DUKE OF MOSCOVY'S GENEALOGY a.d. 



1576, 

 who had not onely no conversation nor dealings with the 

 Moscovites, but were estranged also from all other nations 

 whatsoever : for leading a miserable, poore, barbarous, 

 and heathenish life, in savage maner among wilde beastes, 

 and in the desert and solitary woods, they were utterly 

 ignorant of God and destitute of civil magistrates. How- 

 beit this kind of government was peculiar unto them, 

 namely that all of one familie and society used a kinde of 

 reverence unto their elders more then to any other, whom 

 also, that their authoritie might be the greater, they 

 called by the name of kings, and (albeit one of their 

 families consisted of a 100. persons) they obeyed them in 

 al respects, and after their rude and barbarous maner did 

 them loyal service. At the very same time the Mosco- 

 vites had received the religion, and the Ecclesiasticall 

 ceremonies of the Greeke and Easterne Church, which 

 religion they published and dispersed throughout all pro- 

 vinces subject to their dominion, using their owne proper 

 letters and characters for the same purpose. Of all which 

 things the Livonians which very barbarously inhabited a 

 lande beeing environed with Russia, Lithuania, Samogitia, 

 Prussia, and the Balthic sea, never heard any report at all. 

 It is moreover to be noted that never at any time hereto- 

 fore either within the earth, or in other places of Livonia, 

 there have bene found any monuments at all of the anti- 

 quitie or letters of the Russes : which verily must needs 

 have come to passe, if the Moscovites, Russes, or any 

 other nations which use the foresaid particulars, had borne 

 rule and authority over the Livonians : yea there had 

 beene left some remainder and token, either of their 

 religion and divine worship, or of their lawes and cus- 

 tomes, or at the least of their maners, language, and 

 letters. This indeed we can in no wise deny, that even in 

 Livonia it selfe, there have bin in times past and at this 

 present are many and divers languages spoken by the 

 people. Howbeit no one language of them all hath any 

 affinity either with the Moscovian tongue, or with the 

 tongues of any other nations. But whereas the Mosco- 

 « 193 n 



