verything the princess did while she was thought
to be advised by me, I could not satisfy my own mind till I had
consulted with several persons of wisdom and integrity, and particularly
with the Lady Russell of Southampton House, and Dr. Tillotson,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. I found them all unanimous in the
opinion of the expediency of the settlement proposed, as things were
then situated."
Her friends and her country shared with her own family the heart and the
correspondence of Lady Russell. Her children she lived to see well
provided for in honourable and influential positions. Her second
daughter was married to the son of her husband's dearest friend, Lord
Cavendish, and she became the Duchess of Devonshire. The eldest daughter
was unmarried, but the third became the Duchess of Rutland. Her only
son, afterwards Duke of Bedford, was in high favour in the reign of
William and Mary, and acted as High Constable of England at the
coronation of Queen Anne. His education and training was carefully
directed by his mother. One of her letters is to his grandfather, then
Earl of Bedford, interceding with him for one of the errors of her son's
early life. He had been tempted, as many young Englishmen still are, to
gamble when on his travels, but his debt taught him a lesson which saved
him from ever after getting into trouble in this way. Lady Russell,
while pleading for his forgiveness, undertook to be answerable for the
whole loss which had been incurred. It is a sensible and
motherly letter.
To give adequate idea of the whole correspondence would occupy much
space, and we can only briefly refer to a few of the letters at
different periods of her long life of widowhood. To Burnet, the Bishop
of Salisbury, she writes, in 1690: "When anything below is the object of
our love, at one time or other it will be a matter of our sorrow. But a
little time will put me again into my settled state of mourning; for a
mourner I must be all my days on earth, and there is no need I should be
other. My glass runs low: the world does not want me nor do I want it:
my business is at home and within a narrow compass. I must not deny, as
there was something so glorious in the object of my biggest sorrow, I
believe that in some measure kept me from being overwhelmed."
At one time Lady Russell was in danger of losing her sight, but being
couched for cataract, she recovered sufficiently to continue her
correspondence.
In the early
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