The Dukes (32 page)

The Duchess's suicide is by no means unlikely. Four days later parts of the aircraft were washed up, but her body was never found. A Captain Riley sighted the decomposed remains of an airwoman floating in the sea eleven miles off Gromer on 28th June; this was more than three months after her disappearance. He thought she was dressed in khaki flying kit, but since the family said she was not wearing khaki that day, it was concluded that the body could not have been that of the Duchess.
³¹

The country mourned a colourful extravagant character. She must have been one of the first women to motor alone along the roads of Bedfordshire, an outrageous display of non-comformity in the early part of this century, and she was quite capable of carrying out her own repairs to motor-car or aircraft. Her starchy husband, whose feet were still held fast in the nineteenth century, pretended not to notice his wife's antics. She was adventurous and courageous, and possessed the blissful resources of a sense of humour, so helpful in her dealings with the dour family into which she had married. Here is her quiet diary entry for 8th August 1929, when she and her co-pilot were offered some unappetising food in a dingy dismal room in Aleppo. "He broke open a roll and I saw him looking very closely at his plate, and to my horror discovered that all the rolls were swarming with black ants inside. However, though I cannot say I felt 'none the worse', the black ants did not actively disagree with our digestion, and I only suffered mentally."
³²

We have already seen that the 9th Duke of Bedford (1819-1891) took his own life in a fit of depression arising from ill-health. Briefly to trace his progress from enthusiastic childhood to miserable old age is to see how each Russell generation smothers and stifles the bright­ness and gaiety of the one that follows. The 9th Duke was born Hastings Russell, first son of Lord and Lady William Russell. He was called Hastings after the Marquess of Hastings, a relation on his mother's side. (He must not be confused with the other Hastings in the family, the pacifist and enigmatic 12th Duke, about whom we have already said much.) His grandfather was the 6th Duke, his uncle became the 7th Duke, and his cousin was the 8th.

Young Hastings was something of a prodigy - intelligent, enter­taining, as bright as a button. When he was seven years old, Lady Holland wrote: "As to Hastings he is without exception the most pleasing, promising child I ever saw, full of
sense
beside his acquire­ments, with all his father's courage, manliness and gentleness; not in the least spoiled, well-behaved and tractable." His father wrote proudly of him, "Lord Holland will not be able to say (as he does of the Russells) that he is like an otter, or that he never speaks, for he is handsome and jabbers like a magpie - he has all the quickness
& esprit
of his mother, & is quite a little prodigy ... he is master of little Lieven & thumps him till he cries." His mother was no less lyrical in describing the charms of her first-born: "he speaks French like d'Alembert & English like Johnson - neither lisps, stammers, nor mispronounces, is quick, gay, passionate, good-hearted, gentle, ingeni­ous, ruddy, bright-eyed, blue-eyed - fat, strong & healthy ... if Lord Chesterfield had had such a son he need not have written his book."

Hastings grew up on the continent, with his mother and two brothers, to whom he was very close, and where he was very popular. He became in his adolescence an unusually good shot. He was liked and admired. What, then, went wrong? His parents grew apart from each other and quarrelled frequently by letter. All their own failings were heaped on to the young man's shoulders in their arguments — each parent saw him as living proof of the shortcomings of the other. His mother, Lady William, wrote to her brother-in-law Lord John, when Hastings was twenty-seven years old: "You must repress his excessive arrogance . . . He has erroneous notions of being heir apparent and is overbearing to a degree quite painful . . . He is quite altered, exceedingly insolent . . . compromised both by ill-temper and covetousness." The young man received letters in this vein from his mother, which quite dismayed and bewildered him. He wrote to his father: "I want encouragement & not rebuffs. Without a little vanity [self-esteem] nothing would be done in this world and to be constantly told by one's own Mother that one is an Idiot, a coward & liar is very disheartening."
³³
One hundred years later, Mary Duchess of Bedford was writing of her pacifist son, the other Hastings : "I never thought I should be the mother of a coward."
³⁴

