The Regent, disconcerted by the submission of all the parties in the Diet to the accession of the Swedish prince, managed to avert a possible outbreak of hostilities between the countries which had so nearly been allied by compacting for a truce of fifteen years.
While dealing with the precarious foreign affairs of the country and superintending the domestic administration, Godounov had to fight hard to maintain his own position. Thedor had inherited from his father, if nothing else, a weakness for all that appertained to religion, and the greater part of his existence alternated between devotional exercises and the safe amusement of watching bear-fights. Over a mind so constituted, a priest of high position would naturally have a good chance of obtaining a dominating influence, and the Metropolitan was quite willing to play the part of another Silvestr. The only obstacle to this ambition was the Tzar’s brother-in-law, who brooked no competitor for the tzarskie favour. Hence between Regent and Vladuika lurked an animosity which drove the latter into the arms of the Shouyskie party. Thus a powerful league of the clergy, boyarin, and merchant interests (the latter were hand in glove with the Shouyskie) was formed in Moskva against the Godounov rule. Boris derived his power in the first place from his connection with the Tzar through the Tzaritza Irena, and it was the aim of the malcontents to break this important link on the ground of the latter’s alleged sterility, and to wed Thedor instead to a Mstislavskie princess. The Metropolitan favoured the scheme--Ivan the Terrible had evidently stretched the consciences of his clergy on the marriage question beyond retraction--but the vigilance of the Regent dragged it prematurely to light. None of the conspirators were molested for their share in the intrigue, but the Mstislavskie princess was compelled to become an abiding inmate of a convent. The real or alleged discovery of a plot against the throne, presumably, since some of the Nagoi family were implicated, in favour of the young Dimitri, gave an excuse for the long-deferred vengeance of Godounov. Ivan Shouyskie, the defender of Pskov, was dispatched to Bielozero, Andrei Shouyskie to Kargopol; both, it was said, were afterwards strangled in prison. Thedor Nagoi and six of his companions were publicly executed, an example meant, no doubt, to strike terror into the disaffected at Ouglitch. Batches of the Mstislavskie were forced into religious houses, and many other boyarins were exiled to various parts of the gosoudarstvo--some to Sibiria, the first detachment of a long procession of political offenders which has never since ceased to wend its way from Russia into the “land of the long nights.” The Metropolitan was deposed and his place filled by Iov, Archbishop of Rostov.