
 
 <
 
 RACHEL 
 LADY RUSSELL.
 
 THE 
 
 MARRIED LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 RACHEL 
 LADY RUSSELL. 
 
 BY 
 
 M. GUIZOT. 
 
 )M 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. 
 
 LONDON: 
 THOMAS BOSWORTH. 
 
 1855.
 
 TO 
 HER GRACE 
 
 THK 
 
 DUCHESS OF BEDFORD, 
 
 RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY 
 
 THE TRANSLATOR.
 
 THIS essay by M. Guizot, which appeared 
 in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," March, 
 1 855, has been translated by permission of the 
 author, and at the desire of the Duke of Bed- 
 ford, as a valuable accompaniment to the col- 
 lection of letters by Rachel Lady Russell, 
 recently published. 
 
 The translation has been rendered as literal 
 as possible, by the express wish of M. Guizot. 
 
 JOHN MARTIN. 
 
 Woburn Abbey, 
 June, 1855.
 
 THE 
 
 MARRIED LIFE OF RACHEL 
 LADY RUSSELL. 
 
 I. 
 
 As romance is so much in request, why not search 
 for it in history ? There, will be found life, with its 
 most varied and dramatic scenes, the human heart 
 with its strongest as well as its most gentle passions, 
 and above all a sovereign charm, the charm of reality. 
 I admire and appreciate as much as any person the 
 creative power of imagination, which places before us 
 endowed with life, animation and feeling, ideal beings 
 invested with the attributes of humanity, and display- 
 ing all the riches of the mind through the ever- vary ing 
 vicissitudes of fortune ; but those persons who have 
 really lived, who have actually experienced calami- 
 ties, passions, joys and sorrows, the contemplation 
 of which is so interesting to us, fascinate me still more 
 powerfully than the most perfect productions of poe- 
 try or romance. The living creature, the work of 
 God, when seen under its divine aspects, is more beau- 
 tiful than all human creation, and of all poets God is 
 the greatest. 
 
 In studying the revolution of England, I have met 
 with two episodes more attractive, in my opinion, than 
 
 B
 
 2 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 any romance : a king seeking a marriage of affection, 
 and love in the household of a Christian nobleman, 
 where, in the characters of the most elevated per- 
 sonages private life is seen, with its most charming and 
 most painful secrets, amidst the greatest events of pub- 
 lic life. Perhaps at some future period I may relate 
 the matrimonial project of the king : in this instance, 
 it is the household of the English nobleman I desire 
 to portray. 
 
 II. 
 
 AMONG the counsellors and defenders of Charles I. 
 in his adversity, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of South- 
 ampton, was one of the most independent and most 
 faithful. Neither the court, nor the grandeur of his 
 own position, were to his taste. The almost simulta- 
 neous death of his father and elder brother, placed him 
 unexpectedly in the possession of the title and fortune 
 of his house. It was a source of more embarrassment 
 than pleasure, and for some time he blushed, and 
 turned away when addressed as, my Lord. His dis- 
 position was melancholy, indolent and proud, ener- 
 getic but reserved, and taciturn, strongly attached to 
 his own ideas and opinions, and ready for their sake 
 at all sacrifices to brave haughtily every opposition, and 
 without the desire of power, having little confidence in 
 success, slow to hope, and quitting retirement only at 
 the call of duty or necessity. When the struggle com- 
 menced between the king and the long parliament,
 
 RACHEL LADY KUSSELL. 3 
 
 Lord Southampton took his seat in the House of Lords 
 unfavourably disposed to the acts and claims of the 
 Crown and the Government, above all to Lord Straf- 
 ford. As a loyal Englishman, he respected the laws, 
 national traditions, and the intervention of parliament 
 in the business of the country. A just and meek Chris- 
 tian, although he did not regard liberty of conscience 
 as a right, tyranny on this point disgusted him, and 
 he desired more tolerance and charity for dissenters. 
 On the opening of the long parliament, he frequently 
 voted against the crown, the bishops, and for the re- 
 form of abuses and the punishment of excesses of re- 
 ligious and political despotism. He rarely appeared 
 at court, where he was considered dissatisfied and a 
 Frojideur, like his friend the Earl of Essex ; but when 
 he beheld the outbreaks of popular violence, the rav- 
 ings and iniquities of the parliament, laws violated, 
 and monarchy threatened by a band of despots, he at 
 once returned and took his place, among the defend- 
 ers and even the servants of the king with a con- 
 scientious pride, but without pleasure and without 
 confidence. Opposed to all combination of party, troub- 
 ling himself little about reforming the constitution of 
 his country for the future ; he resisted for the pre- 
 sent, without regard to abstract maxims, or distant 
 hopes, injustice, illegality, disorder and violence, under 
 whatever name they were committed. The parlia- 
 mentary proceedings against Lord Straflford appeared 
 to him arbitrary, and the penalty excessive ; this 
 nobleman whom he formerly attacked, he now de-
 
