Meantime the more fortunate Sir Richard had penetrated to the spot where Archangel is now situated, and where then stood a monastery dedicated to St. Nicholas. After resting here, he made his way to Moscow, where Czar Ivan held his Court. Here he was received in the most friendly manner, remained some months, and was finally dismissed with a royal letter to the young King Edward VI., in which Ivan expressed his great wish that their two countries should henceforth approach each other in more intimate relationship. Nor were these desires of the Czar's fruitless. After Sir Richard Chancellor's return, and on hearing his report concerning the terms under which the Czar would allow the English to trade in and with his country, a number of London merchants formed themselves into a commercial corporation under the title of "The London and Muscovite Company." This company once more despatched Chancellor to treat with the Czar, and the result was that by the year 1555, mutual trading relations between Russia and England were established. Now if an earthquake had shaken the whole of Northern Europe, it could not have produced a greater commotion in the entire Baltic North than did this Russo-Anglican alliance, "The London and Muscovite Company." The good understanding between England and Russia was at once recognized as a danger of first-class importance to all the merchants along the Sound and the Baltic. They saw their entire commerce in imminent danger. What did it now avail them that the Sound had been closed for centuries against the English ships, if the London merchants could carry their goods to Russia by another route? Above all, the Hanseatic League recognized the danger that menaced both them and their colony of Livonia, the colony of which the city of Bremen was wont to boast that it had been the godmother. What would happen, they asked themselves, with good reason, if Czar Ivan, already their enemy at Novgorod, should also take unto himself Livonia, if he should open its harbours to his new friends, and thus obtain for himself the mastery of the Baltic? In order to fully appreciate these fears, we must remember that the province anciently called Livonia embraced all the departments now known as Esthonia, Courland, and Livonia; in a word, the whole Baltic coast of the Russian continent. This district was entirely governed by the Germans. Three hundred years back a priest named Meinhard had founded the first Christian Church at the mouth of the Dwina, and from that time forward Germany had not ceased to send the flower of its aristocracy, the _élite_ of its burghers, its monks and its priests, its merchants and citizens, its _landsknechte_ and mercenaries to these northern coasts to spread the Christian faith, and to found a German colony.