ABSTRACT
Settled relations between England and Russia enabled many Englishmen to travel to, and report on, Russia. Some important and relatively full accounts of Russian life of the period survive from the pens of English ambassadors, envoys and merchants. In 1659, when the Russian embassy was returning from Florence via the Swiss Alps, the treasury was transported on oxen, since the oxen could easily fall into an abyss. The literary character of reports may be explained by the fact that it was impossible, given the distance, for a Russian ambassador to send regular despatches home, and might also be rooted in a different concept of what constituted a literary work in medieval Russia. Another important difference between Russian and Western European diplomatic a system was that the concept of a residential ambassador developed in Russia later than in Western Europe.