 4 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 fended. A vote of parliament had decreed that its 
 members should not take office under the crown : he 
 accepted, though unwillingly, the duties of privy 
 counsellor, and subsequently that of gentleman of the 
 bed-chamber. Civil war broke out ; he deplored it, 
 and anticipated no happy result, whoever should be 
 the victor; he immediately joined the royal army, 
 was present at the battle of Edge Hill, followed the 
 court to Oxford, and became every day more dissatis- 
 fied with its proceedings. He still preserved there 
 his independence, and his susceptible pride. He ex- 
 pressed himself on one occasion in severe terms at the 
 council, upon Prince Rupert and his arrogant pre- 
 tensions towards the English nobility. The prince 
 having received an exaggerated account, inquired of 
 him if it was true. The Earl admitted and main- 
 tained his words, repeating them exactly. Rupert, still 
 feeling offended, conveyed to him a message, that he 
 expected to receive satisfaction, and to meet him soon 
 sword in hand, on horseback. The meeting took place 
 the following day. " What weapon do you choose ?" 
 asked the Prince. " I have no horse here fit for this 
 purpose," said the Earl, " I know not where to find one 
 on so short a notice; on the other hand I am not power- 
 ful enough to encounter your highness in this mode ; 
 I beg you will excuse me and permit me to choose 
 the arms that I can use; I will fight on foot and 
 with pistols." Rupert agreed without hesitation; 
 seconds were appointed, and the meeting fixed for the 
 next day ; but the affair having been noised abroad,
 
 KACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 5 
 
 the Lords of the Council interfered, caused the gates 
 of the city to be shut, summoned the seconds, and 
 succeeded in reconciling the Earl with the Prince, 
 who treated him ever afterwards with the greatest 
 respect. 
 
 The civil war terminated, and the long having fallen 
 into the power of parliament, Lord Southampton 
 eagerly sought opportunities of approaching him and 
 means of serving him. When all had failed, when the 
 trial, the sentence, and execution of Charles left him 
 nothing more to hope or attempt, he did not feel him- 
 self exonerated from all duty towards his royal master; 
 the 18th of February, 1649, the day when the remains 
 of Charles were to be deposited in the royal tomb at 
 "Windsor, Lord Southampton was one of the four who 
 followed to the entrance of the vault, the 'coffin of the 
 prince whom he could neither exonerate nor save. 
 The snow fell so heavily that in the short distance to 
 be traversed, the black velvet pall, which covered the 
 coffin, became completely white, symbolic of the inno- 
 cence which the faithful followers of the king desired 
 to establish. Royalty being abolished, during the 
 protectorate of Cromwell, Lord Southampton lived in 
 retirement in his house at Titchfield in Hampshire, 
 alike ignorant of the plots of his own party, and the 
 new authorities of his country ; invariably faithful to 
 the proscribed Charles II., sending him good counsel 
 and such pecuniary aid as his fortune, diminished by 
 sequestrations and taxes would permit, but taking no 
 part in attempts at insurrection of the royalists, nor
 
 C THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 in the combinations of dissatisfied republicans, nor in 
 the intrigues of foreigners. His good sense, his jealous 
 patriotism, and his natural indolence, united in retain- 
 ing him in this state of inaction and honour. He 
 was informed one day, that Cromwell being in Hamp- 
 shire on the occasion of the marriage of his son Rich- 
 ard, intended to surprise him with a visit. Lord 
 Southampton immediately quitted his residence, and 
 did not return until Cromwell had left the county. 
 When the restoration took place, Lord Southampton, 
 notwithstanding his immobility during the interreg- 
 num, immediately placed himself in the first rank of 
 the nobles and advisers of Charles I. whom royalist 
 feeling had called to power; he was moreover the 
 intimate friend of the Lord Chancellor Hyde, who 
 then possessed the entire confidence of Charles II. 
 Lord Southampton was appointed first Lord of 
 the Treasury, at the same time that Hyde became 
 Lord Chancellor and Earl of Clarendon, and during 
 seven years the two friends, alike in principle though 
 different in character, ruled with difficulty a profli- 
 gate and heartless king, an intriguing and corrupt 
 court, a victorious though dissatisfied party, and a 
 proud nation humbled and irritated. Clarendon, who 
 was ambitious, laborious, passionately attached to his 
 church, his cause, his power, and his rank, struggled 
 with desperation against his enemies, old and new, and 
 against the decline of his influence with his royal pupil, 
 now become his king. Southampton, less active, 
 loving his ease and leisure, more liberal in mind and
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 7 
 
