Anthony Jenkinson

They reached Bokhara after fighting off bandits in the desert, but found that though the routes to China and India were well known, they were impassable due to wars and banditry along the way.

The hostility of the local authorities made their stay precarious, and ultimately they were forced to retrace their steps, leaving Bokhara only shortly before the army of Samarkand arrived to besiege it.

On this journey, however, Jenkinson did manage to make a map of some of the Russian and Tatar territories, though he fell into the common mistake of assuming the Aral Sea was a gulf of the Caspian.

Jenkinson brought a young woman or child from Russia to England, who joined the court of Queen Elizabeth.

[7] From there, Jenkinson traveled across Russia, down the Caspian and into Persia, where he reached the court of Shah Tahmasp, then at Qazvin, and managed to obtain preferential trading deals on behalf of the Muscovy Company.

However, he found that the wider objective of breaking into the Indian Ocean trade was blocked by the Portuguese outpost at Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, and the sale of English goods was limited by competition from the Venetians operating via the much shorter route from the Mediterranean through Syria.

Also during this expedition, he made a great impression on Ivan the Terrible who granted a large extension of trading rights to the Muscovy Company.

In his travels into Central Asia and Persia, Jenkinson had a relationship of mutual advantage with the Tsar, buying commodities on the Tsar's behalf, but also benefiting from Ivan's letters of credence, which had considerable weight with local powers in the aftermath of Russia's triumphs at Kazan and Astrakhan.

Jenkinson's mission was to blockade Leith to prevent Lord Seton landing munitions for Mary, Queen of Scots sent from France.

[10] In October 1565 Jenkinson captured a ship belonging to Charles Wilson near Dunbar, frustrating a plan of the English diplomat in Scotland, Thomas Randolph.

Wilson was intending to sail to Fife, Scotland and pick up Agnes Keith, the pregnant wife of the rebel Scottish Earl of Moray, and take her to England.

Upon his arrival, in a letter sent back to his friend, Jenkinson mentioned the cruelty that had swept over the Russian territories due to Ivan.

Also, Jenkinson's travel accounts were used in Richard Hakluyt's compendium of geographic, trade and exploration material The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation.