RUSSELL, John III

Definite identification of the John Russell who represented Weymouth in 1449 presents difficulties. The name was by no means uncommon, and a credible case might be offered for a number of different men to have been elected for the borough. Four John Russells stand out as possible contenders. One of them lived close to Weymouth at Melcombe Regis, traded as a merchant from that port, and served as bailiff of Melcombe in three successive years, 1425-8.2 CP40/689, rot. 56d; E159/203, recorda Mich. rot. 6; 204, recorda Mich. rot. 2; 205, recorda Mich. rot. 15. He was the man of this name who attested the parliamentary elections for Melcombe five times between 1427 and 1437, and was probably the merchant who as alias Gyle also held property in Dorchester.3 CAD, vi. C6014; Recs. Dorchester, ed. Mayo, 269. A second namesake, employed as a clerk of the Exchequer in the late 1430s and 1440s, was active in the Dorset port of Poole, along the coast from Weymouth. In December 1439 he was commissioned to requisition vessels in London and have them sailed to Poole to transport the earl of Somerset and his retinue to Normandy; seven months later he repaid expenses in connexion with the shipping for the passage of Lord Scales to France from the same port; and in February and November 1441 there were similar payments made to him for conveying the duke of York’s forces across the Channel.4 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 372, 451, 538; E403/739, mm. 15, 17. At the time of the elections to the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.) close links existed between Weymouth and the Isle of Wight, for Weymouth’s lord the duke of York also held the lordship of the island. It is therefore possible that John Russell of ‘Meryfeld’ on the Isle of Wight was the MP. The Commons in this Parliament, seriously concerned about the threat of invasion from France after the fall of Rouen, presented petitions regarding the vital necessity to organize the defence of the island, while praising the actions of York’s appointee Henry Bruyn* as its steward. John Russell of ‘Meryfeld’ had inherited land on the island from his father Richard, and was to be commissioned in 1456 and 1457 to array the able-bodied men there, and arrange for watches to be kept and beacons set up. In December 1460 he was among those named by the Yorkist government to resist the rebels, and a year later Edward IV granted him for life the office of keeper of the King’s artillery at Carisbrooke castle.5 I.o.W. RO, Oglander mss, OG/C/57; P/2, 4; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 307, 347, 638; 1461-7, pp. 61, 203.

Yet the strongest case that can be made is that the Weymouth MP of 1449 was the elder son of Henry Russell alias Gascoigne. Henry was a man of considerable influence in the borough which he had himself represented in the Commons in four earlier Parliaments, and on the occasion of the election of November 1449 appeared at the county court to offer sureties for the Members for Weymouth.6 C219/15/7. His son John must have been still a young man at this time, perhaps even short of attaining his majority.7 When his maternal gdfa. John Herring died in 1455 John was said to be 24 ‘and more’, so had presumably been born at some point before 1431: C139/162/21. Yet he stood to inherit Henry’s lands, and through his mother he was coheir of the affluent Dorset esquire John Herring. Indeed, Herring clearly favoured him: seven years earlier he had arranged that if he died without male issue this grandson John Russell should inherit specified landed holdings in Horiford, Sutton Poyntz and elsewhere; and more recently, in April of this same year of 1449 he had settled on John in tail after his own death three of his manors and a substantial part of the rest of his estate. Furthermore, Herring had arranged that Alice Froxmere, to whom his grandson was betrothed, should have as her jointure the holdings in Horiford, Sutton Poyntz and Westhall.8 C139/162/21. The overlord of these particular lands was James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, and it seems very likely that it was the earl’s trusted retainer Henry Filongley* who had brokered the marriage between Russell and Alice Froxmere, for Alice, who came from a family living in distant Worcestershire, was closely related to him.9 Their precise relationship is uncertain, but Filongley’s sister Margaret was apparently the wife of William Froxmere: Vis. Worcs. (Harl. Soc. xxvii), 39. The marriage was also significant in terms of continuity in the representation of Weymouth, for at the time it was arranged Filongley was representing the borough in the Parliament of February-July 1449, and his nephew, Alice’s kinsman Thomas Froxmere*, was to be elected to do so in 1453. It is entirely possible that the elections of Filongley and Froxmere (as well as that of the young John Russell) were all furthered by Russell’s father Henry. Whether the interests of the earl of Wiltshire were also a factor in John’s return remains open to speculation, yet it should be noted that when in the spring of 1457 the earl acquired the Dorset manor of Bradpole and the hundreds of Redehove and Beaminster, John joined Filongley and Froxmere as his feoffees to complete the transaction.10 CCR, 1454-61, p. 213; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 384.