 heart, and tormented by painful maladies, conscien- 
 tiously discharged his duties in making vain efforts to 
 maintain some order and honesty in the finances, fre- 
 quently melancholy, disgusted, and ill, he evinced, to 
 the great chagrin of Clarendon, his desire to quit an 
 office which he held without pleasure or success. 
 France has witnessed, in the last century, two virtuous 
 and extraordinary men, Turgot and Malesherbes, asso- 
 ciated in like manner in the exercise of power, and 
 with dispositions nearly similar : Turgot, full of ar- 
 dour, faith, hope, and perseverance; Malesherbes 
 equally sincere, but weaker, more easily discouraged, 
 saying : " Turgot will not let me retire ; he does not 
 perceive that we shall be both turned out" They 
 were in fact turned out by the weakness of a king 
 well disposed like themselves, who valued them, but 
 who did not support them better than he defended him- 
 self. Charles II., as clear-sighted as he was corrupt, 
 soon discovered that Lord Southampton was indiffer- 
 ent to power, and sought to profit by this indifference, 
 quietly to free himself from an independent and incon- 
 venient counsellor ; but Clarendon, employing all the 
 influence that remained to him, maintained his friend 
 in office, as he did himself. Lord Southampton, who 
 was Lord Treasurer until his death, which took place 
 a few months after, quitted office and life, without fall- 
 ing, like the Lord Chancellor in the sadness of exile, 
 under the unjust hatred of the people and the ingrati- 
 tude of the kin ST.
 
 8 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 III. 
 
 LORD Southampton had married a French lady, 
 Rachel de Ruvigny, daughter of one of those noble 
 families,* who in the sixteenth century, neither from 
 personal interest, nor from any temptation of power 
 or wealth, but from the simple conviction of faith and 
 conscience, embraced the cause of the Reformation, 
 feeble and persecuted, even from the cradle. At the 
 period of the marriage of Lord Southampton with 
 Mdlle. de Ruvigny, the edict of Nantes was in full 
 force, and Richelieu, while he crushed the protestants 
 as a political party, did not molest them in their reli- 
 gious rites, and even employed, without hesitation, in 
 different public capacities, those who showed them- 
 selves devoted to his own interests and those of the 
 Crown. Mazarin followed the example of Richelieu ; 
 equally prudent with regard to the religious liberty of 
 protestants, but more timid in admitting them into 
 public employment. Though unmolested and tranquil 
 by the limitations of the edict, defeated Protestant- 
 ism lost daily in France that true freedom of action 
 and of general opinion, without which there is no 
 secure guarantee for liberty. Their churches were not 
 closed, neither were the protestants compelled to leave 
 the country: but were condemned to private life, 
 
 * Their name was Massue, Lords of Raynevel in Picardy, 
 Marquis de Ruvigny. See the Dictionnaire de la Noblesse de la 
 Chesnaye des Bois, t. ix. p. 594, et le Nobilmre de Picardie.
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 9 
 
