Identifying
himself with the Almighty, Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible had claimed exemption
from the observance of God’s laws, and, in defiance of the fundamental
principles of the Greek church, of which he was the head, he married seven
wives. Believing that he might with equal impunity insult the moral sense of
other nations, he actually sought to add England’s queen, Elizabeth, to the
list of his spouses. And he was so far right in his estimate of his power to do
as he pleased, that the Virgin Queen, head of the English Church, while she
would not herself become one of his wives, consented to assist him, and selected
for his eighth consort Mary Hastings, the daughter or the Earl of Huntingdon. She
came near bringing about a marriage between the two, in face of the fact that
the two churches of which Ivan and she were respectively the heads ware agreed
in condemning polygamy as a heinous crime.
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| Ivan the Terrible |
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