Frankland, who sat for the family borough of Thirsk throughout this period, made little mark in the House. He was an occasional attender who continued to vote with the Whig opposition to Lord Liverpool’s ministry on all major issues. He divided against them on the civil list, 5, 8 May, and the additional Scottish baron of exchequer, 15 May 1820. He voted for restoration of Queen Caroline’s name to the liturgy, 14 Feb., and inquiry into the conduct of the sheriff of Dublin, 22 Feb. 1821. He divided for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. If he was the ‘Colonel Frankland’ who was credited with a brief comment on the ordnance estimates, 18 Apr. 1821, this was his only known contribution to debate in this period.
He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, 12 May, and repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb. 1828. He voted for the Wellington ministry’s Catholic emancipation bill, 6, 30 Mar. 1829. That autumn the Ultra Tory leader Sir Richard Vyvyan* listed him among those supporters of emancipation whose sentiments were ‘unknown’ with respect to a putative coalition government. He voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 Mar., returns of privy councillors’ emoluments, 14 May, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June 1830. He was in the minority against Lord Ellenborough’s divorce bill, 6 Apr. 1830. After the general election that summer ministers listed him among their ‘foes’, and he duly voted against them in the crucial division on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. He was absent from the divisions on the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar., 19 Apr. 1831. His only known vote on the reintroduced bill was with the minority in favour of counsel being heard on the hostile petition from Appleby, 12 July 1831. No evidence has been found to support the statement then made that he had ‘voted for the bill in its former stages’.
At the general election of 1832 Frankland, who had succeeded to his father’s title and estates the previous year, returned himself for the single Thirsk seat which had survived the Reform Act, but he retired from the House in March 1834. Two years later, on the death of his cousin and former colleague Sir Robert Greenhill Russell*, he inherited the Buckinghamshire estate of Chequers Court, which he initially intended to dispose of. Benjamin Disraeli† was reputedly prepared to bid £50,000 for it, but in the event the sale did not go ahead. Instead, Frankland Russell (as he now became), a gifted amateur artist who took an enthusiastic interest in architecture, enlarged the house and improved the estate. His friend Edward Buckton Lamb dedicated his study of Ancient Domestic Architecture (1846) to him, in recognition of ‘the taste you have evinced in the desire to carry out ancient art in the spirit of the medieval periods’.