 isolated, and like aliens. The Marquis de Ruvigny, 
 brother of Lady Southampton, was among the pro- 
 testants of this period, one of the most eminent and 
 talented; during the troubles of the Fronde, he afforded 
 to Anne of Austria, and to Mazarin himself, proofs of 
 an active, useful, and persevering fidelity. When 
 the Fronde was subdued, Mazarin, wishing to recom- 
 pense Ruvigny, appointed him deputy general of the 
 national synod of the reformed churches in France, a 
 double and mediatorial office of negotiator, between 
 the king and the protestants, and the protestants and 
 the king. Ruvigny discharged this ungrateful duty 
 with skill, often exposed to the suspicion and displea- 
 sure of both parties, but ever faithful to his king and 
 his religion, indifferent about displeasing either party, 
 provided he succeeded in maintaining between them 
 justice and peace. However, this was neither his ca- 
 reer, nor the sole object of his life ; he wished to make 
 his way, whether in the army or not, as a diplomatist ; 
 but he was given to understand, in that department he 
 could not be employed without changing his religion. 
 They made use of him among the protestants, a ser- 
 vice which he alone could perform ; but beyond that 
 all future advancement was closed to him. After the 
 death of Mazarin and the restoration of the Stuarts, 
 the numerous relations of Ruvigny in England, his 
 intimate connection with the family of Southampton, 
 liu.^ell, and other distinguished personages in the 
 court or in the opposition, procured for him the attain- 
 ment of his wishes, which he had hitherto sought in
 
 10 THE MARRIED LIFE or 
 
 vain ; he was several times employed in the most pri- 
 vate negotiations between the courts of Paris and Lon- 
 don, labouring to secure sometimes the secret agree- 
 ment of the two monarchs, at others the secret influ- 
 ence of Louis XIV. over the most violent leaders 
 of the opposition in Parliament. Louis XIV. sin- 
 cerely esteemed him, and Charles II. showed him a 
 marked preference : " I have expressed to Ruvigny 
 all that I have on my mind : never had France been 
 as forward in their intentions towards us as when 
 Ruvigny was here," wrote Charles to his sister the 
 Duchess of Orleans. A true Frenchman, a devoted 
 royalist, and sincere protestant, Ruvigny strove earn- 
 estly to serve at the same time his country, his king, 
 and his faith, without deceiving himself with the hope 
 of succeeding for any length of time in this difficult 
 attempt. The edict of Nantes was still in force, but 
 like those ruined and deserted edifices which only 
 wait the slightest blow to crumble to the ground. 
 Under the impulse of general opinion in catholic 
 France, and the earnest requisitions of the clergy, and 
 wishing to satisfy the false and fatal idea that power 
 has right over conscience, and that a united govern- 
 ment commands unity of faith, Louis XIV. with a 
 disregard of honesty that he did not exercise towards 
 foreigners, broke sometimes secretly, sometimes fear- 
 lessly, the royal promises and legal guarantees which a 
 part of his subjects had received from his predecessors. 
 The Marquis de Ruvigny, while serving the king 
 was not deceived as to the aim and final issue of this
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. n 
 
 work ; and resolved, when the last moment arrived, to 
 sacrifice everything rather than his faith and honour, 
 he took measures beforehand to obtain for himself and 
 his children letters of naturalisation in England, and 
 
 O ' 
 
 in January, 1680, he wrote to his niece, Lady Rus- 
 sell, " I send you our letters of naturalisation, which 
 will be safer in your hands than in mine. I beg you, 
 and your sister also (Lady Elizabeth Xoel), to pre- 
 serve them for me. They may be of use, for nothing 
 can be more uncertain than the future." The event 
 was not long uncertain : five years after the edict of 
 Nantes was formally revoked ; Ruvigny obtained with 
 considerable difficulty as a reward for his services, 
 and through the personal favour of Louis XIV., per- 
 mission to retire, rather than fly from the country 
 with his family, and some years later, in 1711, the 
 king granted to the Abbe de Polignac the confiscated 
 property of his son, Henry de Ruvigny, engaged in 
 the service of William III., and created in England 
 Earl of Galway. The revocation of the edict of Xantes, 
 without speaking of its general consequences, deprived 
 France and the king of those three excellent and 
 illustrious servants, the Marechal de Schomberg, in 
 the army ; the Admiral Duquesne, in the navy ; and 
 the Marquis de Ruvigny, in diplomacy.
 
 12 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 . 
 IV. 
 
