http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/TudorWomen3.htm wrote:
<<MARY HASTINGS (c.1552-1584+) was the youngest daughter of Francis Hastings, 2nd earl of Huntingdon (1514-June 20,1561) and Katherine Pole (d. September 23, 1576). In 1562, Mary's brother contracted a marriage for one of his sisters, either Lady Elizabeth or Lady Mary, to Lord Bulbeck, Edward de Vere. The agreement provided for a dowry of 1000 marks and a jointure of £1000. Edward de Vere was supposed to marry one of the sisters within a month of his eighteenth birthday. Before that date, however, the 16th earl of Oxford died and the new earl became the ward of William Cecil, Lord Bughley. He married Burghley's daughter, Ann Cecil, instead. Lady Mary, still unmarried and in her late twenties, may have been a maid of honor at the court of Queen Elizabeth in 1581 when Dr. Atkins, an English physician living in Muscovy, suggested her name to Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia in reponse to his interest in beginning negotiations for an English bride of royal blood. Mary qualified, being a Plantagenet descendent distantly related to the queen. It is uncertain when she was told of her role in the matter, but if she knew anything about Ivan, she cannot have been enthusiastic. He was at that time married to his seventh wife, a woman he planned to discard if the match with an English "princess" could be arranged. Ivan sent an ambassador, Theodor Andreevich Pissemsky, to England to negotiate the marriage and an alliance against the king of Poland. He was to report on the height, complexion, and measurements of the proposed bride and procure a portrait of her. Ivan was looking for a stately appearance, and would also require that Mary and all her attendants convert to the Orthodox religion. Queen Elizabeth, who wanted exclusive English access to the port of St. Nicholas, deliberately delayed committing herself with the ambassador, who arrived in England in September 1582, at first telling him that Mary Hastings had recently had smallpox and that a face-to-face meeting and a portrait would be intrusive. In May 1583, however, she could put him off no longer. There are two accounts of the meeting, one from the ambassador himself (translated) and one by Sir Jerome Horsey, who was not present. They differ widely in some areas but agree that the meeting was in the Lord Chancellor's garden. The Lord Chancellor was Sir Thomas Bromley, but while the ambassador's account says the garden was at Bromley's country house, Horsey places it in the gardens at York House, near Charing Cross in the city of Westminster. According to the ambassador, he was allowed only an interpreter, Dr. Roberts, and did not actually speak to Lady Mary. There was a party of ladies in the garden and Lady Mary was pointed out to him. She was walking at the head of the group, between the countess of Huntingdon (her brother's wife, born Katherine Dudley) and Lady Bromley (Elizabeth Fortescue). The two groups circled the garden several times, passing each other, so that the ambassador could get a good look. Horsey's version, in which the ambassador throws himself on the ground before the Tsar's betrothed and declares she has the face of an angel, seems unlikely. What the ambassador did say was, "It is enough." He reported to the Tsar that "The Princess of Hountinski, Mary Hantis is tall, slight, and white-skinned; she has blue eyes, fair hair, a straight nose, and her fingers are long and taper." Some translations make her eyes grey. The long-awaited portrait was completed in time for him to take it with him when he returned to Russia. He embarked on June 22, 1583 along with England's new ambassador to Russia, Sir Jerome Bowes. Bowes's instructions were to dissuade the Tsar on grounds of Mary's poor health, scarred complexion, and reluctance to leave her friends. Until Ivan's death on March 18, 1584, Mary (at least according to Horsey) had to put up with being called "the Empress of Muscovia." Mary herself died, still unwed, before 1589, by which date a bequest in her will was being contested. One source says her death came was shortly after a visit to her brother in Ireland but, so far, I've found no record that any of her brothers were ever sent to that country, let alone were serving there in the 1580s.>>
