It was at his house, full of all the wondrous, half-forbidden novelties of the west, that Alexius, after the death of his first consort, Martha, met Matvyeev's favourite pupil, the beautiful Natalia Naruishkina, whom he married on the 21st of January 1672.
Having at length received an intimation from London that the queen " could not acknowledge the independence of her own subjects, but that the trade of the emigrant farmers would be placed on the same footing as that of any other British settlement, upon their receiving a military force to exclude the interference 1 Commonly called the Republic of Natalia or Natal.
In 1806 he had married Natalia Khomutova, but they lived apart, and he had no children by her.
The Dutch claimed independence, and on the block-house at Durban hoisted the flag of the " Republic of Natalia."
Physically and mentally deficient, Ivan was the mere tool of the party in Muscovy who would have kept the children of the tsar Alexis, by his second consort Natalia Naruishkina, from the throne.