Discouraged and rejected by his mother, whom he adored, Has­tings's naturally affectionate and bubbling personality withered and withdrew. He was no longer talkative in adulthood, but uncomfort­ably shy and retiring. He settled into the Russell mould of an obstinate, self-protecting recluse, obsessed by health. On 14th January 1891 he shot himself through the heart in an access of bad temper, delirium or insanity (no one is sure which) in his house at 81 Eaton Square; he was suffering from pneumonia at the time. Hastings had married Lady Elizabeth Sackville-West, daughter of Lord de la Warr, and was father of both the 10th and .11 th Dukes of Bedford, and grandfather of Hastings 12th Duke. One of his daughters, Lady Ela Russell, who died in 1936, was apt to talk to herself. Guests who overstayed their welcome at her house would hear her exclaim, in a loud whisper, "I wish they'd go! I wish they'd go!"
³⁵

Two members of the family have been murdered, one judicially and the other for money, and both were called William Russell. Lord William Russell (1767-1840) will have to be called "old" Lord William to avoid confusion with the other Lord William who was father to Hastings the 9th Duke. He was a son of the 4th Duke, and both the 5th and 6th Dukes were his brothers. "Old" Lord William was murdered by his Swiss valet, Francois Courvoisier, on 5th May 1840. The murder caused a commotion among the aristocracy. Greville wrote : "The extraordinary murder of Lord Wm. Russell . . . has excited a prodigious interest, and frightened all London out of its wits . . . half the world go to sleep expecting to have their throats cut before morning."
³⁸
Greville doubted that the evidence was con­clusive, but Courvoisier was found guilty on 20th June and two days later confessed to the crime. At his execution on 6th July there was a crowd of over 20,000 people.

On 21 st July 1683 there took place the public execution at Lincoln's Inn Fields of William, Lord Russell, son of the 5th Earl of Bedford. His name was William Russell, but being the son of an earl and not of a duke (the dukedom was not created until later), he had no right to the appellation "Lord William". He did, however, inherit the courtesy title of "Lord Russell" on the death of his brother Francis (yet another hypochondriac) in 1678. Hence he is known to history as "William, Lord Russell" and must not be mistaken for the two "Lord William Russells" that we have so far considered. William, Lord Russell, was one of the most illustrious members of the family. He lived at a time when the Russells were closely involved in the political destiny of the country, and had been so for 150 years. He is commonly known to posterity as "the patriot", yet it was for high treason that he was executed.

William was a nonconformist in the Russell tradition. A fervent Protestant, he feared most that the King, Charles II, would fall under the influence of the "papists"; the King's brother and heir, the Duke of York, was openly suspected of being a Roman Catholic, which, to a Russell, meant that he had just stepped up from Hell. Something of a Puritan, Russell was also disgusted with the dissoluteness and extravagance of the Court. He proposed in the House of Commons that there should be a committee to consider "the sad and deplorable condition we are in, and the apprehensions we are under of popery and a standing army". He later proposed that the House should pass legislation to prevent a popish successor, and was the loudest supporter of the Exclusion Bill, which sought to disable the Duke of York from inheriting the crown. Lord Russell and the Duke of York were hence­forth locked in a bitter fight, which had perforce to end with the downfall of one of them.

Lord Russell was supported by his intelligent and beautiful wife Rachel, one of the most engaging and important of the Russell wives, and as anti-papist as her husband. It was one of the few Russell marriages which worked. She had been born Rachel Wriothesley, daughter of the 4th Earl of Southampton, and therefore grand­daughter of the Earl of Southampton who was Shakespeare's patron. (It is interesting to reflect that the present Duke of Bedford is des­cended in part from the friend to whom Shakespeare addressed most of his sonnets.) Rachel and her sisters were co-heirs to the South­ampton estates, and Rachel received as her portion the lucrative Bloomsbury property which she had brought into the Bedford family. It is often said that all Bedfords are ruled by their wives, and this wife was certainly the driving-force behind William, who had integrity rather than initiative.

