with the order and good liking of his Majesty, and by leave given me from the House and enterd in the Journal; and having received moreover your approbation, I go therefore with more ease and satisfaction of mind, and augurate to myselfe the happier successe in all my proceedings....”

It was Marvell’s good fortune to be in Lord Carlisle’s frigate which made the voyage to Archangel in less than a month, sailing from Gravesend on the 22nd of July and arriving at the bar of Archangel on the 19th of August.  The companion frigate took seven weeks to compass the same distance.

Nothing of any importance attaches to this Russian embassy.  It cost a great deal of money, took up a great deal of time, exposed the ambassador and his suite to much rudeness and discomfort, and failed to effect its main object, which was to secure a renewal of the privileges formerly enjoyed in Muscovy by British merchants.

One of the attendants upon the ambassador made a small book out of his travels, which did not get printed till 1669, when it attracted little notice.  Mr. Grosart was the first of Marvell’s many biographers to discover the existence of this narrative.[106:1] He found it in the first instance, to use his own language, “in one of good trusty John Harris’ folios of Travels and Voyages” (two vols. folio, 1705); but later on he made the sad discovery that this “good trusty John Harris” had uplifted what he called his “true and particular account” from the book of 1669 without any acknowledgment.  “For ways that are dark” the old compiler of travels was not easily excelled, but why should Mr. Grosart have gone out of his way to call an eighteenth-century book-maker, about whom he evidently knew nothing, “good and trusty”?  Harris was never either the one or the other, and died a pauper!

A journey to Moscow in 1663-64 was no joke.  Lord Carlisle, who was accompanied by his wife and eldest son, although ready to start from Archangel by the end of September, was doomed to spend both the 5th of November and Christmas Day in the gloomy town of Vologda, which they had reached, travelling by water, on the 17th of October.  Some of this time was spent in quarrelling as to who was to supply the sledges that were required to convey the ambassador and all his impedimenta along the now ice-bound roads to Moscow.  It was one of Marvell’s many duties to remonstrate with the authorities for their cruel and disrespectful indifference; he did so with great freedom, but with no effect, and at last the ambassador was obliged to hire two hundred sledges at his own charges.  Sixty he sent on ahead, following with one hundred and forty on the 15th of January 1664.  It was an intensely cold journey, and the accommodation at night, with one happy exception, proved quite infamous.  On the 3rd of February Lord Carlisle and his cortege found themselves five versts from Moscow.  The 5th of February was fixed for their entry into the city in all their finery.