 BY the marriage of the Earl of Southampton with 
 Mdlle. de Ruvigny a daughter was born in 1636, 
 who was like her mother named Rachel. Descended 
 from two noble and conscientious lines of ancestry, 
 educated in principles of piety and virtue, she received 
 from the events in the midst of which she passed her 
 youth, those powerful moral impressions which ele- 
 vate the mind Avithout overpowering it, and learnt 
 from an early period to sympathise with the misfor- 
 tunes of others, and to bear with resignation domestic 
 trials. She lost her mother in her infancy. Lord 
 Southampton married a second time, frequently a 
 cause of many annoyances, even when it is not a source 
 of real unhappiness ; but it by no means diminished 
 the tender affection he bore to the two daughters of 
 his first wife, and Rachel's respect and attachment to 
 her father experienced no change. In politics she 
 saw him devote himself without hesitation or degra- 
 dation of mind, to the cause which, all things con- 
 sidered, he believed the most just ; remaining at the 
 same time a patriot and a royalist. In religion, the 
 views and actions of Lord Southampton were im- 
 bued with a mild and liberal piety : nothing, in the 
 life which his daughter led, disturbed or removed 
 the impressions which her father's salutary example 
 afforded her. Precisely at the period when she emerged 
 from childhood into youth, she lived far from the world
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 13 
 
 in the country, in those habits of tranquillity , dignity 
 and simplicity, of social elevation and popular benevo- 
 lence, which constitute the honour and the credit of a 
 Christian aristocracy. In 1653, when seventeen, she 
 was beautiful, pious, and cheerful, not too much led 
 away by imagination, disposed to enjoy life calmly, 
 receiving her blessings as favours, and her trials as 
 lessons, from the hands of her Creator. Lord Vaughan, 
 the eldest son of the Earl of Carberry, made pro- 
 posals of marriage for her to her parents, with scarcely 
 any previous acquaintance. It was as she after- 
 wards expressed herself to one of her friends ; " ac- 
 ceptance rather than choosing on either side." She 
 went to reside with her father-in-law, at Golden Grove 
 in Wales, and discharged without effort or display 
 all the duties of her new position, inspiring those 
 around her with a real affection, produced by the 
 effect resulting from a mild spirit, a gentle disposi- 
 tion,' and above all, a goodness so perfect, so constant, 
 that it was remarked to herself as a singular merit. 
 A friend of her husband's wrote to her, " There is not 
 in the world so great a charm as goodness ; and your 
 Ladyship is the greatest argument to prove it. All 
 that know you are thereby forced to honour you, nei- 
 ther are you to thank them, because they cannot do 
 otherwise." Fourteen years were thus passed by Lady 
 Vaughan, happily and virtuously. In 1665, she gave 
 birth to a child who died almost immediately. In 
 1667, she became a widow, but we have no details 
 of the death of her husband ; she resided with her
 
 14 THE MARRIED LIFE OP 
 
 beloved sister, Lady Elizabeth Noel, at Titchfield, in 
 the house of her father, where she had passed her in- 
 fancy. Lord Southampton, on his death, left to his 
 two daughters all his property ; Lady Elizabeth Noel 
 received for her share, Titchfield; the estate and 
 domain of Stratton, also in Hampshire, fell to the lot 
 of Lady Vaughan. 
 
 V. 
 
 ABOUT the same time, William Russell, second son 
 of the Earl of Bedford, three years younger than 
 Lady Vaughan, made his debut in the world and in 
 public life. After travelling three years on the Con- 
 tinent, he returned to England a short time before the 
 restoration, and was elected a member of the House 
 of Commons which restored Charles II. to his throne. 
 There are few traces of his life and character at this 
 period ; a note addressed by him to Mr. Thornton indi- 
 cates a disposition sincerely pious : " I am recovering," 
 he says, "from a violent illness, which has reduced 
 me almost to the gates of death. My prayer to God 
 is, that he will grant me grace to employ my health 
 in his service, and to make good use of the trial which 
 he imposed upon me." Yet the habits of the times, 
 the example of the court, the seductions of youth, and 
 perhaps a naturally indolent mind and careless dispo- 
 sition, threw him for a time into habits of irregularity. 
 We hear of his being engaged in several duels, pro- 
 voked probably by frivolous causes ; but at the mo-
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 15 
 
 ment of this act always serious in itself, however trifling 
 the cause, serious reflections were revived in the mind 
 of the young Lord Russell, imbued as it was with an 
 affectionate simplicity and touching benevolence. The 
 2nd of July, 1663, he writes to his father, the Earl 
 of Bedford : 
 
