Distant friends draw nigh: The Realms of Great Britain AND Lithuania S.C. ROWELL Con ten ts General Introduction | S Royal Connections | 7 Military Contacts: From Foes to Friends, Knights to NATO | 1 5 Trade and Agriculture | 21 Religious Exchange and Asylum | 25 Migration | 3 1 Culture I 33 List of Illustrations | 36 1. Unit rakis Manor Eitute, Trakai, Lithuania. Restoration work sponsored in part by the Sainshurу Foundation Photograph, courtesy: The British hmbassv at Vilnius ELIZABETH II, BY THE GRACE OE Goi) OE THE UNITED KINGDOM OI (I RE AT BRITAIN and N orthern Ireland and oe H er other Realms and T erritories Q u i i n, H ead oe the C ommonwealth, D i lender of ehe: Елеен General Introduction D u rin g one of the hottest summers on record in Europe Lithuanian work­ men were busy carrying out reconstruction work on the main palace of the Parliament or Seimas ot the Lithuanian Republic, partly in anticipation of a State Visit to be paid to the Republic in October 2006 by Her Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, accompanied by her husband, His Royal High­ ness The Duke of Edinburgh. Queen Elizabeth is the first reigning British monarch to visit Lithuania, although several of her own children and ances­ tors have been to Vilnius in various capacities over the ages. Her Majesty’s visit sets the seal on the restoration of full diplomatic ties between Lithuania and the Court of St James in 1991. Since that date British artists and schol­ ars, scientists and soldiers, diplomats and tradesmen have been active in re­ establishing relationships between the British Isles and Lithuania, which thrived for centuries before the tragedies unleashed on Europe in 1939. The Lithuanian Embassy in London, which was never forced to close down, as happened in some western countries, has taken on a new lease of life, serving the largest population of Lithuanians Great Britain has ever known, and propagating closer links between these two ancient nations, who stand now side by side as members ot the European Union and the North Atlan­ tic Treaty Organization [NATO]. Indeed, direct and indirect connections between the various realms of Great Britain (England, Scotland and the United Kingdom) and the Baltic, especially Lithuania (both the Grand Duchy and modern Republic thereof), can be said to stretch back tor more than a millennium. In the late ninth- century King Alfred ot England included an account of the South-western Baltic lands, as related to him by his Jute servant, Wulfstan, in his transla­ tion ot Orosius’ Historia adversus pavanos. The king expected his subjects to be able to read his updated Anglo-Saxon version of this classical Christian universal history in their own language. More than three hundred years later another Englishman, Bishop Bartholomew of Magdeburg (in Germany) gave a classic description of Lithuania in his encyclopaedia, De Rerum Proprietatibus [On the Properties of Things], which was translated into En­ glish by John Treviso in the fourteenth century. This formed the basis of European accounts of the country for centuries, noting how Lithuania is full of forests and marshes, rich in natural products such as timber and furs, wax and honey. It could be visited best in winter, when “waters and rvuers ben yfrore [frozen)”. Roads, it must be confessed, have improved a S little since 1250, and tourists come in considerable num­ pian, Sir John Gielgud claimed descent from the bers throughout the year. Lithuanian Gelgaudas gentry family, which fought for Britons have been visiting Lithuania, and Lithuanians, Lithuanian and Polish freedom from the Russian yoke England since the fourteenth century. Various individuals (with some support from Britain) in 1831 and 1863—1864. and communities from England and Scotland too have The British television celebrity, Mel Giedroyć, is a lived in Lithuania since the sixteenth century. In the 1680s scion of the distinguished Lithuanian noble family, which an English merchant company was invited to build a gave the Grand Duchy many administrators of Church port for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at Šventoji, and and State. Leading members of the British Jewish Com­ in the early nineteenth century British agricultural munity are proud of their Litvak origins in the Grand methods were adopted by Lithuanian landowners seek­ Duchy of Lithuania. Those tor whom ball games have ing to increase yields on their estates. English fashions replaced other forms of organized religion will be aware in architecture and park building were particularly popu­ that the Scottish Association Football Club, Heart of lar in the nineteenth century. Sefton Park in Liverpool Midlothian is now owned by a Lithuanian company, and the gardens of the Tyszkiewicz familv’s Užutrakis Lithuanians such as Tomas Danilevičius have played in Manor Estate outside the historic town of Trakai were the English League, and the London team, Chelsea, is