RUSSELL (FAMILY). The great English Whig house of the Russells, earls and dukes of Bedford, rose under the favour of Henry VIII. Obsequious genealogists have traced their lineage from "Hugh de Rozel," alias "Hugh Bertrand, lord of le Rozel," a companion of the Conqueror, padding their fiction with the pedigree of certain Russells who are found holding Kingston Russell in Dorset as early as the reign of King John. But the first undoubted ancestor of the Bedford line is Henry Russell, a Weymouth merchant, returned as a burgess for that borough in four parliaments between 1425 and 1442. He may well have been the son of Stephen Russell, another Weymouth merchant, whose name is just before his in the list of those men of substance in Dorsetshire who, in 1434, under the act of parliament, were to be sworn not to maintain breakers of the peace. Stephen Russell, having served the office of bailiff of Weymouth, was returned as burgess to the parliament of 1395, and one William Russell was returned for King's Melcombe in 1340. Both Stephen and Henry were in the wine trade with Bordeaux, and in 1427 Henry Russell was deputy to the chief butler of England for the port of Melcombe. In 1442 a pardon under the privy seal significantly
describes Henry Russell of Weymouth, merchant, as alias Henry Gascoign, gentleman, and it is therefore probable that the ducal house of Bedford springs from a family of Gascon wine-merchants settled in a port of Dorsetshire, a county remarkable for the number of such French settlers.
Henry Russell of Weymouth made a firm footing upon the land by his marriage with Elizabeth Hering, one of the two daughters and co-heirs of John Hering of Chaldon Hering, a Dorsetshire squire of old family, heir of the Winterbournes of Winterbourne Clenston and of the Cernes of Draycot Cerne.
John Russell, eldest son of this match, born before 1432, and returned to parliament for Weymouth in 1450, had his seat at Berwick in Swyre, he and his son and heir, James Russell, being buried in the parish church of Swyre.