8o BEDFORD of his grandson and h. ap., Wriothesley Russell, with the da. and h. of John Rowland, he was cr. BARON HOWLAND OF STREATHAM, Surrey, with rem. to his (said) grandson, and the heirs male of his body, begotten on the body of Elizabeth Howland. He m., 1 1 July 1637, at St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, London, Anne, da. and sole h. of Robert (Carr), Earl of Somerset, by Frances, the divorced Countess of Essex, da. of Thomas (Howard), Earl of Suffolk.. She, who was b. 9, and bap. at St. Martin's, Ludgate, 16 Dec. 161 5 (when her mother was a prisoner in the Tower of London), had a fortune of ;^ 12,000 (the sum demanded by her husband's father, who was much opposed to the match). She d. at Woburn, 10, and was bur. 16 May 1684, at Chenies, aged 64. He d. at Bedford House, Strand, 7, and was bur. ij Sep. 1700, at Chenies, aged 84.^') M.L Will pr. May 1701. [Francis Russell, styled Lord Russell, s. and h. ap., b. 1638. Ed. at Cambridge. " He was of a melancholy disposition, which by ten years' travel (1657-67) he sought to dispel." He d. unm., v.p.y 14, and was bur. 21 Jan. 1677/8, at Chenies, aged 41.] [William Russell, styled Lord Russell, 2nd, but ist surv. s. and h., b. 29 Sep. 1639. Ed., with his brother, at Cambridge. M.P. for Tavis- tock, 1660-61 and 1661-79; and for Beds 1679-81. P.C. 22 Apr. 1679 to 31 Jan. 1679/80, when he, with Lord Cavendish and others, withdrew from the council board by leave of the King "with all his heart." He, who was leader of the "Country" (or Whig) party in the House of Com- mons, spoke vehemently in favour of the bill for the exclusion of James (afterwards James II) from the throne, carrying it up to the House of Lords on 15 Nov. 1680. He had previously presented at the King's Bench (on 16 June) the said James, Duke of York, as "a recusant." In 1683 he was accused of being concerned in the Rye House plot, and brought to trial at the Old Bailey on 13 July, as having been present in a conspiracy of high treason. He was found guilty, condemned to death, attainted and executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The transaction is a matter of history. Much eulogy was bestowed on him after the Revolution, though his conduct seems, when fairly weighed, to have been more than questionable. C") He if) Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury, in his Memoirs, speaks of him as " a graceful old nobleman, and his outside was all. . . . He kept a good house for eating amongst them- selves, but no hospitality. . . . He went to the Parish [Church] on Sunday Morning, but had a Presbyterian Chaplain." Vandyck painted a fine portrait of him and George Digby, Earl of Bristol, which has been several times engraved. V.G. () Macaulay, no unfriendly critic of Protestant Whig statesmen, admits that he " did not scruple to concert with a foreign mission schemes for embarrassing his sovereign." It is calculated to lessen sympathy with "this ornament of his age," and idol of the Whigs, when it is remembered that he violently opposed the King's remitting, and affected to doubt his power to remit, that portion of the penalty for high treason which involved disembowelling alive, in the case of the aged Lord Strafford, whose crime was the being a Roman Catholic. Charles II showed more mercy when "the wheel came full circle," than this since canonised ruffian had been