designed bv the same landscape gardener, Eranęois owned currently by a Russian businessman, Roman Edouard Andre. Today British scientists are working w ith Abramovich, whose family hails from the small their Lithuanian colleagues at the Ignalina nuclear power Lithuanian town of Tauragė. plant. The story is by no means one-sided. While mi­ In sum contacts between Great Britain and Lithuania gration between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries have developed over many centuries anti are growing was largely from Great Britain to Lithuania, since 1795, ever stronger today. These interests on both sides are and especially since 1991, the movement has been more often of secondary importance to the parties concerned, intense in the opposite direction. but they have been and are shared at the highest levels. Lithuanians have contributed much to British cul­ In the following sketch of the more prominent exchanges ture and society. In more recent times the Lithuanian between Britons and Lithuanians we will concentrate on pilot Romas Marcinkus joined the Royal Air Force (as certain interlocking topics: links with the Royal Family, 89580 Flight Lieutenant Marcinkus), defended Great military contacts, religious and political migration, trade Britain from enemy attack during the Second World War and agriculture, and culture. and, after being captured later by German forces, took part in the unsuccessful escape of Allied prisoners of war from Stalag Luft III in March 1944, which has be­ come enshrined in British folk memory by John Sturges’ 1963 film, The Great Escape. The renowned English thes­ 6 Connections In 1390 King Richard II, whose wife, Queen Anne, was herself the great grand daughter of a Lithuanian prin­ cess, granted English merchants a charter for their fac­ tory in Gdańsk, with the intention of trading further with the newly converted Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1392 he issued a safe conduct for Henry Bolingbroke (who was to rule England as King Henry IV between 1399 and 1413) addressed to the supreme duke of Lithuania, Jogaila (then ruling Poland too as king Władysław II), requesting assistance for the earl, who was planning to travel via Jogaila’s realms to Jerusalem. This came in the same year as Bolingbroke travelled to Prussia for the second time. In 1390 he had joined in the attack on Vilnius made by the Teutonic Order and Prince Vytautas of Lithuania, during which, one English chronicler claims, he killed there the brother of the king of Poland. During the unsuccessful but destructive siege the brother 3. Kiny Henry IV (1 3 9 9 —1413), kiny o f of King Jogaila, Prince Karigaila, did indeed perish. England, and crusader in Lithuania (13 90) In July 1419 the envoy of King Henry V, the English Carmelite provincial, Thomas de Balden, took part in negotiating a peace between Poland, Lithuania and the Teutonic Knights at Bandzyn. The next year Henry sent his Burgundian envoy Ghillebert de Lannoy to enlist the support of Grand Duke Vytautas for a crusade against the Turk. De Lannoy has left one of the most detailed descriptions we have of mediaeval Vilnius and Trakai, the major political and commercial centres of Lithuania Proper. In 1424 John Norton, a doctor of laws, was sent to discover Vytautas’ views of Church reform, as well as to intervene in a trade dispute on behalf of Eng­ lish merchants in Gdansk. Later Henry Vi’s government would senil letters to Vytautas pledging support for Lithuania against Prussia during the Council of Basle. Lithuania was already being courted by English monarchs as a possible ally in military, commercial and religious policy. Lithuanian rulers sometimes had more pressing problems to deal with. 7 In 1449—1450, as the English lost Rouen and were defeated by the French at Formigny and difficulties arose with trade exports to East-Central Eu­ rope, King-Grand Duke Casimir of Poland and Lithuania ( 1440/1447—1492), along with the king of Portugal, England’s constant ally, Afonso V, were considered as candidates to be admitted to the Most Noble Order of the Garter (August 4 1450). According to the Order’s statutes a candidate had to take up his stall in person within a year of his election. However, there was an exception for “Strangers the which may not well come in their proper 5. Gilt badge or merchant's tag persons, that they might be stalled by Attorneys” , if they “be letted and bearing the Arms o f England disturbed by great affairs” . Thus in 1453 John Newport, steward of the Isle and the Motto o f the Most of Wight and member of parliament was sent with the order’s insignia and Noble Order o f the Garter robes to Casimir, who at that time was in Lithuania and recovering from an attack on his life. In 1454, as relations with the Teutonic Order deteriorated into a state of war, the Polish nobleman, Andrzej Teczyński was instructed to visit Henry VI and two years later the insignia and robes were sent again.