен в потомственное дворянское достоинство Всероссийской Империи Высочайшим Указом Петра III от 20.01.1762.

Петр Евреинов, служил с 1739 г. лакеем, с 1750 г. камер-лакеем, с 20.09.1754 – камердинером Голштинской службы.

Евреинов Петр Герасимович (1721--1787.12.03,†с.Трясово Новгород, у., в церкви, им построенной) бригадир и камергер, 67 л. 11 мес. и 7 дней. Пох. с внуками Петром (7 дней) и Павлом (30 дней) Воронцовыми [Шереметевский В. Русск.провинц.некрополь. Т.1. М.,1914]

и еще Алексей Евреинов - камердинер А.Г.Разумовского
Алексей Евреинов - человек, кредитирующий Екатерину Алексеевну и братьев Орловых.


Екатерина Алексеевна передавала Петру Федоровичу по цепочке камердинеров деньги, ссуженные у вельмож.

на место уволенного Тимофея Евреинова - Екатерине назначили Василия Шкурина в камердинеры. Его в 1762 наградили дворянством после переворота, наряду с Алексеем Евреиновым - кассиром Банковской Конторы.

Узкий, вытянутый ввысь фасад дома №8 кажется стиснутым соседними зданиями. Строгость рисунка, огромные окна нижнего яруса, сочетание гранитной облицовки и мозаичной отделки характерны для нового, современного стиля начала 20 столетия – модерна.
На его месте в 1740-х годах располагался двор купца Алексея Васильевича Хлебосолова, перешедший по наследству к его дочери Марье Алексеевне, жене купца Ивана Васильевича Третьякова, некоторое время владевшего соседним домом.
В 1749 году она закладывает дом за три тысячи рублей петербургскому купцу Емельяну Корниловичу Климушкину и, так же как муж, не смогла его выкупить.
В 1756 году в «Санкт-Петербургских ведомостях» сообщалось, что у снимавшего здесь квартиру медного дела мастера Карла Фосмана через окно «покрадена пара платья серонемецкого сукна с томпаковыми пуговицами, в которой был в кармане вексель на 500 рублей».
От Климушкина дом, достался его сыну, тоже купцу, Емельяну Емельяновичу, а тот в 1759 году продал его Его Императорского Высочества Великого Князя Петра Федоровича камердинеру Петру Герасимовичу Евреинову . Камердинеры в то время быстро делали карьеру, и уже бригадир П. Евреинов оставил дом в наследство своей дочери Екатерине Петровне, супруге статского советника Ивана Алексеевича Воронцова, который был троюродным братом Екатерины Романовны Воронцовой-Дашковой, её сестры Елизаветы (фаворитки Великого Князя Петра Федоровича ), и их известных своей деятельностью братьев Александра и Семена Романовичей Воронцовых.
Е.П. Воронцова владела домом до конца 18 века. В то время в доме было 28 покоев.

Благодаря apelsinKe - продвинулись чуть дальше.

отцом Елены Алексеевны Евреиновой, в замужестве Велецкой*1758 - оказался Алексей Павлович Евреинов

смотритель конского завода двора Его Сиятельства генералъ фельдмаршала рейхъ графа Алексея Григорьевича господина Разумовского
Алексей Павлович Евреинов *1726 - 33 лет (в 1759)

Жена его Анна Андреева *1731 - 28 лет( (в 1759) ,
Дочь Елена 1 мес.

главный смотритель Лубенских и Полтавских вотчин Разумовского в чине поручика до 1770

позже полковник. флигель адъютант генерал фельдмаршала

в 1745-7 годах - камердинер А. Г. Разумовского

Дети -

Велецкая (урожд. Евреинова ) Елена Алексеевна (1758- ?), дочь полковника.
Муж - Максим Иванович Велецкий (1746-до 1811), коллежский асессор, гадячский уездный предводитель дворянства (1782-1784).

Ласкевич (урожд. Евреинова ) Мария Алексеевна, дочь полковника. Муж - Иван Павлович Ласкевич (ок. 1753-после 1798), премьер-майор в отставке, коллежский асессор, заседатель Роменского уездного суда (1784).