 " Although I think I have courage enough to fight 
 with anybody without despairing of the victory, yet 
 nevertheless that the issue of combats depends upon 
 fortune, and it is not always he that has most courage 
 and the justest cause who overcomes, but he that is 
 luckiest ; and having found myself very unlucky in 
 several things, I have thought fit to leave these few 
 lines behind me for to express (in case I should mis- 
 carry) some kind of acknowledgement for the goodness 
 your Lordship has had in shewing me so much kind- 
 ness above what I have deserved. I have the deepest 
 sense of it in the world, and shall always during life 
 make it my business to express it by my life and 
 actions. For really, my Lord, I think myself the 
 happiest man in the world in a father, and I hope if 
 I have not already, I should at least for the future, 
 have carried myself so as not to make your Lordship 
 think yourself unhappy in a son. My Lord, in case 
 I miscarry, for without it I suppose this will not come 
 into your hands, let me beg it of you to remember me 
 in the persons of those who have served me well. 
 Pray let not my friend Taafe suffer for his generous 
 readiness to serve me, not only on this occasion, but 
 in several other wherein he has shewed himself a very
 
 16 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 generous and kind friend to me ; therefore pray bring 
 him off clear, and let him not suffer for my sake. For 
 my men, I doubt not but your Lordship will reward 
 them well. For Robin, my footman, because he has 
 served me faithfully, carefully, and with great affec- 
 tion, and has lost a great deal of time with me, I de- 
 sire that twenty pounds a year may be settled on him 
 during his life : and the French man I hope you will 
 reward very well, having served with care and affec- 
 tion. For my debts, I hope your Lordship will see 
 them paid, and therefore I shall set them down to 
 prevent mistakes. I owe one hundred pounds, forty 
 pounds, and I think some four or five more to my 
 Lord Brook; this is all I owe which I can call to 
 mind at present, except for the cloaths and some other 
 things I have had this winter, of which my man can 
 give an account. I have not time to write any longer, 
 therefore I shall conclude with assuring your Lord- 
 ship that I am as much as it is possible for one to be, 
 Your Lordship's, &c. &c. 
 WILLIAM RUSSELL." 
 
 A life cannot continue long ill-regulated when 
 the mind is so upright, respectful and affectionate. 
 The morals of "\Villiam Russell were not long in rising 
 to the level of his mind. Lady Vaughan was pro- 
 bably no stranger to the re-establishment of moral 
 harmony in the young nobleman, to whom she was 
 about to be united. Of all human influence, that 
 springing from virtuous love is the most powerful and
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 17 
 
 the most gentle. No details exist of their first ac- 
 quaintance; we know only from a letter of Lady 
 Percy, half-sister to Lady Vaughan, that, in the year 
 1667, William Russell had been attracted by the young 
 widow : " he professes a great desire," says she, " to 
 gain one who is so desirable in all respects." Lady 
 Vaughan had no children by her first marriage, and 
 was moreover a rich heiress. William Russell, a 
 younger son, had neither title nor fortune to offer her. 
 He was on that account more timid and reserved ; 
 but there existed between them too much natural 
 and intimate sympathy to permit such considerations, 
 or the opinions of the world to keep them long sepa- 
 rated. The marriage took place in the beginning of 
 the year 1670, but according to the custom of Eng- 
 lish society, Rachel Wriothesley preserved the name 
 of Lady Vaughan until the year 1678, at which time, 
 by the death of his elder brother, William Russell 
 became the heir, and took the title of Lord Russell. 
 In our days we should have expected that Lady 
 Vaughan would not have waited so long in adopting 
 the name of the man whom she loved ; personal feel- 
 ings have gained a victory over aristocratic tastes, and 
 recently Lady Cowper has not hesitated to give up 
 her title of Countess, on her marriage with Viscount 
 Palmerston, and assume the inferior title and name 
 of her husband.
 
 18 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 VI. 
 
 THERE is nothing more delightful in the world 
 than pure and virtuous love, that spontaneous and sin- 
 cere development of the desires and intimate feelings 
 of the mind, which has so much attraction, affording 
 infinite pleasure in its contemplation, even when pre- 
 sented burdened with error, trouble, disappointment 
 and sorrow. Love harmonising with conscience, over- 
 flowing the soul with joy, without disturbing its 
 beauty or its peace, is the highest flight of which hu- 
 man nature is capable, the satisfaction of our aspira- 
 tions at once the most human and the most divine ; 
 it is Paradise regained. The union of Rachel 
 Wriothesley and William Russell presents this rare 
 and delightful character. Rachel has hitherto appeared 
 tranquil, simple, virtuous without impulse or without 
 effort, pursuing modestly the direct and ordinary path 
 of life. Her heart so well suited to appreciate, 
 though without seeming to seek for it, is now pos- 
 sessed by ardent love and supreme happiness. Rachel 
 gave herself up to these feelings with perfect freedom 
 and trust; she loved with equal ardour, and inno- 
 cence, and was perfectly happy. She writes to her 
 husband : " If I were more fortunate in my expres- 
 sion, I could do myself more right when I would own 
 to my dearest Mr. Russell what real and perfect hap- 
 piness I enjoy, from that kindness he allows me every 
 day to receive new marks of, such as, in spite of the.
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 19 
 
