The family history from this time began thoroughly to support believers in the supernatural, for Francis, the fourth Earl, had two sons, one of whom died without issue, before his father. The second son, who became the fifth holder of the title, was a man upon whom sorrow laid a heavy hand. His two sons died before him; the eldest unmarried, the second, Lord William Russell, beheaded in 1683 for complicity in the political movement resulting in the Rye House Plot.
That must have been a hollow and barren honour which was conferred upon the bereaved man in 1694, when William the Third created him a Duke, “to solace his excellent father for so great a loss, to celebrate the memory of so noble a son, and to excite his worthy grandson, the heir of such mighty hopes, more cheerfully to emulate and follow the example of his illustrious father.” The fifth Earl and first Duke had often before been offered a dukedom, but had declined; so it would seem that the “solace” could have been little comfort to him. He died in his eighty-seventh year, in 1700, and his grandson, Wriothesley, became second Duke, who died eleven years later, and was followed by his son, Wriothesley, third Duke, who died childless in 1732. His brother stepped into his place, and survived until 1771. He was twice married, but his eldest son died on the day of his birth, the second in infancy, and the third, the Marquis of Tavistock, was killed by a fall in the hunting field, in 1767; and he was therefore followed by his grandson, Francis, the fifth Duke;, killed in 1802 by a blow from a tennis-ball. The sixth Duke was brother of the last. He died in 1839, and his son Francis, the seventh Duke, reigned in his stead until 1861. His son William next enjoyed the title until 1872, when it fell to his cousin, Francis, the ninth Duke, who in 1891, in his seventy-second year, committed suicide by shooting himself, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. An unsuccessful attempt was made to hush up the affair: the first reports to the newspapers declaring that he had died from congestion of the lungs.
WOBURN ABBEY.
A DUCAL SUICIDE
The tenth Duke was a man of bloated and unwieldy proportions, who died suddenly in 1893, and was followed by his brother. It would appear, therefore, to recapitulate, that of the fourteen successive holders of the titles of Earl and Duke of Bedford, five only have been succeeded by their eldest sons. In all, there have been six deaths by various forms of violence, including those of the aged Lord William Russell, murdered in 1840 by his valet, Courvoisier, in Park Lane, and Lord Henry Russell, who was killed on shipboard in 1842, by a block falling on his head.
The Russells are by tradition Liberals in politics, but it is really only an astute abstract Liberalism, calculated to impress the unthinking, that they affect. I think of them, living behind their park walls, in their huge, hideous house, as a succession of bloated spiders, gorged but still unsatisfied, incredibly rich, incredibly wealthy, shamelessly mean: deriving from their London ground-rents an income that emperors might envy, and yet sharing no burdens and doing no work for the State.
The great mansion of Woburn Abbey stands in the middle of a park twelve miles in circumference: that is to say, for purposes of ready comparison, a quarter larger than Richmond Park. Of the Abbey itself nothing is left, and on the site of it stands the vast gloomy building begun by Flitcroft in 1744 for the fourth Duke, and looking more like some public institution of the asylum sort than a residence. It is a veritable treasure-house of art, jealously closed against visitors, except grudgingly, once a year, on the August Bank Holiday; but public paths run through a great portion of the park, lovely with its woody glades, still lakes, and couching fawns.
WOBURN.