JOHN RUSSELL, son and heir of James, on the accession of Henry VIII. advanced rapidly serving the crown as soldier and as diplomatic agent. He fought well at Therouanne, saw the Field of the Cloth of Gold and the French disaster at Pavia, lost an eye by an arrow at Morlaix. In 1523 he was knight-marshal of the king's household. In 1526 he married a rich widow, Anne, daughter and co-heir of Sir Guy Sapcotes by the co-heir of Sir Guy Wolston, a match which brought to the Russells the Buck inghamshire estate of Chenies, in whose chapel many generations of them lie buried. His peerage as Lord Russell of Chenies dated from 1539, and in the same year he had the Garter. Having held many high offices, he was named by Henry VIII. as one of his executors. At the crowning of Edward VI. he was lord high steward, and after his defeat of the western rebels was raised, in 155o, to the earldom of Bedford. Queen Mary, like her brother, made him lord privy seal. He died in London in 1555, leaving to his son a vast estate of church lands. In the west he had the abbey lands of Tavistock, which give a marquess's title to his descendants. In Cambridgeshire he had the abbatial estate of Thorney, in Bedfordshire the Cistercian house of Woburn, now the chief seat of the Russells. In London he had Covent Garden with the "Long Acre." He left an only son, FRANCIS, second earl of Bedford, K.G. (c. 1527-1585), who, being concerned in Wyatt's plot, escaped to the Continent and joined those exiles at Geneva whose religious sympathies he shared. He returned in 1557, and was employed by Queen Mary before her death. Under Queen Elizabeth he governed Berwick, and was lord-lieutenant of the northern counties.
Three of his four sons died before him, the third, killed in a border fray, being father of Edward, third earl of Bedford, who died without issue in 1627. The fourth son, William, created Lord Russell of Thornhaugh in 1603, was a soldier who fought fiercely before Zutphen beside his friend Sir Philip Sidney, whom he succeeded as governor of Flushing, and was from 1594 to 1597 lord-deputy of Ireland. He died in 1613, leaving an only son, FRANCIS, who in 1627 succeeded his cousin as fourth earl of Bedford. This earl built the square of Covent Garden, and headed the "undertakers" who began the scheme for draining the great Fen Level. He opposed the king in the House of Lords, but might have played a part as mediator between the sovereign and the popular party who accepted his leadership had he not died suddenly of the smallpox in 1641 on the day of the king's assent to the bill for Strafford's attainder. WILLIAM, the eldest surviving son, succeeded as fifth earl, Edward, the youngest son, being father of Edward Russell (1653-1727), ad miral of the fleet, who, having held the chief command in the victory of La Hogue, was created in 1697 earl of Orford. The
fifth earl of Bedford, after fighting for the parliament at Edgehill and for the king at Newbury, surrendered to Essex and occupied himself with completing drainage of the Bedford Level. He carried St. Edward's staff at the crowning of Charles II., but quitted political life after the execution of his son, Lord Russell, in 1683. In 1694 he was created duke of Bedford and marquess of Tavistock, titles to which his grandson, Wrothesley Russell, succeeded in 1700.
The "patriot" Lord Russell had added to the family estates by his marriage with Rachel, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Wrothesley, the fourth earl of Southampton, from whom she finally inherited the earl's property in Bloomsbury, with South ampton House, afterwards called Bedford House. Her son, the second duke of Bedford, married the daughter of a rich citizen, John Howland of Streatham, a match strangely commemorated by the barony of Howland of Streatham, created for the bride groom's grandfather, the first duke, in 1695. The third duke, another WROTHESLEY RUSSELL (1 708-1732 ), died without issue, his brother JOHN (1710-1771) succeeding him. This fourth duke, opposing Sir Robert Walpole, became, by reason of his rank and territorial importance, a recognized leader of the Whigs. In the duke of Devonshire's administration he was lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and he served as lord high constable at the coronation in 1760.
His son Francis, styled marquess of Tavistock, was killed in 1767 by a fall in the hunting field, and Lord Tavistock's son FRANCIS (1765-1802) became the fifth duke. This was the peer whom Burke, smarting from a criticism of his own pension, assailed as "the Leviathan of the creatures of the crown," en riched by grants that "outraged economy and even staggered credibility." He pulled down Bedford House, built by Inigo Jones, Russell Square and Tavistock Square rising on the site of its gardens and courts. Dying unmarried, he was succeeded by his brother JOHN, the sixth duke (1766-1839), whose third son was the statesman created, in 1861, Earl Russell of Kingston Russell, better known as Lord John Russell. Lord Odo Russell, a nephew of "Lord John," and ambassador at Berlin from 1871 to his death in 1884, was created Lord Ampthill in 1881. HERBRAND ARTHUR RUSSELL (b. 1858), the eleventh duke and fifteenth earl, succeeded an elder brother in 1893. (0. B.)