 knowledge I have of my own wants, will not suffer 
 me to mistrust I want his love, though I do merit, to 
 so desirable a blessing ; but, my best life, you that 
 know so well how to love and to oblige, make my 
 felicity entire, by believing my heart possessed with 
 all the gratitude, honour, and passionate affection to 
 your person any creature is capable of, or can be ob- 
 liged to." And again, eight years after : " My dearest 
 heart, flesh and blood cannot have a truer and greater 
 sense of their own happiness than your poor but honest 
 wife has. I am glad you find Stratton so sweet ; may 
 you live to do so one fifty years more ; and, if God 
 pleases, I shall be glad I may keep your company 
 most of those years, unless you wish other at any 
 time ; then I think I could willingly leave all in the 
 world, knowing you would take care of our brats : they 
 are both well, and your great one's letter she hopes 
 came to you:" and also a year later; " to see any body 
 preparing, and taking their way to see what I long to 
 do a thousand times more than they, makes me not 
 endure to suffer their going without saying something 
 
 to my best life ; I would fain be telling my 
 
 heart more things any thing to be in a kind of talk 
 with him ; but I believe Spencer stays for my dispatch : 
 he was willing to go early ; but this was to be the 
 delight of this morning, and the support of the day. 
 It is performed in bed, thy pillow at my back ; where 
 thy dear head shall lie, I hope, to-morrow night, and 
 many more I trust in His mercy, notwithstanding all 
 our enemies or ill wishers. Love, and be willing to 
 be loved by R. Russell."
 
 20 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 Lady Russell did not confine herself to merely talk- 
 ing to her husband of her love ; she testified it for him 
 actively in trifles as well as in great things, by enter- 
 ing into all his concerns, his tastes, by living with 
 him in the world when he wished for society, or in the 
 country, when he preferred it, in taking care of his 
 amusements as of his happiness. When they were 
 separated, which rarely occurred, the one at Stratton, 
 and the other in London, she kept herself informed in 
 politics, and the news of the day, the occupations of 
 their friends, the events of society, and conveyed them 
 promptly to him without much exertion of mind, or 
 any design of raising herself in his eyes, but as an 
 observer solely interested in collecting what would 
 interest or divert him. In May, 1672, she writes to 
 him from London. 
 
 " I am very sure my dearest Mr. Russell meant to 
 oblige me extremely when he enjoined me to scribble 
 to him by the post, as knowing he could not do a 
 kinder thing than to let me see he designed not to 
 think me impertinent in it ; though we parted but 
 this morning, which I might reasonably have doubted 
 to have been, when I have passed all this long day 
 and learned nothing new can entertain you and your 
 good company. All I see either are or appear duller 
 to me than when you are here, and I do not find the 
 town is enlivened by the victory* we have obtained. 
 Many whisper the French behaved thcm- 
 
 * This was the bloody engagement at Solbay, of the 28th of 
 May, in which the Duke of York gained a dear-bought advan- 
 tage over the Dutch fleet, commanded by De Ruyter. Lady
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 21 
 
 selves not like firm friends. The Duke of York's 
 marriage is broke off. That, or other causes, makes 
 him look less in good humour than ordinary. They 
 say she. [the Archduchess of Inspruck] is offered the 
 King of Spain, and our Prince shall have D'Elbeuf. 
 Mrs. Ogle is to marry Craven Howard, Tom Howard's 
 son ; and Tom Wharton has another mistress in chase, 
 my Lady Rochester's grandchild, but he is so unfor- 
 tunate before the end, that it is mistrusted he may 
 miss her, though the grandmother is his great friend. 
 Young Arundel, my Lord Arundel of Trerice his 
 son, is extremely in love, and went down where she 
 is, and watched her coming abroad to take the air, 
 rode up to her coach. Mr. Wharton was on horse by 
 the coach side. Arundel thrust him away, and looking 
 into the coach, told her no man durst say he valued 
 her at the rate he did. Mr. Wharton, like a good 
 Christian, turned the other cheek; for he took no notice 
 of it ; but the other having no opportunity to see or 
 speak to her, was thus forced to return ; but Wharton 
 is admitted to the house." 
 