William and Rachel Russell held political meetings at Southampton House in London (later called Bedford House and now demolished) at which the early Whigs devised their strategy. The Russells earned a reputation for political extremism, which prejudiced the public against them when the time came for William's integrity to be tested.

Some of his political allies were responsible for a plan to assassinate the King and his brother the Duke of York as they drove past the Rye House on their way from Newmarket to Westminster. This became known as the "Rye House Plot", and the name of William, Lord Russell, was implicated by an informer. As a result, he was arrested (on 26th June 1683) and sent to the Tower pending his trial for high treason, although according to Macaulay the plot had been carefully kept from him. The trial took place on 13th July at the Old Bailey. That same morning one of Russell's most intimate friends and a political ally, the Earl of Essex, was found dead in the Tower. The suspicion of suicide did nothing to help the tense, sus- spenseful atmosphere in court, at what has since become one of the most famous trials ever to be held at the Old Bailey. There were nine judges, and amongst the counsel for the Crown was the up-and- coming, notorious Jeffries.

Russell pleaded "not guilty", maintained that he had not been present at the meeting which hatched the Rye House Plot, and stood firm on the principle that it should sometimes be permissible to resist a sovereign for the greater good of the people. Wiffen describes the scene in the florid prose fashionable among historians of the nine­teenth century:

"With a serenity that excited the highest admiration, Lord Russell appeared at the bar of the Old Bailey. Every hardship that could be inflicted by angry and vindictive enemies, the steady patriot was doomed that day to bear. Even before he opened his lips in his defence, he was treated by Sawyer, the attorney-general, like a guilty felon. His request for the delay of a few hours, till his witnesses might arrive in town, though twice pleaded for by the chief justice, with a shew of compassion, was absolutely negatived. His right to the challenge of such jurors as possessed no freehold, was questioned, was impugned, was over-ruled. The death of his friend, Lord Essex . . . was tortured into an incontestable proof of guilt, and made ... to press upon him with its extraneous and cumulative weight. He at length requested pens and an amanuensis. To prevent his having the aid of counsel, Sawyer said he might employ a
servant.
'Any of your servants', said Pemberton, 'shall assist in writ­ing for you.'
'Two,'
said the generous Jeffries, 'he may have
two!'
'My wife,' said Lord Russell, the heart of the husband and the father rising to his tongue, 'my wife is here, my Lord, to do it!' The bystanders turned, and saw the daughter of the most virtuous minister whom Charles had ever possessed or disregarded, take her station at the table; and pity, shame and sorrow, and holy reverence, and thrilling indignation, touched by turns the soul of everyone who had a heart to feel for his country or himself, for wounded virtue or for violated freedom."
³⁷

Amongst hubbub and disorder and protest, William was found guilty and sentenced to death. The King later commuted this to simple beheading, a cleaner death more befitting a nobleman. The Duke of York wanted the execution to take place outside Lord Russell's own front door, but this sadistic vengeance was not granted.

In the few days before he was due to be executed, Russell, his family and friends, made frantic efforts to save him. Russell wrote to the King, and to the Duke of York; his wife Rachel herself delivered this letter to the Duchess of York. His father, the old Earl of Bedford, was distraught and desperate. He offered £100,000 for a pardon for his son. The Earl also wrote to the King, saying that he would be content with bread and water if only the life of his son were spared. It was all to no avail. When Lord Russell recognised there was no hope he wrote once more to the King pleading for consideration for his wife and children after his death. Rachel brought the three children, two girls and a little boy, to bid farewell to him at Newgate.

The execution took place on 21st July. It was a messy and unpleasant business, as the axeman did not despatch his victim at the first stroke. Evelyn describes the scene : "On the 21st was the Lord Russell decapitated in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the executioner giving him three butcherly strokes. The speech he made and the paper he gave the Sheriff declared his innocence and the nobleness of his family. And the piety and worthiness of this unhappy gentleman wrought effects of much pity, and various discourses on the plot."
³⁸
Russell's head was sewn back on his body, and the remains buried in the family vault at Chenies. Fortunately for his descendants, the King announced that he did not intend to profit by the forfeiture of Russell's personal estate.