Richard Chancellor

Richard Chancellor (1553)

Richard Chancellor († November 10, 1556 in the area of Aberdour Bay off the coast of Scotland ) was an English navigator .

Expeditions

Little is known about Chancellor's life, whose name was also spelled Chanceler , Chancelour or Cancelerus . He is said to have been raised by Henry Sidney, Philip Sidney's father . He appeared for the first time in 1550 as a participant in an expedition led by Roger Bodenham on board the barque Aucher .

From 1553 Chancellor was captain of the Edward Bonaventure as part of an expedition under Hugh Willoughby in the direction of the Northeast Passage . The expedition was supposed to open up new trade routes in the east. In early August 1553 the originally three ships were separated in a storm off Lofoten , and only the Bonaventura reached the planned stopover in Vardø . Although several Scots advised him to turn back there, Chancellor continued the voyage after he realized that Willoughby would no longer arrive with his ship. He followed the coast of the Kola Peninsula and entered the White Sea . There he met fishermen from whom he learned that he would be in the land of Muscovy ( Russia ). Chancellor anchored off Arkhangelsk and met with the local governor, along with some of the traders accompanying him. After receiving a letter from King Edward VI. informed the governor Tsar Ivan IV , who then invited them to Moscow , more than 2,400 km away . The Tsar gave several banquets in honor of his guests and finally handed them a letter to Edward VI, in which he agreed to the establishment of trade relations. In the summer of 1554 Chancellor returned to England. There had been no sign of life from Willoughby either; the following year it turned out that Willoughby had perished while wintering on the Kola Peninsula near the Warsina estuary . Queen Maria I , who was given to the late Edward VI. had in the meantime succeeded on the throne, had the trading company Muscovy Company founded on February 26, 1555 .

In the summer of 1555, Chancellor began another voyage to Russia on board the Edward Bonaventure on behalf of the Muscovy Company . The expedition reached Moscow via Arkhangelsk in October, where they negotiated details of the new business relationship with the Tsar and also tried to find out how to reach China from Russia. The following summer, Chancellor, accompanied by the Russian ambassador Osep Napea, set off for home and set sail on July 20, 1556 in Arkhangelsk. However, the Edward Bonaventure sank in the area of Aberdour Bay off the Scottish coast. While the Russian ambassador was able to save himself, Chancellor was killed.

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• William J. Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2003, p. 134. ISBN 978-1-57607-422-0
• John Knox Laughton: Chancellor, Richard. From: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 10, 1885-1900. ( online )