Another brother, Philip Livingston (1716-1778), was also prominent as a leader of the New York Whigs or Patriots.
It is at this period that Ranke believes Maximilian to have entertained the idea of a universal monarchy; but whatever hopes he may have had were shattered by the death of his son Philip and the rupture of the treaty of Blois.
Their first and most notable victim was Philip, the saintly metropolitan of Moscow, who was strangled for condemning the oprichina as an unchristian institution, and refusing to bless the tsar (1569).
Ivan had stopped at Tver, to murder St Philip, while on his way to destroy the second wealthiest city in his tsardom - Great Novgorod.
The same society which produced his infamous favourites also produced St Philip of Moscow, and by refusing to listen to St Philip Ivan sank below even the not very lofty moral standard of his own age.
