BASIL II., called TEMNY ("the BLIND") (1415-62), son of the preceding, succeeded his father as grand-duke of Moscow in 1425. In 1430 Basil was seized by his uncle, Yury of Halicz, and sent a prisoner to Kostroma, but Basil was reinstated with the con currence of the khan. On the death of Yury, Basil was at constant variance with Yury's children, one of whom (Basil) he had blinded ; but in 1445 the grand-duke fell into the hands of blind Basil's brother, Shemyak, and was himself deprived of his sight and banished . The clergy and people, however, reinstated him, put Shemyak to flight, and seized Halicz, his patrimony. During the remainder of Basil II.'s reign he slowly and unobtrusively added district of ter district to the grand-duchy of Muscovy, so that in time, only the republics of Novgorod and Pskov and the principalities of Tver and Vereya remained independent of Mos cow. All this time the realm was overrun continually by the Tatars and Lithuanians, and suffered severely from their depredations. Basil was for a short time a prisoner of the Tatar ruler of Kazan in 1443, and in 1451 the Tatars appeared before Moscow, only to be repulsed. His reign saw the foundation of the Solovetsk mon astery and the rise of the khanate of the Crimea. In 1448 the north Russian Church became virtually independent of the patriarchal see of Constantinople by adopting the practice of selecting its metropolitan from among native priests and prelates exclusively.