Page:Biographical catalogue of the portraits at Weston, the seat of the Earl of Bradford (IA gri 33125003402027).pdf/60

 He was selected by his nephew, Lord Russell, to carry the noble letter which the prisoner had written from Newgate on the 19th July 1683 to the King.

No. 11.

FRANCIS RUSSELL, FOURTH EARL OF BEDFORD.

Black dress.

DIED 1641.

He was the only son of William Russell, called the Heroic Baron of Thornhaugh, whom he accompanied to Ireland when only nine years old. A curious picture at Woburn leads us to believe that the young Francis shared his father's love of sport, being there represented in a white hunting jacket with green hose, a hawk on his hand, and two dogs in couples beside him. He was knighted in 1604 by James the First, at Whitehall, and the ensuing year he married Catherine, daughter and co-heir of Gyles Brydges, third Lord Chandos, with whom he lived very happily; and during the first years of his marriage he devoted himself to domestic life, and took great delight in study. Having received a legal education he prosecuted his researches into questions of law, parliamentary privileges and the like, which were destined to prove useful to him in his public career. He succeeded his father, as Baron Thornhaugh, in 1613; and his cousin, Edward Russell, in the Earldom of Bedford in 1627. He frequented the society of such men as Sir Robert Cotton, Selden, Eliott, and was ever ready, says