Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/444

 parliament as member for Bedfordshire, and represented the county until 1872, when (26 May) he succeeded to the dukedom of Bedford on the death of his first cousin, William, the eighth duke, son of Francis and grandson of John, the sixth duke [see under, first ]. In 1879 he succeeded the Prince of Wales as president of the Royal Agricultural Society, and he carried out some costly experiments on his Woburn estate in connection with the fertilising properties of manures. Some valuable results were obtained on a farm of ninety acres devoted to experimental purposes. The duke himself had a keen practical knowledge of ensilage and stock-breeding. Though born in the ‘purple of whiggism’ and possessed of a caustic tongue, he was abnormally shy and retiring, and took no active part in politics. He chiefly occupied himself in superintending the management of his vast properties covering about ninety thousand acres in Bedfordshire, Devonshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Dorset, Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire, and Cornwall. He presented a statue of Bunyan and other gifts to the town of Bedford, built a town-hall, and executed many improvements on his property in and about Tavistock, and also on his estates in the fens; but he was taunted by the press (especially by ‘Punch’) for his neglect of Covent Garden Market and the important property in its vicinity. Over a million sterling was added to the ducal revenues in his time by the fines exacted on the leases falling due upon his Bloomsbury estate. Russell was created K.G. on 1 Dec. 1880. In later life he became a pronounced hypochondriac, and, in a fit of delirium, while suffering from pneumonia, he shot himself through the heart at his house at 81 Eaton Square, on 14 Jan. 1891; he was buried at Chenies three days later. He married, on 18 Jan. 1844, Elizabeth Sackville-West, eldest daughter of George John, fifth earl De La Warr. She was a bridesmaid and subsequently mistress of the robes (1880–3) to Queen Victoria. There is at Woburn Abbey a portrait of the ninth duke painted by George Richmond [q. v.] in 1869. He was succeeded in the dukedom by his eldest son, George William Francis Sackville Russell (born 16 April 1852), who graduated B.A. from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1874, was called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn, and married on 24 Oct. 1876 Lady Adeline Mary Somers-Cocks, second daughter and coheiress of Charles, third earl Somers. He represented Bedford in parliament from 1875 to 1885, and died suddenly on 23 March 1893 leaving no issue. He was succeeded by his brother Herbrand Arthur, the eleventh duke.

[Gent. Mag. 1846, ii. 316; Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell; Haydn's Book of Dignities; Cannon's Records of the Eighth Hussars. A memoir of Lady W. Russell was printed in 1874. For eldest son see Doyle's Official Baronage; G. E. C.'s Peerage, i. 303; Times, 15 and 19 Jan. 1891; Illustrated London News, 24 Jan. 1891; Bateman's Great Landowners, 4th edit. p. 34; Scharf's Cat. of Pictures at Woburn Abbey, pt. i. p. 175; Clarke's Agriculture and the House of Russell, 1891; Spectator, 7 March 1891, an estimate by Benjamin Jowett, master of Balliol College, Oxford.] 

RUSSELL, HENRY (1751–1836), first Baronet of Swallowfield, Indian judge, born at Dover, on 8 Aug. 1751, was third son of Michael Russell (1711–1793) of Dover, by his wife Hannah, daughter of Henry Henshaw. The Earl of Hardwicke nominated him in 1763 to the foundation of the Charterhouse, and he was educated there and at Queens' College, Cambridge (B.A. 1772, M.A. 1775). Having been admitted a member of Lincoln's Inn, 20 June 1768, he was appointed about 1775 by Lord Bathurst to a commissionership in bankruptcy; and was called to the bar on 7 July 1783. In 1797 he was appointed a puisne judge in the supreme court of judicature, Bengal, and was knighted. He reached Calcutta on 28 May 1798. In 1807 he was appointed chief justice of the supreme court in place of Sir John Anstruther. On 8 Jan. 1808 he pronounced judgment in a case that attracted much attention at the time. John Grant, a company's cadet, was found guilty of maliciously setting fire to a native's hut. In sentencing him to death, the chief justice said: ‘The natives are entitled to have their characters, property, and lives protected; and as long as they enjoy that privilege from us, they give their affection and allegiance in return’ (Asiatic Register, 1808; Calcutta: a Poem, London, 1811, p. 109). Russell's house at Calcutta stood in what is now called after him, Russell Street (Calcutta Review, December 1852). Here, on 2 March 1800, died his wife's niece, Rose Aylmer, whose memory is perpetuated in the poem of that name by Walter Savage Landor.

By patent dated 10 Dec. 1812 Russell was created a baronet. On 9 Nov. 1813 (, Analysis) he resigned the chief justiceship, and on 8 Dec., at a public meeting in the town-hall, Calcutta, he was presented with addresses from the European and native residents; the latter comparing his attributes ‘with those of the great King