Great Englishwomen: An Historical Reading Book for Schools

by M. B. Synge

“It was acceptance rather than choosing on either side,” she said in after life. However, the young couple went to live in Wales, and were very happy, and everyone loved her and respected her.

“All that know you are forced to honour you,” wrote a friend to her one day, “neither are you to thank them for it, because they cannot do otherwise.”

Fourteen happy years passed away, and then Lady Vaughan was left a widow. She went to live with her elder sister Elizabeth, now Elizabeth Noel, whom she loved very dearly. Her father was dead, and Elizabeth had inherited his seat in Hampshire; so, in the home where they had played as children, the two sisters now lived together.

In 1669 she married William Russell, a young nobleman. Having travelled abroad, he had returned to England in time to become a member of the House of Commons which restored Charles II. to the throne, and from this time he took a prominent part in the politics of the day. He consulted his wife about everything; he was guided by her advice in moments of extreme difficulty; he depended on her judgment, and he found it just and good. On the other hand, she watched every event in which her husband’s interest was concerned, with unwearying love; his happiness and success were hers, his sorrows and defeats were shared by her too. They were not often parted during the fourteen years of their married life, but when they were separated their letters show how long the time seemed, and how drearily the days passed.

“The few hours we have been parted seem too many to me to let this first post-night pass without giving my dear man a little talk,” she wrote to him, when he had been obliged to be present at the parliament, just called together again. She tells him about their little child named after her mother, Rachel, how she “fetched but one sleep last night,” and how “very good she was this morning;” how she is writing in the nursery with “little Fubs,” as they generally called her, and how she knew the father would be rejoiced to hear that Fubs “was breeding her teeth so well,” and beginning to talk.

The letters are badly written, bad grammar is used, and the spelling neglected, but they are so homely and happy, they are written with such ease and enjoyment, that we forget that the writer was never really educated, though an earl’s daughter.

In 1679 Elizabeth Noel died. This was no common loss to Lady Rachel Russell; it was her only sister, her beloved, the person whom, next to her husband, she loved most dearly in all the world. Though she writes to her husband of her loss, she does not fill her letters with her own feelings; she tries to rouse herself to public affairs, which will interest him more, and chats about the three little children and their doings and sayings. She taught the children herself, and their happiness and welfare was her great object in life; she liked “Fubs” to write to her father whenever he went away, and the conscientious little girl used to bring a tiny letter to be enclosed, though sometimes tears were shed when the spelling and writing would not come right.

Nevertheless, very anxious times were hovering over England, and Lady Rachel Russell was not blind to her husband’s danger.

Lord Russell had been in the parliament that called Charles II. to the throne; but slowly he and many others awoke to the fact that they had blundered. Charles was weak, selfish, unfit to rule England, unsettled as she was then, and a few years after the Restoration Lord Russell, together with others, joined the country party against the court. He was a generous, kind-hearted man, “raised by birth and fortune high above his fellows,” and he soon became one of the most powerful opponents of the court, one of the most influential leaders of the country party. By the Whigs he was honoured as a chief; he was one of those who wished to exclude the Duke of York, brother to Charles II., from the throne on account of his religion.

In 1678 Lord Russell was supporting a bitter measure against the court party. Lady Russell was very much alarmed; she wrote to him in the House, and begged him not to support it.