The Dukes (33 page)

Six years later, when William and Mary were on the throne, their first Parliament passed an Act to reverse the attainder of William, Lord Russell, who was now lauded as "the ornament of his age". Scenes in the House of Commons that day were emotional and intense. One Whig member broke down as soon as he started speaking. "I cannot name my Lord Russell without disorder," he said. "It is enough to name him. I am not able to say more." His condemnation was declared null and void, and an injunction was passed to cancel and take off the file all record of the trial. The Earl of Bedford was created 1st Duke of Bedford and Marquess of Tavistock, by way of apology for the loss of his son, whom Macaulay called "the most virtuous of all the martyrs of English liberty".

The patent of creation has an interesting preamble which shows just how great a national hero William Russell was in the years after the Stuart debacle. The preamble begins: "Since in human societies there are some men so far excelling others, that they may be truely said to embellish those very titles of Honour they wear, and to shed back upon them no less lustre, than others borrow from them", and continues in such laudatory terms that there is no doubt it is William Russell who is being honoured with the dukedom posthumously rather than his father the Earl of Bedford. Bedford's greatest honour, it said, was that

"from his loins issued the ornament of our Age, William the late Lord
russell,
whose superlative merits we think it not sufficient should be transmitted to all future generations upon the credit of Public Annals, but will have them inserted in these our Royal Letters Patents, as a monument consecrated to the most accom­plish'd and consummate virtue in the said family . . . Know ye therefore etc."
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William Russell suffered the unseemly death of a martyr, but his descendants benefited from his life, and his death, more than from any other member of the family after the 1st Earl, who founded the family fortunes. William brought into the family, by marriage, the estates of the Earl of Southampton in Bloomsbury, which still yield a handsome revenue; his son married another heiress, Elizabeth Howland of Streatham, who brought yet more estates to the Bedford purse. And if it were not for his death there would be no dukedom of Bedford at all. The three little children who were brought to their father in prison at the moment of his deepest disgrace grew up to be 2 nd Duke of Bedford, Duchess of Devonshire and Duchess of Rutland. And the radical meetings held in his London home laid the founda­tion for one of England's greatest political parties — the Whigs.

Mention should be made of another Russell distinguished by his nonconformity. Bertrand Russell, whose work in mathematics and logical positivism earned him a permanent place in the history of Western philosophy, was grandson of Lord John Russell and great- grandson of the 6th Duke of Bedford. He was therefore in direct line of descent from William, Lord Russell, whose quarrel with the establishment ended on the scaffold. The two men have in common their indomitable opposition to political deceit, and Bertrand Russell, like his ancestors, was more than once put in the pillory for his ruthless honesty, and twice imprisoned. In all his ninety-six years, he never once accepted the established view. (He carried, by the way, the title of Earl Russell, conferred on his grandfather, a title quite separate from the Earldom of Bedford, which is carried by the Duke.)

It is time to step backwards and examine the origins of the Russells, one of the greatest of Whig families. Wiffen, who had been commis­sioned by the 6th Duke to do precisely this, produced a family tree which showed descent from someone called Olaf the Sharp-eyed, King of Rerik, who lived at an unspecified date. One of his descend­ants was a certain Hugh de Rozel (in which we recognise the name Russell), who came with the Norman conquerors in 1066. Sad to say, all this is so much romantic invention.
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The truth is more prosaic.

The Russells were traders and merchants from Weymouth, dealing in wine. It was John Russell, born about 1486, who raised the family to the giddy heights of vast wealth and title by a combination of chance and opportunism. The first chance occurred when Archduke Philip landed in England, close to Weymouth, in 1506. He was met by Sir Thomas Trenchard, who knew Russell, and sought the latter's help as an interpreter. Russell could speak several European languages fluently. Thus he accompanied the Archduke to Windsor, and proved himself such a lively and useful companion that the King, Henry VII, employed him as a gentleman of the Privy Chamber. From that moment, it is a story of rapid advance politically, socially, and financially, as John rose in the esteem of his monarch, and of his successor, Henry VIII, and held one important post after another. He was diplomat, soldier, counsellor, and trusted friend of the King. Apart from Wolsey, there was, for a while, no more important or influential man in the land. He married Anne, daughter of Sir Guy Sapcote, who brought the property of Chenies to the Russells in 1526 (where it remained until 1956, and where all the Earls and Dukes are buried). He was created Baron Russell of Chenies in 1539.

