general a reputation as any one of the age, and his memory will be held
in everlasting remembrance.

"Bring every sweetest flower, and let me strew
The grave where Russell lies, whose tempered blood
With calmest cheerfulness for thee resigned,
Stained the sad annals of a giddy reign;
Aiming at lawless power, though, meanly sunk
In loose inglorious luxury."

So sang of him the poet of the Seasons, Thomson, in his famous
apostrophe to Britannia as the land of liberty.

One of the first Acts of King William III. after the Revolution, was to
reverse the attainder of Lord Russell. In the preamble of this Bill,
which was the second that passed in his reign, after receiving the Royal
assent, his execution was called a murder: and in November of the same
year, 1689, the House of Commons appointed a committee "to inquire who
were the advisers and promoters of the murder of Lord Russell." In the
year 1694 his father was created Marquis of Tavistock and Duke of
Bedford. The reasons for bestowing these honours were stated in the
preamble of the patent in these terms: "And this, not the least, that he
was the father of Lord Russell, the ornament of his age, whose great
merits it was not enough to transmit by history to posterity, but they
(the King and Queen) were willing to record them in their royal patent,
to remain in the family as a monument consecrated to his consummate
virtue, whose name could never be forgot, so long as men preserved any
esteem for sanctity of manners, greatness of mind, and a love of their
country, constant even to death. Therefore, to solace his excellent
father for so great a loss, to celebrate the memory of so noble a son,
and to excite his worthy grandson, the heir of such mighty hopes, more
cheerfully to emulate and follow the example of his illustrious father,
they entailed this high dignity upon the Earl and his posterity."

The first Duke of Bedford (fifth Earl) lived till September, 1700. He
had six sons and three daughters, besides the martyred son. William,
married to the daughter of the Earl of Southampton. They had one son,
Wriothesley, who succeeded his grandfather as Duke of Bedford in 1700,
and died of small-pox, in 1711, in the 31st year of his age. Of two
daughters, the elder married William Lord Cavendish, afterwards Duke of
Devonshire, and the second married John Manners, Lord Ross, afterwards
Duke of Rutland. A third daughter died unmarried.

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