THE AMBASSADOR, HIS WIFE AND AN ENGLISH MERCHANT, OR THE STORY OF HOW MARFA MATVEEVA PAYED LONDON A VISIT

The study aims to add to the discussion of how and to what extent the spouses of diplomats or ambassadresses were involved into their activities during the early modern period. Focusing on the life and fortunes of Marfa Feodorovna Matveeva, née Princess Baryatinskaya, the author highlighted that in spite of lacking evidence on her from her contemporary Russian sources, Marfa’s biography could be reconstructed drawing on the data from the digitized newspapers, primarily coming from the Netherlands. However, the main point of this study is to assess Marfa’s possible involvement into the diplomatic scandal of 1708, when her husband, a Petrine ambassador Andrei Matveev was arrested for failing to clear his debts before leaving Great Britain. The settlement of this so-called “Mattueof’s case” between Russia and Britain resulted in the “The Diplomatic Privileges Act” of 1708 and left the creditors, who initiated Matveev’s manhandling without any compensation. On the other hand, in the end, they were not prosecuted either. Therefore, the author sought to establish the identity of Matveev’s actual offender and presumed him to be Thomas Moreton, a lace-and silk-man from London. Drawing on the data from the newspapers, civil records, legal claims and wills from the National Archives (UK), the author suggested that Moreton, being a man of a proud disposition, could perceive Matveev’s non-payment of the debt not only as an act of violation of his civil rights, but also as a personal insult from a foreigner. At his turn Matveev, when ordering goods from Moreton most likely did so to satisfy his wife Marfa and not himself. Evidently, considering Moreton to be a person of a lower social ranking than himself, Matveev took the lace-man’s assault against him not only as an act of violation of his diplomatic immunity, but also as a deep personal insult.