Then, as his friendship warmed, he proposed that they should sign a reciprocal engagement to furnish each other with an asylum in the event of the rebellion of their subjects.
Elizabeth declined the asylum he kindly offered her, "finding, by the grace of God, no dangers of the sort in her kingdom." Then he did her the honor to offer an alliance of a different kind.

He proposed that she should send him her cousin Lady Mary Hastings to take the place left vacant by his eighth wife--to become his Tsaritsa.

The proposition was considered, but when the English maiden heard about his brutalities and about his seven wives, so terrified was she that she refused to leave England, and the affair had to be abandoned.
Elizabeth's rejection of his proposals, and also of his plan for an alliance offensive and defensive against Poland and Sweden, so infuriated Ivan that he confiscated the goods of the English merchants, and this friendship was temporarily ruptured.

But amicable relations were soon restored between Elizabeth and her barbarian admirer.

If she had heard of his awful vengeance in 1571, she had also heard of the massacre of St.Bartholomew in Paris in 1572! Russia had now opened diplomatic relations with the Western kingdoms.
The foreign ambassadors were received with great pomp in a sumptuous hall hung with tapestries and blazing with gold and silver.