At the dissolution of the monasteries, the most lavish redistribution of wealth and land since the Conquest, Henry VIII and his son Edward VI simply gave to Russell vast lands which had been confiscated from the monks, including the lands of Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, thirty manors in Cornwall, Somerset and Devon, formerly belonging to the abbey of Tavistock, several thousands of acres formerly belonging to the abbey of Thomey in Cambridgeshire, and, in 1552, the Covent Garden "lying in the parish of St Martin's- in-the-fields next Charing Cross, with seven acres called Long Acre, of the yearly value of six pounds six shillings and eightpence" (there is to this day a street which bears the name Long Acre). On these acquisitions are founded the colossal wealth and territorial power of the family, who were "gorged with ecclesiastical spoils".
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Covent Garden remained the personal property of the Russells for nearly 400 years.

When Henry VIII died, Russell was one of the executors, and in a position naturally to influence the boy king Edward VI. It was this monarch who conferred upon him the Earldom of Bedford in 1549. John Russell and his four immediate descendants were henceforth styled 'Lord Bedford'.

The 2nd Earl served Elizabeth I as his father had served the three previous monarchs, and was godfather to Sir Francis Drake. He was succeeded by his
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dissolute grandson, the 3rd Earl, who, with his spendthrift wife Lucy Harrington, proceeded to work his way through the inheritance with conscious abandon. On his death in 1627 the title passed to his cousin, the 4th Earl, who was the first Russell to make his home at Woburn. He fled there with his wife and ten children to escape one of the sporadic plagues which clutched the throat of London throughout the seventeenth century. He rescued the family fortunes and commissioned Inigo Jones to build in Covent Garden and Woburn; St Paul's Church in Covent Garden was one result of this collaboration. Then, having survived the plague, he succumbed to smallpox, and was succeeded by his son, the 5th Earl. This is the one who was father of William, Lord Russell, "the patriot", the political martyr beheaded in 1683, and who consequently became the 1st Duke of Bedford. He had married Lady Anne Carr, who had been born in the Tower of London, where her mother, the Countess of Somerset, was imprisoned for the murder by poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. Apparently, the truth was successfully kept from Anne Carr that her mother had been a wicked murderess. After she became Duchess of Bedford, and was told her parents' true history, she collapsed in a fit.
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The 2nd Duke was grandson of the first, and son of the unfortunate William, Lord Russell. He was called Wriothesley after his mother's family, the Earls of Southampton, and this ambitious mother, whom we know as Rachel, Lady Russell, arranged for him to marry a wealthy heiress from Streatham, Elizabeth Howland. It was an astute commercial venture, bringing another £100,000 to the Bedford coffers, and yet more estates. Wriothesley had little choice in the matter, which he had to accept as his destiny, trusting to his mother's wisdom. He was fourteen and a half at the time of the marriage, and his bride was thirteen. The wedding took place on 23rd May 1695 in a chapel of the Howland family mansion at Streatham. Immediately afterwards, the King conferred upon the bridegroom's family the new title Baron Howland of Streatham (in order to preserve the bride's name), a title which to this day is given by courtesy to the grandson of the Duke of Bedford; the present Lord Howland was born in 1962.

The Duke's mother, Rachel, was in a position to request royal favours, as her late husband was now a national hero, and his execution recognised to have been a miscarriage of justice. She squeezed every advantage from this circumstance.

The 3rd Duke, son of the 2nd, was also called Wriothesley. He was one of the most notorious gamblers of his age. Had he been given his way, he would have gambled with the entire Bloomsbury estate, but his wife's grandmother, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, intervened to prevent the disaster. As it was, the Duke managed to lose every available penny he could lay his hands on. In one evening he lost nearly a quarter of a million pounds to the infamous gambler Jansen, an occasion recorded by Pope in the line : "Or
when a duke to Jansen punts at White's."
Not for more than forty years was this sum surpassed as a gambling loss.
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The Duke was "so intellectually weak and easily imposed upon that he was the dupe of all the disreputable men about town and the laughing-stock of Society".
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He was succeeded by his brother as 4th Duke, who had also married a grand-daughter of the Duchess of Marlborough, so that the Duchess was grandmother to two Duchesses of Bedford. To complicate matters further, his daughter married the Duke of Marlborough of the next generation, great-grandson of the redoubtable Duchess.

