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 |
