The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

Arms.—Azure, a bend cotised between six crosses patée or.

Present Representative, Richard Hippisley Bingham, Esq.

Russell of Kingston-Russell, Duke of Bedford 1694, Earl of Bedford 1550.

Although this family may be said to have made their fortune in the reign of Henry VII., first by Mr. John Russell's accidental meeting with Philip Archduke of Austria, and his consequent introduction to the King, and secondly by the large share of ecclesiastical plunder acquired by this same John at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, yet there is no reason to doubt that the Russells are sprung from a younger branch of an ancient baronial family, of whom the elder line were known by the name of Gorges, and were Barons of Parliament in the time of Edward III.

The Russells were seated at Kingston as early as the reign of Henry III.

See Wiffen's House of Russell, and Brydges's Collins, i. 266, &c.

Arms.—Argent, a lion rampant gules, on a chief sable three escallops of the first.

Present Representative, William Russell, 8th Duke of Bedford, K.G.

Digby of Tilton, Baron Digby of Sherborne 1765, Baron Digby of Geashill in Ireland 1620.