RUSSELL, William Congreve (1778-1850), of King’s Heath, Worcs.

The descendant of a family seated for some generations at Moor Green, King’s Norton, Worcestershire,1His father’s first wife, Sarah, the daughter of William Congreve, had died without surviving issue: Gent. Mag. (1851), i. 204. Russell was a yeomanry officer and landed proprietor. In 1820 he had married the daughter of a Northumbrian landowner, and in 1830 his sister married Sir Joseph Bailey, Conservative MP for Worcester 1835-47, and Brecknockshire, 1847-58.2Gent. Mag. (1820), ii. 179-80. Russell’s wife had died within the first year of their marriage: Gent. Mag. (1851), i. 204. In 1832 he built a mansion at Kings Heath, near Birmingham.3‘History of King’s Heath Park’: www.birmingham.gov.uk.

Having long been attached to ‘liberal and enlightened principles’, Russell actively supported the campaign for parliamentary reform in the West Midlands. In May 1831 he chaired a meeting of Worcestershire freeholders resident in Birmingham and its neighbourhood which pledged support for the Reform members.4Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832, 5 May 1831. In July 1832 he was requested to stand at the next general election for the new constituency of East Worcestershire, where he had considerable property. Of ‘a quiet, retiring, disposition’, Russell found this prospect foreign to his ‘habits and pursuits’, but acquiesced, and in addressing the Friends of Reform at Worcester, pledged to ‘further the cause of liberality, in a reformed Parliament’. A moderate Whig, he opposed ‘all corrupt expenditure of the public money’, supported an inquiry ‘into the causes of national distress’, and advocated the immediate abolition of slavery.5Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 26 July, 2 Aug., 20 Dec. 1832; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 156. In order to fend off a challenge from a Conservative proprietor, Sir John Pakington, Russell joined forces with another Reformer, Thomas Cookes, and, with ‘his age and experience’ to recommend him to the electors, was returned at the top of the poll.6Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 1 Dec. 1832; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832.

Russell saw himself as a moderate who was committed to the ‘reform of existing abuses, without destroying Institutions’, his object being merely to restore the constitution ‘to its primitive perfection, and to correct those evils which party spirit and time have introduced into it’.7Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 29 Nov., 20 Dec. 1832. Although a silent member, he appears to have been a regular attender, supporting the ministry on the Irish coercion bill, 5, 11 Mar. 1833, and later that month sitting on the Ripon election committee.8CJ, lxxxviii. 217. He was keen to see the causes of the depression of both the agricultural and manufacturing interests removed, telling constituents that neither could ‘separately thrive at the expense of the other’, and supported Thomas Attwood’s motion for an inquiry into public distress, 21 Mar. 1833.9Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 29 Nov. 1832. However, he did not vote for Lord Chandos’s motion for a select committee on agricultural distress, 26 Apr. 1833. An opponent of the restrictions on the currency imposed by the 1819 Bank Act, which he believed had ‘cramped’ the country’s industry and commerce, he nevertheless opposed Matthias Attwood’s motion on the currency, 24 Apr.10Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832. He voted for Ingilby’s motion for the reduction of malt tax, 26 Apr., but did not divide on the issue when that vote was subsequently challenged by the ministry, 30 Apr.11Morning Chronicle, 2 May 1833. Having pledged himself in an election speech to the ‘principles of equal Justice and Constitutional Liberty’, he supported the second reading of Grant’s bill for Jewish emancipation, 22 May.12Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 29 Nov. 1832. He voted with ministers for striking out the appropriation clause of the government’s Irish Church temporalities bill, 21 June 1833, and, having expressed a wish during his election campaign to see the ‘stain’ of ‘Negro Slavery’ brought to ‘a speedy termination’, backed Buxton’s motion to restrict the period of slave apprenticeships to the shortest possible time, 24 July 1833.13Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832.

During the 1834 session, Russell demonstrated that there were limitations to his commitment to retrenchment and free trade. In 1832 he had declared his support for ‘the utmost economy in every department of the State’, but he opposed Harvey’s motion for a scrutiny of the pensions list, 18 Feb. 1834.14Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 Jan. 1835. He voted for a reduction of the malt tax, 27 Feb., and was known to be hostile to ‘all monopoly’, having argued for the China trade, amongst others, to be ‘thrown open to the private trader’. However, he divided against Joseph Hume’s motion to reconsider the corn laws, 7 Mar.,15Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832. and Lord Althorp’s proposed replacement of church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr. Russell is not known to have sat on any select committees, but in May 1834 he carried a bill for the improvement of Dudley’s water supply.16CJ, lxxxix. 53, 65, 274, 307.

In November 1834, Russell advised electors that he had no intention of retiring at the dissolution but would once more coalesce with Cookes in the event of a Conservative challenge.17Morning Chronicle, 26 Nov. 1834; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 11 Dec. 1834. In January 1835, however, he opted to retire in favour of another Reformer, explaining to electors that his health, by then ‘considerably impaired’ by his attendance in parliament, would not allow him ‘to undergo the fatigue of another contested Election’.18Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 Jan. 1835; Morning Post, 13 Jan. 1835.

Russell was later said to have had ‘no other ambition than that of discharging his public duties with integrity and honour’.19Gent. Mag. (1851), i. 204. He was nominated for the position of high sheriff of Worcestershire on at least five occasions between 1822 and 1846, and received the lord lieutenant’s endorsement in 1839.20Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 21 Nov. 1822; Morning Post, 14 Nov. 1836, 15 Nov. 1837; Liverpool Mercury, 20 Nov. 1846. In 1845 he sat on the provisional committee of the Warwickshire and London Railway.21Morning Chronicle, 24 July 1845.

Around 1835 Russell had quit Kings Heath for the more fashionable Leamington Spa, where he died in November 1850.22‘History of King’s Heath Park’. In 1839 his only daughter and heir, Elizabeth Mary (1821-97), had married Sir Joseph Bailey’s son, Joseph, Conservative MP for Sudbury, 1837-41, and Herefordshire from 1841 until his early death in August 1850.23Gent. Mag. (1850), ii. 550.