The Muscovy Company was originally established under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England in the 1550s in order to create trade relations between England and Russia. One of the first joint stock companies created, the Russia Company had a monopoly on trade between the two countries until 1698.

The Company faced a variety of challenges during the end of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century, including competition with Dutch traders, the tumultuous and violent period of the Russian Time of Troubles (1598-1613), and the English Civil War and beheading of King Charles I in 1649.

The Company was banished from Russia after Charles I's death, and thereafter could not regain the trading stronghold it had before the English Civil War, though relations thawed slightly with the return of King Charles II to England in 1660. Despite its loss of the monopoly on trade in 1698, the company managed to continue trading with Russia until the 1917 Revolution.

[Information retrieved from Gledhill, Kevin, "The Russia Company and Russo-British Trade after 1600," in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 22, 4 (fall 2021): 885-94; and Anderson, M.S., "English Views of Russia in the 17th Century," in The Slavonic and East European Review 33, 80 (December 1954): 140-160.]