and conducted religious services, for which he dressed all his courtiers in cassocks and monastic habits, and then officiated as Prior. One day, as he was going in solemn procession to church with his second son, the pious Prince Theodore Ivanovitsch, in order to hear Mass, there stood outside the church door a venerable-looking monk with a long white beard, who was clad in a shabby old habit. The Czar started at the sight of him, and stopped. The monk crossed himself, bowed low to the Czar, and then, kneeling down, presented him with a paper or petition. The Czar ascertained from the bystanders that this was a holy monk named Trifon, who had built the most northerly church in his realms. He accepted the petition, and entered the church. There both he and his son read it, and the pious Theodore was so much touched by it, that he went into the sacristy and divested himself of his costly cloak, which he sent out to the poor monk, and offered it to him as a gift. The Court attendants could not be behind-hand in their gifts. The Czar was on this occasion accompanied by princes and boyars, among others by Vjæsemski, Nikita, Boris Gudunov (to whose sister, Irene Gudunov, Theodore was married), Morosov, Theodore Basmanov, Gregon, Skourlatov (his executioner, who was known as Malijuta), and others. All of these bestowed valuable gifts of gold and silver on Trifon, so that in a very short time, from being a poor pilgrim, he became a rich man. The next day he was summoned to the palace, to an audience with Ivan the Cruel. The latter was anxious to hear from Trifon an account of those Northern regions in which he lived and laboured. Trifon spoke in glowing terms of his life in those parts, with the light summer nights and the dark wintry days. He told the Czar of the heathen people who lived there, the wealth of fish, both in the fjords and in the rivers, the enormous whales in the vast Arctic Ocean, the virgin forests, the herds of reindeer, and, above all, the need there was that the Russian Church should erect places of worship and monasteries, and thus, in a way, put the stamp of the Russian kingdom on those lands, and so take them into the Czar’s possession, seeing that Denmark was laying some claim to them. This had its effect, for Ivan, who after the fire of Moscow was in one of his fits of piety, was now entirely controlled by the priests Sylvester and Alexis Adasjev, and on their advice issued a deed of gift to the holy Trifon on November 22, 7065 (1556). This deed of gift has been preserved, and it runs as follows: