checked, if it did not altogether repress, the boyarin struggles and intrigues which the weakness of the Tzar invited, and at the same time the man who was practically Regent had the address to govern as though with the co-operation of the whole Council. One of the first acts necessitated by the political circumstances of the Court was the removal or banishment of the Tzarevitch Dimitri, with his mother and the whole clan of the Nagois, to Ouglitch, a town some 90 verstas from Moskva. Here they remained in a state of repressed disaffection, biding their time till the day when the young Dimitri should succeed his half-brother and the Nagois should dispossess the Godounovs. This was a factor which Boris had always to reckon with, and which perhaps forced his statesmanship out of the legitimate groove of throne-serving. That his ascendancy would be accepted without a struggle by the other members of the Council was scarcely to be expected; Romanov died in 1586, and soon after Mstislavskie drifted over to the Shouyskie faction, in opposition to Godounov. That intrigues would be set on foot against his authority was extremely probable, but whether a definite plot existed or not, one was at least “discovered,” in which the two counsellors and several other boyarins were implicated. The offenders were dealt with in a spirit of moderation which had been long foreign to the Court of Moskva; Mstislavskie entered the Kirillov monastery at Bielozero, others of his party were imprisoned or banished to distant parts of the realm. The Shouyskie, enjoying the protection of the Metropolitan (Dionisie), survived the storm which swept away so many of their colleagues. Meanwhile the Regent’s diplomacy had been exerted to defer, for the time being, hostilities with any of the four states--Turk, Pole, Swede, and Tartar--which permanently threatened Russia with aggression. With Sweden a prolongation of the truce for four years was effected in December 1585; the Krimskie khanate was weakened by civil war and dynastic revolutions, and little was to be feared from that quarter. The chief danger lay with Poland, and Batory was only held back by the controlling hand of the Diet and the protests of the Lit’uanian landowners from renewing his profitable campaigns against Moskovy. Under these circumstances it was with feelings of relief that the Council of State, sitting at Moskva, heard, on the 20th December 1586, of the death of their enemy, which had taken place eighteen days earlier (13th December according to the new reckoning of the calendar, initiated by Pope Gregory and adopted throughout west continental Europe, by which Russian--and English--time was left twelve days behind). The death of this prince reversed the whole position of affairs between the two countries, and instead of living in constant apprehension of fresh inroads upon their territory, the Moskovites were able to entertain the prospect of an advantageous union with the neighbour State.