RUSSELL, John (c.1620-87), of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, Mdx. and Shingay Hall, Cambs.

John Russell’s parliamentary career was brief and occasioned entirely by the elevation of his elder brother, William, to become 5th earl of Bedford. Before the death of the 4th earl, Russell seems to have shown no interest in politics or in a parliamentary seat. He was educated at Magdalen, Oxford, where his eldest brother is said to have been enrolled, and like his brother, he left without taking a degree. When Russell was 17, he was the object of a plan to unite the house of Russell with that of the earls of Bath. A cousin of the 4th earl of Bedford, Edward Bourchier, 4th earl of Bath, had died, leaving a widow, Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Lovett of Lipscombe, Buckinghamshire. George Lord Digby*, Bedford’s son-in-law, went to Tawstock in Devon in August 1637 to negotiate a marriage between Anne and John Russell. Digby wrote an amusing account of his diplomatic endeavours for Bedford, but they failed, and Anne Bourchier became the wife of Sir Henry Bourchier, cousin of the 4th earl of Bath and now the 5th earl himself. This seems to be the only known attempted match set up for John Russell, who remained a bachelor until his death 50 years later.16Wiffen, Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell (2 vols. 1833), ii. 154-8. At some point before 1640, he must have travelled abroad, to judge from evidence concerning his long-serving manservant.17Letter Bks. of Sir Samuel Luke, 397.

Russell probably became a career soldier soon after this disappointment, if indeed that is what the failed marriage plan was for him. In the bishops’ wars, one of his name served as a lieutenant in the regiment of the 1st earl of Barrymore, although the Irish basis of much of the regiment means that it is unlikely that a son of such a prominent English family is likely to have served in such a unit.18Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1241. He seems not to have been destined for a political career until the elevation of his brother to the earldom in May 1641, after the death of their father. As part of the settlement of the family estates after the 4th earl’s death, Russell acquired Shingay Hall in south-west Cambridgeshire, which became his main estate.19VCH Cambs. viii. 124-7. He was elected on the family’s interest at Tavistock on 17 June 1641, where he had no known property of his own. His time in the Commons was brief. On 19 August, he was asked to take to the Lords the petition and documentation which would accompany a parliamentary delegation to Edinburgh, where the king had recently arrived on a difficult mission to placate the Covenanted Scots. Russell’s role as a messenger was exactly the kind of activity that had fallen to his elder brother during his time in the Commons, and in fact Bedford was named as one of the commissioners to Scotland.20CJ ii. 263b; Procs. LP vi. 487. No more is heard of Russell until 15 December, when he acted as a teller. The debate that day on whether to publish the Grand Remonstrance was long and heated, and after four in the afternoon a motion was put to bring in candles, the effect of which would have been to prolong the debate. Denzil Holles and Sir John Clotworthy were the tellers for those who wanted to continue, Sir Robert Hatton and Russell the tellers for the noes. The yeas won the division by 99 votes in a House of 205. The motion to publish the Remonstrance was passed soon afterwards.21CJ ii. 344b; D’Ewes (C), 295. Russell’s next, and last, contribution to the Parliament came on 1 March 1642, when he was part of a delegation with the Lords to the king on the subject of control of the militia.22CJ ii. 462a.

Russell’s attitude towards the militia is almost certain to have been one of scepticism towards Parliament’s pretensions to control of the trained bands. He was an early defector from Westminster to the king, joining him at Nottingham in August when he raised his standard. Soon after the outbreak of civil war Russell had been identified by the leadership of the Commons as an enemy to the parliamentary cause because of his journey to Nottingham. On 1 September 1642 the serjeant-at-arms was ordered to arrest him, and his case was referred to the committee on absent Members. A week later Sir William Strickland reported that Russell had attended the committee after being arrested at Shingay, and offered them by way of explanation that he had been obliged to attend the king, ‘being his servant’. 23CJ ii. 748a, 757b. On the 10th, a motion was put on whether he should be allowed to resume his parliamentary seat, which was voted down, but on the 24th his petition found favour, and he was released in order so that he could take his seat.24CJ ii. 761b, 781b. Perhaps it was his eldest brother’s eminence as a commander in the army of Parliament that led the Commons to take such a benign view of Russell, who promptly left London to join the king’s army.

Russell probably served first as lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of Sir Francis Wortley, but by mid-December 1642 was attached to Prince Rupert. Russell was the first to enter the town through its blown-up walls when Rupert took Cirencester in January 1643.25Mems. of Prince Rupert, i. 507; Particular Relation of the Action before Cyrencester, 9. Although there is some confusion about his precise regimental affiliation, he seems to have been the lieutenant-colonel under Thomas Lord Wentworth at Chalgrove (18 June 1643), and took over the regiment of Henry Lunsford when the latter was killed at Bristol (27 July).26Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, i. 68, ii. 433. All of these units were under Rupert’s overall command. As one of the ‘blue-coats’ of Rupert’s own regiment, Russell was at the first battle of Newbury (20 Sept. 1643), where he was wounded.27A True and Impartiall Relation (Oxford, 1643), sig. A2(iv) (E.69.10).

