Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/491

Russell  by Gabriel Cibber) and the historical picture by Sir G. Hayter have been already mentioned.

After her husband's death Lady Russell passed ten months at Woburn, and then revisited Stratton (Letters, p. 27; cf., p. 80), and her desolate London habitation, Southampton House (Letters, p. 50). At times she resided at Totteridge. In a spirit of patient and courageous resignation, which tempers even her first pathetic outbursts of grief in her letters to her faithful correspondent, Dr. Fitzwilliam, she composed herself to the duties before her. Among these she gave the first, and for some years an exclusive, place to the training of her children (, p. 58). In June 1688 she married her elder daughter, Rachel, to the eldest son of her husband's closest friend, Earl (and soon afterwards Duke) of Devonshire; in August 1693 (overcoming certain ecclesiastical scruples with cool sense) she brought about the marriage to Lord Ross (afterwards Duke of Rutland) of her second daughter, Catherine, whose death in 1711 she survived to mourn. Her only son, Wriothesley, when Marquis of Tavistock, she married in 1695, at the age of fifteen, to a wealthy Surrey heiress, Elizabeth, daughter of John Howland of Streatham. He, too, died in 1711, having succeeded his grandfather as second Duke of Bedford in 1700. The retirement in which Lady Russell spent the early years of her widowhood did not prevent her from following the course of events with keen interest. In 1687 Dyckveldt waited on her with sympathetic messages from the Hague; and her advice largely helped to determine the Princess Anne's formal adhesion to the new regime (ib. pp. 67-8). Queen Mary's relations with her had long been kindly (ib. pp. 132, 148), and a letter from her to King William, thanking him for favours to her family, was found in his pocket after his death (ib. pp. 328-9). In the management of her large property Lady Russell showed herself an excellent woman of business, taking particular interest in bestowing the clerical benefices at her disposal in accordance with her own and her husband's principles. She was a good housewife, a discriminating reader, and, like so many active-minded women of her times, a voluminous letter-writer. Her published letters probably only represent a small proportion of her activity in this direction. Her letters to Fitzwilliam, Tillotson, and her other more intimate correspondents have the charm of naturalness and the distinction of a noble nature. 'Integrity,' she writes, 'is my idol;' and in small things, as in great, she avoids whatever is false or deceptive. The last of her letters, which appears to have been penned in 1718, is characteristic both of her unaffected depth of religious feeling and of her humorously vivacious interest in the young generation, which she loved to have around her. In 1693-4 her correspondence with Tillotson was interrupted for several months by a disorder of the eyes. She died, at Southampton House, on 29 Sept. 1723, in her eighty-seventh year, and was buried at Chenies, by her husband's side.

The portrait of Lady Russell in advanced age, by Kneller, at Woburn is that of which the upper part, engraved by C. Knight, forms the well-known frontispiece to the numerous editions of her 'Letters.' A small engraving of the head has been separately published. Another portrait of her in enamel is in the drawing-room at Woburn. A miniature of her, by C. Bolt, is preserved at Althorp; other portraits of her are in the National Portrait Gallery (by Kneller), at Madresfield Court, and at Weston Hall.

 RUSSELL, WILLIAM, first (1613–1700), second but eldest surviving son of Francis, fourth earl of Bedford [q. v.], was born in 1613. He was educated, according to Clarendon, at Magdalen