John inherited his share of his grandfather Herring’s estates in 1455, a share seemingly much larger than that accorded to his cousin John de la Lynde, although his father retained for life Herring’s principal manor of Chalton Herring.11 C139/162/21. In the years that followed, before he entered his patrimony, John appeared in the records only occasionally. It was probably he who served on a jury at Sherborne in October 1455 at the inquisition post mortem for Eleanor, widow of Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford, and dowager countess of Arundel, and as ‘esquire’ he attended the county court at Dorchester with his father for the shire elections to the Parliament of 1460.12 C139/159/35; C219/16/6. There is nothing to indicate whether in the civil wars he lent active support to his feudal lord the earl of Wiltshire (who was executed after Towton by the victorious Yorkists), for he survived the change of regime. He was pricked as a juror at sessions of oyer and terminer held at Dorchester in May 1462, and served on the jury at the inquisition post mortem of William, Lord Zouche of Harringworth, held a year later at Shaftesbury.13 KB9/21/18; C139/159/35; C140/8/29.

Towards the end of 1463, or early in the next year, John’s father died and he came into his extensive inheritance (with the exception of the manor of Blynchesfeld, which was kept by his stepmother until her death in 1479).14 Scott Thomson, 93, 95; E149/240/16. At what stage he inherited the manor of Berwick, destined to become the principal seat of the Russells, is less certain. Under the terms of a settlement of 1428 Berwick was held for life by the widow of Morgan Gogh, with remainders in tail first to Hugh and Edith Deverell and then to John’s grandparents, Stephen Russell alias Gascoigne† and his wife Alice.15 Scott Thomson, 50-51, 101-2. Perhaps it had fallen to John by 1472, when as a landowner of substance in Dorset he was elected to the Commons as a knight of the shire. The Parliament, which sat for seven sessions, eventually concluded its business in March 1475, having agreed to finance the King’s invasion of France. Whether Russell himself crossed the Channel is uncertain, although he was commissioned to take the musters at Weymouth of forces under Lords Audley and Duras that were expected to cross to Brittany. Curiously, although in 1482 he again served on a jury at an inquisition post mortem, this time at Dorchester,16 CPR, 1467-77, p. 552; C140/84/38. he was never singled out for the offices of county administration which members of the gentry of his standing were expected to fill.

More is recorded of Russell’s private affairs in this period. In August 1477 he made a settlement on his son James and the latter’s wife Joan, daughter of the late John Wyse, of the manor of Westhall by Sherborne and a moiety of his lands in Horiford.17 Dorset Hist. Centre, D102/T8. At Stour Provost the tenancy of a large part of the Russell lands were held of John by his sister Christine, in accordance with arrangements made on her marriage many years earlier to Walter Cheverell*, and also in the 1470s John gave property in Maiden Newton to his nephew John Cheverell (d.1485) and the latter’s wife Margery, the daughter of John Wyke II*. He helped his sister to execute her son’s will. Russell extended the family property beyond the boundaries of Dorset, for towards the end of his life he acquired Thorndown in Somerset from the Newburghs.18 Scott Thomson, 105-6; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 145.; CP40/905, rot. 349d. A few years before his death, he was appointed to a commission to inquire whether the manor of Swyre belonged to Henry VII as parcel of the earldom of Salisbury,19 CPR, 1494-1509, p. 286. this being a matter that concerned him directly, for he was the principal tenant at Swyre. Indeed, after his death, at an unknown date shortly before 10 May 1505, he was to be buried next to his wife in Swyre parish church. Russell’s eldest son, James, did not long survive him, for he died soon after making his will on 30 Nov. that same year .20 Scott Thomson, 107-8. Of his other two sons, Thomas and Henry, the latter was then rector of East Stoke, a living in the gift of the Cheverells. It was in the next generation that the Russells came to national prominence, with the elevation of James’s son John as Baron Russell and earl of Bedford.