The 4th Duke rescued the family fortunes, once again, from the ravages caused by his disastrous brother, and eventually was said to be the richest man in England.
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Certainly he was among the four wealthiest individuals in the land.* Unlike his humourless descend­ants, the 4th Duke had a reputation for mirth and light-heartedness, a reputation which did him little good. Pelham complained that with him it was "all jollity, boyishness and vanity", and Walpole has nothing but diminutive, hardly affectionate, epithets to describe him. He is "little Aeolus", "the paramount little Duke of Bedford", "this bustling little Duke", or simply the "merry little Duke".
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When he went into battle Walpole had this to say: "The Duke of Bedford goes in his little round person with his regiment; he now takes to the land, and says he is tired of being a pen and ink man."
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The celebrated satirist who wrote under the name of Junius was far less gentle in his mockery. He wrote a savage letter to Bedford which begins:

"My Lord,

You are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem from the public, that if, in the following lines a compliment or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery to your established character, and perhaps an insult to your understanding. You have nice feelings, my Lord, if we may judge from your resentments ...

"You are indeed a very considerable man. The highest rank; a splendid fortune; and a name, glorious till it was yours, were sufficient to have supported you with meaner abilities than I think you possess. . . . Consider the character of an independent virtuous

Duke of Bedford; imagine what he might be in this country, then reflect one moment upon what you are..

It is a splendid piece of vitriolic prose, but it would be folly to regard it as representing the truth. The "bustling little Duke" was not the monster that Junius paints; even Walpole, who was not excessively fond of him by any means, believed that he was an honest man.
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While we can recognise much of the Russell personality in Junius's portrait — obstinacy, a tendency to meanness, opportunism, and an inability to judge character, all traits which will surface again and and again in the next 150 years - the 4th Duke was neither an unprincipled nor a stupid man, and he did more than any other to make Woburn beautiful.

There are manifold other references to the fact that the Russells have long been held in high public esteem. "All the Russells are excellent", wrote Creevey, "and in my opinion there is nothing in the aristocracy to compare with this family." In spite of eccentricities, they have been one of the most intelligent families in all Europe.

One matter about which there can be no dispute is the extent of the Bedford fortune which, already a source of wonder in the eighteenth century, grew still greater in the nineteenth, even surviving the extravagances of the 5th and 6th Dukes. "The Duke of Bedford is every day making his colossal fortune greater and greater", mused the envious Greville.
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By 1883, the combined estate covered 86,335 acres, with land in Bedfordshire, Devon, Cambridgeshire, Northampton­shire, Dorset, Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire, Cornwall, and, of course, the huge adjacent chunks of Covent Garden and Bloomsbury in London.
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(There had in addition been great estates in Hampshire and Surrey.) It was one of the three or four largest family fortunes in England. So vast was it, that the management of the estates was a burden which successive Dukes deplored; it seems they paid for their riches by the sweat of long hours and constant worry. For example, the 7th Duke (brother to Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister) would rise at five o'clock every morning and spend the day grappling with the problems of his inheritance. He wrote that he considered himself "a well-paid agent with an income of £12,000 working for those who had mortgages and settlements on the estates". To his brother William he confided the terror he felt when confronted with his responsibilities: "You are little aware of the cares and worries and plagues I have had to go through in the course of the last year, and were it not that it would be wicked to complain of my lot, and not to be grateful for it, I should say that a man with fewer of these cares and responsibilities is a happier man ... If I could put you in my place, and take your income in place of my own, I am sure I should not be a less happy man."
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Not for the first time does a great landowner realise that one is better off with one acre than with one thousand. (His wife Duchess Anne, by the way, is credited with having invented the five o'clock tea.)
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