Of the three ships – the Bona Speranza, Bona Confidentia and Edward Bonaventure – which set out from England in 1553 to seek a northern sea route to the East, only the last succeeded; the first two singularly failed to live up to their names. Edward VI had supplied the captains with a letter to be presented to rulers of the lands they were to encounter; it alluded to the function of merchants ‘to carry such good and profitable things, as are found in their countries, to remote regions and kingdomes and againe to bring from the same, such things at they find there commodious for their owne countries’. Although Edward was dead by the time a reply was received, it came from a totally unexpected quarter. Ivan IV, to whom Richard Chancellor, captain of the Edward Bonaventure, had delivered the letter, replied promising ‘free marte with all free liberties’. For the sober John Milton, writing over a century later, ‘the excessive love of Gain and Traffick [which] had animated the design’ detracted from what otherwise might have seemed ‘an enterprise almost heroick’.

The company which was formed to exploit that trade and which received its royal charter in 1555 was the Company of Merchant Adventurers, better known as the Muscovy Company. It operated as a joint-stock company, enjoying a monopoly of trade with Russia and acting as a body; the British merchants in Russia were not independent traders, but servants or employees of the Company, headed by its factors or agents (hence the name Factory).