RUSSELL, Robert II

A member of a family long established in Worcestershire, Russell was the grandson of Sir John Russell, a prominent Household man of Richard II. Sir John, who emerged apparently unscathed from the upheavals of 1399, married three times, providing generously for his last wife Elizabeth, the daughter of the Buckinghamshire esquire, William de la Plaunk. An heiress, having inherited manors in Wiltshire, Leicestershire and Buckinghamshire, Elizabeth also enjoyed either dower or jointure interests in the substantial estates of her previous husbands, Sir John Birmingham, Robert, Lord Grey of Rotherfield, and John, Lord Clinton. Even though she was already a lady of substantial means, Sir John agreed that she should retain most of his estates in Worcestershire for life should he predecease her, and that any children she bore him should inherit these lands to the exclusion of their elder half-brothers. As a result, William Russell, his eldest son and heir by his first marriage, was excluded from the family seat at Strensham. When Sir John died in 1405, William appears to have come into immediate possession of little more than the manor of Dormston, a few miles east of Worcester. As it happened, all of Elizabeth’s children (including any she may have borne Sir John) predeceased her, and she also outlived William, not dying until 1423. Yet it is possible that she allowed her stepson control of some of the Russell estates in her hands, and his circumstances were to some extent ameliorated by his own marriage to an heiress. During his brief career, William was elected as a knight of the shire for Worcestershire to the Parliament of March 1416 but he appears never to have served as a commissioner in that county or elsewhere.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 248-51, 259-60; CIPM, xxii. 333-44.

Most, if not all, of the Russell lands had passed to William’s son, the subject of this biography, by 1428. Eight years later, these estates, along with the moiety of the manor of Huddington which had come to Robert from the Hodyngtons, his mother’s family, were estimated to produce an income of £66 p.a.6 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 259; Feudal Aids, v. 322, 326, 327. The Robert Russell who held estates at ‘Tytherton’ and Cockelborough in Wilts. in 1428 (ibid. v. 252-3) has not been identified, but the MP is not known to have had interests in that county. Among the other properties he inherited from his mother was a share of five messuages in Worcester, salt wells at Droitwich and a manor at Broad Campden, Gloucestershire.7 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 888, 937; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 386. In the first half of the 1440s, along with his aunt Joan, the coheir of the Hodyngton estates, and Joan’s husband, Roger Winter, he pursued a lawsuit at Westminster against some tenants for committing waste on the Worcester properties. By the end of the century, the Russells had surrendered their share of Huddington to the Winters in return for a rental income of 22s. p.a.8 CP40/719, rot. 335.

It is not entirely clear whether Russell ever enjoyed possession of another manor, ‘Bolneys’ at Haversham in Buckinghamshire, which Sir John Russell had assigned to his younger son and namesake. In April 1430 the younger John, a clerk, conveyed the property to Sir Thomas Green*, Sir Richard Vernon* and other feoffees, who also included his servant John Aleyn. Some years later, Russell went to the Chancery to complain that Margaret, the widow of Sir Ralph Rochford (d.1439/40) of Lincolnshire had maliciously put it about that this conveyance had been fictional. The purpose of his bill was to request that Aleyn should validate the transaction, and in due course the latter appeared before the chancellor to authenticate it. The bill disguises the fact that Russell was trying to claim a manor that rightfully belonged to Margaret, by virtue of a settlement made by his grandfather Sir John Russell. It also fails to mention that she was a daughter of Sir John and therefore his aunt.9 C1/16/147-8. Yet, in spite of his unjust claim, Russell may have obtained possession of ‘Bolneys’. He was probably the Robert Russell who attested the return of the knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire to the Parliament of 1442, suggesting that he had a stake in the county by that date. Whatever the case, the manor had certainly reverted to the main line of the Russell family by the beginning of the sixteenth century when it was in the hands of Robert’s grandson and namesake.10 VCH Bucks. iv. 370.

So far as is known, Russell began his public career in the mid 1430s. In 1435 he was returned to the first of his two Parliaments, and within a month of his election he was appointed escheator of Worcestershire. During the Parliament he no doubt looked for guidance to his fellow MP, John Wood I*, an experienced parliamentarian and lawyer attached to the interest of the Beauchamp earls of Warwick. He himself was part of the same interest, an association reinforced by his marriage to Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of John Throckmorton. Another prominent lawyer, Throckmorton was a leading counsellor of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, a lord with whom Russell’s own father, William Russell, had mustered for military service in France in 1417.11 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 259.

Russell is likely to have married Elizabeth shortly before June 1434 when the manors of Strensham and Peopleton were settled on the couple and their issue.12 CP25(1)/260/27/30. Among those party to this settlement was his father-in-law, for whom he acted as a surety in the Exchequer in early 1437.13 CFR, xvi. 321. He was also associated with Throckmorton in the Parliament of 1439, in which John was his fellow knight of the shire, and in December 1441 and September 1444, as a co-feoffee and witness for Thomas Winslow I*, husband of Elizabeth’s sister Agnes.14 CAD, vi. C5242; CCR, 1454-61, p. 32. Throckmorton regarded his son-in-law with sufficient affection to leave him 100 marks in his will of 1445.15 PCC 31 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 251).

