the council Russell, on the 28th of June, acknowledged his presence at the meeting, but denied all knowledge of the proposed insurrection. He reserved his defence, however, until his trial. He would probably have saved his life but for the perjury of Lord Howard. The suicide of Essex, the news of which was brought into court during the trial, was quoted as additional evidence against him, as pointing to the certainty of Essex’s guilt. On July 19 he was tried at the Old Bailey, his wife assisting him in his defence. Evidence was given by an informer that, while at Shaftesbury’s hiding-place in Wapping, Russell had joined in the proposal to seize the king’s guard, a charge indignantly denied by him in his farewell paper, and that he was one of a committee of six appointed to prepare the scheme for an insurrection. Howard, too, expressly declared that Russell had urged the entering into communications with Argyll in Scotland. Howard’s perjury is clear from other witnesses, but the evidence was accepted. Russell spoke with spirit and dignity in his own defence, and, in especial, vehemently denied that he had ever been party to a design so wicked and so foolish as those of the murder of the king and of rebellion. It will be observed that the legality of the trial, in so far as the jurors were not properly qualified and the law of treason was shamefully strained, was denied in the act of 1 William & Mary which annulled the attainder. Hallam maintains that the only overt act of treason proved against Russell was his concurrence in the project of a rising at Taunton, which he denied, and which, Ramsay being the only witness, was not sufficient to warrant a conviction.
Russell was sentenced to die. Many attempts were made to save his life. The old earl of Bedford offered £50,000 or £100,000, and Monmouth, Legge, Lady Ranelagh, and Rochester added their intercessions. Russell himself, in petitions to Charles and James, offered to live abroad if his life were spared, and never again to meddle in the affairs of England. He refused, however, to yield to the influence of Burnet and Tillotson, who endeavoured to make him grant the unlawfulness of resistance, although it is more than probable that compliance in this would have saved his life. He drew up, with Burnet’s assistance, a paper containing his apology, and he Wrote to the king a letter, to be delivered after his death, in which he asked Charles’s pardon for any wrong he had done him. A suggestion of escape from Lord Cavendish he refused. He behaved with his usual quiet cheerfulness during his stay in the Tower, spending his last day on earth as he had intended to spend the following Sunday if he had reached it. He received the sacrament from Tillotson, and Burnet twice preached to him. Having supped with his wife, the parting from whom was his only great trial, he slept peacefully, and spent the last morning in devotion with Burnet. He went to the place of execution in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with perfect calmness, which was preserved to the last. He died on the 21st of July 1683, in the forty-fourth year of his age. His attainder was reversed in 1689, and his son Wriothesley (1680–1711) succeeded his grandfather as 2nd duke of Bedford in 1700.
A true and moderate summing-up of his character will be found in his Life, by Lord John Russell (1820). (O. A.)
RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN, CHARLES RUSSELL, Baron (1832–1900), lord chief justice of England, was born at Newry, county Down, on the 10th of November 1832. He was the elder son of Arthur Russell, a Roman Catholic gentleman, who was engaged in commerce and brewing in Newry. Educated first at Belfast, afterwards in Newry, and finally at St Vincent’s College, Castleknock, Dublin, in 1849, he was articled to a firm of solicitors in Newry. In 1854 he was admitted, and began to practise his profession. Disturbances between Roman Catholics and Orangemen were at that time prevalent in this part of Ireland, and in the legal proceedings which ensued at quarter and petty sessions young Russell distinguished
himself as a bold and skilful advocate in the cause of his co-religionists. The political zeal which always formed an important element in Russell’s character happily harmonized with these professional duties. After practising, however, for two years, he determined to seek a wider field for his abilities, and to become a barrister in England. It was a wise ambition,
early conceived by young Russell, stimulated by his present
success, and encouraged by the counsel of at least one competent
adviser, judge Jones, who was much impressed by Russell’s
ability in the conduct of a case at the Newry quarter sessions.
He believed, moreover, that to succeed at the Irish bar he would
have (to use his own phrase) to “swallow his convictions.”
With this end in view Russell, whilst still practising and residing
in Belfast, became a student of Trinity College, Dublin. He
matriculated there in 1855, and passed examinations from
time to time, but did not wait to become a graduate. In 1856
he went to London and became a student of Lincoln’s Inn.
In 1858 he married, in Belfast, Ellen, the eldest daughter of
Dr Mulholland, a physician of distinction in that city. In
1859 he was called to the bar, after gaining by examination
a first-class honour certificate, and joined the Northern Circuit.
Except some valuable introductions to friends in London and
Liverpool, which his uncle, the president of Maynooth, had
given to him, Russell brought to the work of his profession no
external aids. He had to rely upon himself; But the equipment
was sufficient. A well-built frame; a strong, striking
face, with broad forehead, keen grey eyes, and a full and sensitive
mouth; a voice which, though not musical, was rich, and
responded well to strong emotions, Whether of indignation,
or scorn, or pity; an amazing power of concentrating thought;
an intellectual grasp, promptly seizing the real points of the
most entangled case, and rejecting all that was secondary, or
petty, or irrelevant; a faculty of lucid and forcible expression,
which, without literary ornateness or grace of style, could on
fit occasions rise to impassioned eloquence—all these things
Russell had. But beyond and above all these was his immense
personality, an embodiment of energetic will which riveted
attention, dominated his audience, and bore down opposition.
His successful advocacy in the Colin Campbell divorce case in
1886, and his famous cross-examination of hostile witnesses
and still more famous speech before the Parnell Commission in
1888, afforded perhaps the best examples of Russell’s characteristic
powers. He was not a learned lawyer in the sense in which
Willes, or Mellish, or Blackburn were learned lawyers; he did
not possess the fine legal acumen of his great contemporary,
Herschell; but he had a sufficient apprehension of legal principles.
He handled a point of law with telling directness and
force. His argument as the leading counsel for Great Britain
in the Bering Sea Arbitration in 1893, and his address at Saratoga
Springs on International Law and International Arbitration in
August 1896, were expositions of law in its practical application
to matters of state which the most learned jurist must admire
for their thoroughness and perspicuity.
Russell’s success, after he joined the Northern Circuit, did not, of course, come to him at once. For some time his work in court was principally in the Court of Passage at Liverpool, which he regularly attended from London. He wrote a book on its procedure, which was published in 1862. This ancient local court, possessing both common law and Admiralty jurisdiction, had as its presiding judge—then styled “assessor”—an eminent leader of the Northern Circuit, Mr Edward James. Substantial commercial cases were tried there, and of these Russell soon had a goodly portion. Steadily, and, for a barrister, speedily, Russell’s fortune grew. His biographer, Mr Barry O’Brien, has given, in The Life of Lord Russell of Killowen (1901), an account of Russell’s fees, which shows that they were, in round figures: in 1859, £117; in 1862, £1016; in 1866, £2367; and in 1870, £4230. At the beginning of this period Russell wrote occasionally for the newspapers, and especially for the Irish press. From early boyhood onwards he maintained a keen interest in politics, and pre-eminently in the public affairs of Ireland. In 1859 he published a pamphlet entitled The Catholic in the Workhouse, and an article from his pen is to be found in The Dublin Review, vol. xlviii. p. 497. His legal work was not wholly confined to the north of England. He was employed at the Guildhall and elsewhere by solicitors of position in the City of London. He was one of the counsel engaged in
