Lord Oxford was twice married, first to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Foley of Whitley Court, county Worcester, by whom he had one son, and two daughters; and, secondly, to Sarah, daughter of Thomas Myddleton, Esq., who was childless.
No. 147.
LORD JOHN RUSSELL, AFTERWARDS
EARL RUSSELL, K.G.
BORN 1792, DIED 1878.
As a young man. Resting his hand on the inner frame of the picture.
THE youngest son of Lord John Russell, afterwards sixth Duke of Bedford, by the Hon. Georgiana Elizabeth Byng. Born in the very crisis of the French Revolution, his uncle (the reigning Duke) was the champion of French ideas, and having been carried far beyond the opinions of his family, which for more than a century had been zealously Whig, both he and his brother, young Russell’s father, settled that on John’s leaving Westminster, he should go to the University of Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge being too Tory in their proclivities to suit the family traditions. By the time (we quote an able article in the Times of 1878) the youth left College, his political faith had crystallised into something very like that in which he consistently lived, laboured, and died. A visit to the Peninsula, however, where the star of Wellington was then in the ascendant, modified his French ideas and inspired him with such an admiration for the hero, that ever afterwards, in the fiercest political struggle, John Russell maintained towards the Duke the attitude and language of profound respect, almost amounting to veneration. On his return to England, while still under age, he sat for Tavistock, and threw himself heart and soul into the Parliamentary fray at one of the most eventful periods of the history, not only of England, but of Europe, and of that history John Russell’s career forms a most important feature. But our limited space will only allow us to glance at the prominent events of his life. He was a zealous advocate for Catholic Emancipation, and all Liberal measures, and from the very first threw in his lot with those who demanded Parliamentary reform, in which cause he was the primary mover, and the draught for the first Bill of which was drawn up by his own hand. To his early efforts in this cause Macaulay refers with his usual eloquence, saying: ‘Those were proud and happy days, when amid the applause and blessings of millions, my noble friend led us on in the struggle for the Reform Bill; when hundreds waited round our doors till sunrise, to hear how well we had sped; when the great cities of the North poured forth their populations on the highway to meet the mails which brought tidings from the capital, whether the battle of the people had been lost or won,’ etc. etc. Lord John Russell sat for Tavistock, Hunts, Bandon, etc.; and was a member of the Lower House for forty-seven years, during many of which he was the leader of the Opposition. He filled at various times many of the highest offices of State, Home, Foreign, Colonial, Lord President of the Council, Commissioner to the Congress at Vienna, and First Lord of the Treasury from 1846 to 1852. Once more Foreign Secretary in 1859, and again at the head of the Government in 1865, he retired in 1866, having been raised to the Peerage as Earl Russell and Viscount Amberley in 1861, and receiving the Garter in 1862. He married, first, (in 1835,) Adelaide, daughter of Thomas Lister, of Armitage Park, widow of the second Lord Ribblesdale; she died in 1838, leaving two daughters. His second wife was Lady Frances Elliot, daughter of Gilbert, second Earl of Minto, by whom he had three sons and a daughter. Besides a drama, ‘Don Carlos,’ written in his youth, Lord Russell was the author of several literary works, political, historical, etc. etc. He died at Pembroke Lodge in 1878. His latter years had been much embittered by the premature death of his eldest son, Lord Amberley, and his wife (a daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley), within a few months of each other. They left two little children, of whom one is the present Earl Russell.