Men of the Time (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LORD JOHN RUSSELL Lord John Russell, the leader of the House of Commons, and probably the most influential member of the present Cabinet, is the third son of the late Duke of Bedford, and was born August 18, 1792, in Hertford Street, May Fair. His lordship may be said to have been born a politician. The family, of which he is one of the most illustrious ornaments, has been mixed up with the constitutional history of England iu all its great crises, from the Reformation downwards. The rise of the house of Russell dates from the reign of Henry TIL, when a German prince, on his way to London, was wrecked off the coast of Dorsetshire, where William Russell, a country gentleman, of moderate means, was living in privacy and retirement. Russell was called upon to entertain the illustrious stranger, and to accompany him to the court of Henry, where the sovereign was so attracted by the gracefulness of his manners and conversation that he retained the country squire among the number of his personal attendants, and charged himself with the advance of his fortunes. The favour thus gained on the part of the father was not lost on the accession of the son; and on the sequestration of the monastery and abbey lands, Russell, as one of the favourites of the monarch, gained large accessions from the property thus secularised. Wobnrn Abbey, and several other possessions both in Bedfordshire and Devonshire, to this day attest the munificence of the monarch, and the esteem in which the ancestor of the house of Bedford was held. From that time downwards the house of Bedford is always to be found in connexion with the cause of the people. In the struggle with Charles I. the Earl of Bedford was one of the great parliamentary leaders; after the Restoration the great opponent of the reactionar...