He may still have been unfit for active military service when in January 1644 he was summoned to the Oxford Parliament. He did not sign the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex in pursuit of peace negotiations, and was among the late arrivals, ‘through several accidents’, at the Parliament.28Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575; The Names of the Lords and Commons (1646), 5. On 22 January, as a consequence of attending the rival assembly, he was finally disabled by the Westminster Parliament from taking his seat there.29CJ iii. 374a. He was at Marston Moor in July 1644, and in November that year, his manservant was at Woburn, where Russell’s mother lived, taking friendly messages between the dowager countess and the parliamentarian governor of Newport Pagnell, Sir Samuel Luke*.30CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 664; Letter Bks. of Sir Samuel Luke, 397. Russell returned to Rupert’s regiment, and there are reports of him in 1645 at Evesham (9 May) and at the taking of Leicester (30 May).31Symonds, Diary, 165, 180. He fought at Naseby, and got away, after the royalist defeat, first to Worcester and subsequently back to the king’s headquarters at Oxford.32Letter Bks. of Sir Samuel Luke, 622; CCC 1208. In April 1646, he petitioned to compound for his delinquency, and on 24 September his fine was set at £7,000, half the value of his estate in Shingay and Covent Garden. His case was initially helped by his brother, the earl of Bedford, and in November 1648, when his fine was noted as still unpaid, by Sir Thomas Fairfax*, who confirmed that Russell was entitled to the concessions agreed on in the articles of surrender agreed for Oxford. His fine was re-calculated at a little over £2,204. He was still under the scrutiny of the commissioners for penal taxation in July 1652.33CCC 1208.

Soon after Russell had escaped the attentions of the compounding authorities, in November 1653 he was approached by Charles Stuart to become one of the founder-members of the Sealed Knot, working for the restoration of the Stuart monarchy.34Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 75. In the incorrigibly factionalized circles surrounding the exiled king, Russell’s friendship with Rupert was considered by some to be an obstacle to his inclusion in the Knot, and in any case, Russell had been an object of suspicion to the republican government from at least as early as April 1651. In 1654, Russell’s status as an agent for the exiled royalists was fully understood by John Thurloe*, the lord protector’s secretary of state.35HMC 10th Rep. i. 578; TSP ii. 513, iii. 384; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 89; idem, ‘Sir Richard Willys and Secretary Thurloe’, EHR lxix. 381. Despite, or perhaps because of, the high profile of its members, the Sealed Knot was never effective as an agency on the king’s behalf, but for his part in the plotting, Russell was arrested and detained in June 1655 and between September and December 1656.36TSP v. 407; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 164, 186, 188. There was talk of a trial in May 1657, and in March 1658 Russell was re-arrested and committed to the Tower with other members of the Knot, Sir William Compton† and Sir Richard Willys. Released after three months, Russell came close to being tried for treason and was this time warned by Thurloe that further involvement in plotting would cost him his life.37CCSP iv. 41; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 16; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 220, 231; ‘Sir William Compton’, Oxford DNB. This doubtless influenced Russell’s inclinations towards caution still further, and he poured cold water on the plans for the rising known by the name of Sir George Boothe*, even though Sir Edward Hyde* thought him ‘a good man and fit to be trusted with greater matters’.38CCSP iii. 336; HMC 10th Rep. vi. 195, 203, 212; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 266.

With the other Sealed Knot members, Russell was side-lined during the restoration of the monarchy, and was thus not among those showered with rewards after Charles II had taken the throne. In November 1660, he was commissioned as colonel of the king’s foot guards, later the grenadier guards, which he commanded until 1681.39Dalton, Army Lists, i. 7. In July 1662 he petitioned the king for a patent to manage an ‘insurance company for navigation’, presumably meaning a privateer force, funded by raising a joint stock of £100,000, but nothing seems to have come of it.40CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 446. In October 1664, he was given a grant which had formerly been enjoyed by the countess of Peterborough, but early the following year, Russell had displeased the king enough to merit brief detention in custody.41CSP Dom. 1664-5, pp. 50, 281. Apart from serving as a commissioner of sewers for the Bedford Great Level, where his family interests were significant, he seems to have kept out of politics altogether. He drew up his will on 7 April 1683, dividing his assets between the sons of his brother, Edward Russell, and making one of these, Edward Russell†, his executor.42Worcs. RO, 705:56, BA 3910/17. John Russell died on 25 November 1687 and was buried, according to his wish, in the family vault Chenies. His executor went on to play a significant part, as one of the ‘Immortal Seven’, in bringing about the accession of William III.