The little fleet met with bad weather off the coast of Spitzbergen; two of them, including the captain’s ship, ran into a harbour of Lapland, where the whole company were frozen to death; the third got into the White Sea and so to Archangel; the captain, Richard Chancellor, procured sledges and travelled to Moscow, where he obtained from the Czar permission to trade on the northern coast of Russia. Thus was founded the Russia Company. A few years later one of the agents of the Russia Company was despatched as an Ambassador from the English Court to the Czar, who in his turn sent an Ambassador to Whitehall. On his voyage the Russian Ambassador was wrecked on the coast of Scotland. The Russia Company, hearing of the disaster, sent a deputation with a supply of everything that the Ambassador might want. On his approach to the City he was met by a company of eighty merchants on horseback, who escorted him to Highgate, where he lay that night, and on the next day was met by Lord Montague, representing the Queen, with 300 knights and esquires and 140 merchants of the Russia Company. Rooms were found for him in Gracechurch Street, where many costly gifts awaited him. The history of this Company deserves to be written at length on account of the enterprise and intelligence of its agents. Indeed, justice has never been done to the agents and factors of the great London Companies. It was not the Directors, sitting at home at their long table, who created the Indian Empire; maintained and widened the English trade; carried the English flag over lands unknown and to peoples unheard of; it was not the Directors who opened up routes, stood before capricious despots, marked the resources of new countries and reported on their wants. These things were done by the factors and the agents, who encountered all risks, facing possibly prison, torture, disease, and sometimes a cruel death, for the enlargement of trade and the enrichment of their masters. They were the pioneers; sometimes they were the Forlorn Hope of the English trade and wealth. No Company, not even the East India Company, was better served by its agents than the Russia Company. They obtained from the Czar important privileges; they could trade in any part of Russia without safe conduct or licenses; they could not be arrested for debt; they could appoint their own officers and servants; and they had jurisdiction over all Englishmen resident in Russia. In other words, they had a monopoly of the Russian Trade.