Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast. I'm your host, Heather Tesco.

This episode, I'm going to talk about the quest to find the Northeast Passage. Yes, you heard that right, the northeast passage.

In the mid-1550s, everyone was fascinated by the idea that you could, perhaps, get down to Asia by going north and east around the northern coast of Russia and down into the Pacific Ocean that way.

And thus came about the Muscovy Company, which must be one of the

most unknown of the different companies of merchants around, a sad little sibling to the East India

Company, for example. But the Muscovy Company had a heyday that lasted nearly 100 years, and it only

completely fell apart during the Russian Revolution.

So let's start at the beginning.

In the mid-1500s, everybody's going exploring, right?

The Spanish and the Portuguese are going crazy in South America.

The French are trading furs in Canada.

The Dutch have New York.

Every seafaring nation seems to be getting a piece of the newly

discovered lands in the Atlantic Ocean, right? Except the English who were lagging,

thanks to their religious turbulence and a king that, while he may or may not have been crazy,

was certainly more interested in his marital life and recapturing the glory of war with France

than with claiming land

in the Americas.

Oh, there were some early English explorers like John Cabot, and certainly Henry was aware

of what was going on in the world.

His father, Henry the 7th, had financed exploration with John Cabot, but England lagged

woefully behind the other countries.

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