In 1581, Dr Robert Jacobi, an English doctor living in Moscow, suggested that Hastings would make a suitable eighth wife for the Russian tsar, Ivan the Terrible.

Pisemsky answered that she'd have her own court if she converted to Orthodoxy and that any children they had would be treated as holding equal sovereign status as Ivan's son Fyodor.

The Ambassador, attended with divers other noblemen and others, was brought before her Ladyship; cast down his countenance; fell prostrate to her feet, rose, ran back from her, his face still towards her, she and the rest admiring at his manner.

[7] A month after Pisemsky had left, the Queen sent Jerome Bowes as the English ambassador to Russia to persuade them that Hastings had ill-health and could not marry the Tsar.

[4] Reportedly when Pisemsky showed the portrait of Hastings, whom he referred to as the "Princess of Hountinski",[7] to the Tsar, he stated "She has but lately had smallpox and our painter has been obliged to depict her with a red face, deeply pitted".