The Beauchamp earls of Warwick were the hereditary sheriffs of Worcestershire and it was to the Beauchamp connexion that Russell owed his term as deputy sheriff in 1442-3. Shortly after completing that term, he was caught up in an outbreak of lawlessness. During 1444 he and other gentry participated in a series of raids on lands in Gloucestershire which Katherine, the wife of Sir William Peyto‡, held in dower from her earlier marriage to Thomas Stafford† of Baginton, Warwickshire. Most of the raiders were associated with John Beauchamp, Lord of Powick, and his ally, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, although Russell was said to have taken part in one of the attacks as a ‘feedman to the Abbot of Pershore and so to my lord of Warrewyk’, the then earl, Henry Beauchamp. It was an unfortunate irony that Katherine’s husband, at this time almost certainly a prisoner in France, was another Beauchamp retainer.16 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 416; C1/15/77; 51/158. Among the other men who took part in these raids were Thomas Throckmorton*, Russell’s brother-in-law, and John Rous of Ragley, Warwickshire, of whom the latter had been a party to the settlement made for Russell and his wife Elizabeth in 1434.17 CP25(1)/260/27/30. Rous was a cousin of Thomas Rous* of Worcestershire, who appointed Russell as one of his feoffees in 1445, prior to departing on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella.18 C1/52/69.

It is not known when Russell died, although he is not heard of alive after the autumn of 1449. In the spring of the following year, his wife acted alone as a plaintiff in the court of common pleas, suggesting that she was already a widow at that date.19 CP40/757, rot. 181. Among those murdered by ‘traitors and rebels’ at Newport on the Isle of Wight in July 1450 was Robert Russell, a former servant and counsellor of the late Adam Moleyns, bp. of Chichester, but it is very unlikely that he was the MP: KB27/763, rex rot. 7d; KB9/109/9. Likewise the sole plaintiff in a suit for trespass brought in the court of King’s bench in the mid 1450s,20 KB27/778, rot. 71d. Elizabeth was certainly a widow in the spring of 1460 when she and, posthumously, her late husband, were admitted to the guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford-upon-Avon. The brethren of the guild, to which she had paid an entry fine of 6s. 8d., were still remembering the couple in their prayers over 30 years later.21 Shakespeare Centre Archs., Guild of Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon mss, BRT1/1, ff. 80v, 127v.

Whenever he died, Russell was succeeded by his eldest son John, a Lancastrian who forfeited the manor of Strensham to the Crown by virtue of the Act of Attainder passed in the Parliament of 1461.22 VCH Worcs. iv. 204. Despite his forfeiture, John Russell is not named in the Act as enrolled on the Parl. roll. A knight by the early 1460s, John received a royal pardon on 8 Feb. 1462,23 C67/45, m. 46. although Strensham was granted to Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, on the following 27 Apr.24 CPR, 1461-7, p. 189. Elizabeth Russell, who was likewise pardoned in February 1462,25 C67/45, m. 41. subsequently recovered the manor, perhaps after her son’s death. When Sir John Russell died is also unrecorded, although he was evidently childless since his heir was his younger brother, another Robert Russell. This Robert did not come fully into his own upon succeeding to the Russell estates since Elizabeth retained possession of Strensham and other lands for life, presumably by virtue of the settlement of 1434.26 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 888. Again the recipient of royal pardons in October 1468 and June 1471,27 C67/46, m. 26; CPR, 1467-77, p. 262. she survived for several more years after making her will – now no longer extant – in June 1481.28 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 562. In July 1480 she and the younger Robert obtained a lease of various judicial rights within Westminster Abbey’s lordship at Strensham; in 1482-3 she founded an obit in Strensham parish church; a year later she obtained a warrant against all those who would hunt on the park at Strensham without her licence;29 Westminster Abbey muns. 22958; VCH Worcs. iv. 204, 206. and she was still alive in mid 1485. At some stage during her widowhood she obtained admission to the confraternity of Westminster Abbey for herself, the younger Robert and, posthumously, the late MP.30 Westminster Abbey muns. 22958. The younger Robert lived until September 1493 and was succeeded by his own son and namesake, then a minor of some 17 years of age.31 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 888, 937. Just a few years later the latter inherited – by virtue of his descent from his great-grandmother Agnes Hodyngton – a share of estates once held by Sir Thomas Cokesey†,32 CPR, 1494-1509, p. 192. but he had little time to enjoy this stroke of good fortune since he himself died in 1502.33 PCC 20 Blamyr (PROB11/13, f. 173); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 562, 587, 651, 655.