Chelyadnins
The Chelyadnin family were an old and influential Russian boyar family who served the grand princes of Moscow in high and influential positions. They were descended from Ratsha, court servant to Prince Vsevolod II of Kiev.
History
Ancestry
The Chelyadnins were descended from Ratsha, court servant to Prince Vsevolod II of Kiev and the oppressive manager of serfs in Kiev. Several other Russian noble families are also descended from Ratsha, including the Pushkin, Aminoff, Buturlin, Kuritsyn, Kamensky families.Ratsha's great-grandson Gavrila Aleksich was a boyar under the famed Alexander Nevsky and played an important role in the Battle of Neva. Gavrila Aleksich's son Akinf Gavrilovich the Great was a boyar under two Grand Princes of Vladimir, Andrey of Gorodets and Mikhail of Tver. The founder of the Chelyadnin family was Mikhail Andreevich Chelyadnya, son of Akinf and seventh-generation descendant of Ratsha.
Rise to power
Mikhail Andreevich Chelyadnya's son, Ivan Mikhailovich Chelyadnin, married Princess Elena Yuryevna Patrikeeva, grand daughter of Grand Prince Vasily I. In the 14th, 15th and early 16th centuries, the Chelyadnins often occupied one of the highest positions at court. They often became boyars, bypassing the stage of okolnichiy. The family went extinct in the 16th century when Tsar Ivan the Terrible executed Ivan Petrovich Fedorov-Chelyadnin, an influential boyar belonging to the Daydov-Khromy branch of the Chelyadnin family. Subsequently, the oprichniks under the tsar looted and thoroughly destroyed all the vast Chelyadnin estates, and all close relatives and servants of Ivan Petrovich were brutally killed.Notable Chelyadnins
- Boyar Andrey Fyodorovich Chelyadnin , the first of Chelyadnins who gained the title of konyushy, governor of Novgorod. He was the commander-in-chief during the Russo-Swedish War (1495–1497). In 1500, he defeated the Lithuanians at the Lovat River and captured the city of Toropets.
- Boyar Ivan Andreyevich Chelyadnin, konyushy at the court of Vasili III of Russia, voyevoda. He took part in a number of battles with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, after the defeat of Russia at the Battle of Orsha he was taken into captivity and died in a prison in Vilnius.
- Boyar Ivan Petrovich Fedorov-Chelyadnin, became boyar in 1550, de facto head of the Zemsky Sobor and held the rank of konyushy. He was an influential and wealthy boyar known for his honesty. Tsar Ivan the Terrible was told that the elderly boyar had supposedly intended to overthrow him from the throne and become tsar himself. Alexander Guagnini reported that Ivan ordered him to put on royal clothes, put him on the throne, bowed, and then stabbed him in the heart, after which the Oprichniks attacked and stabbed the body of Fedorov-Chelyadnin. After his death, all the vast Chelyadnin estates were looted and destroyed, and all close relatives and servants of Ivan Petrovich were killed.