 I would say that beyond this ardent, lively and 
 tender love, another sentiment I will not say another 
 love, I like not similar words for such different 
 meanings another sentiment reigned in the mind 
 of Lady Russell, and early strengthened it for the 
 day of trial, during the days of her happiness. She 
 was a true Christian in mind and heart, full of faith 
 
 Unwell, \ve see, confirms what Burnet says of the supposed 
 treachery of the French fleet, then acting as our ally.
 
 22 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 in the dogmas of Christianity, of submission to Chris- 
 tian precepts, without bigotry, disliking controversy, 
 animated with discriminating and elevated charity to- 
 wards those who did not think exactly as she did. It 
 will be seen shortly, when the visitation of the 
 Almighty fell upon her, with what singular precision 
 and beautiful harmony she combined Christian and 
 human sentiments, piety and love. I wish only now 
 to point out the dominion of faith in her mind when 
 in a state of complete felicity, and this mind overjoyed 
 with her lot here below ; preparing itself with a deep 
 and humble conviction, to receive from the hands of 
 God the chastisements of which she appeared to have 
 a presentiment. In one of her letters in which she 
 expresses herself to her husband in terms overflowing 
 with tenderness and gratitude, she stops suddenly, 
 and says to him, " What have I to ask but a con- 
 tinuance, if God see fit, of these present enjoyments ? 
 if not, a submission without murmur to his most wise 
 dispensations and unerring providence ; having a 
 thankful heart for the years I have been so perfectly 
 contented in: he knows best when we have had enough 
 here ; what I most earnestly beg from his mercy is, 
 that we both live so as, which ever goes first, the other 
 may not sorrow as for one of whom they have no hope. 
 Then let us cheerfully expect to be together to a good 
 old age ; if not, let us not doubt but he will support 
 us under what trial he will inflict upon us. These 
 are necessary meditations sometimes, that we may not 
 be surprised above our strength by a sudden accident,
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 23 
 
 being unprepared. Excuse me, if I dwell too long 
 upon it : it is from my opinion that if we can be pre- 
 pared for all conditions, we can with the greater tran- 
 quillity enjoy the present, which I hope will be long 
 
 Let us pray daily that it may be so, and then 
 
 admit of no fears ; death is the extremest evil against 
 nature, it is true ; let us overcome the immoderate fear 
 of it, either to our friend or self, and then what light 
 hearts may we live with ? " 
 
 Ten years had passed away since the day when 
 Lady Russell addressed from London to her husband, 
 then at Stratton, these pious words : Lord Russell 
 was in his turn a temporary resident in London, and 
 his wife wrote to him from Stratton, September 25, 
 1682. " I know nothing new since you went; but 
 I know, as certainly as I live, that I have been for 
 twelve years as passionate a lover as ever woman was, 
 and hope to be so one twelve years more ; happy still, 
 and entirely yours." 
 
 VII. 
 
 SCARCELY ten months after this letter replete with 
 so much affection, happiness and love, the thunder- 
 bolt fell on this serene atmosphere ; Lord Russell 
 was a prisoner in the Tower, and appeared at the bar 
 of the Old Bailey accused of high treason. For seve- 
 ral years during which he sat in the House of Com- 
 mons, he took little part, nor perhaps much interest, 
 in the debates. He was young and moreover influ-
 
 24 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 enced by the impetuosity of youth. England slowly 
 exhausted the joy and the hopes which the restoration 
 had inspired. From the recollections of the Revolu- 
 tion, its principles, its acts and actors, a complete 
 re-action occupied all minds: Charles II. and his 
 court, with licentious egotism, encouraged these vicious 
 feelings till by constant indulgence they became ha- 
 bitual. Their pretensions, their vices, their errors, 
 gave rise to questions and new passions. The old 
 royalists, the men who had served Charles I. and fought 
 against Cromwell, had disappeared; new men, and 
 under their guidance, new parties, appeared on the 
 stage : the court party and the country party, after- 
 wards Tories and Whigs, heirs, but heirs thoroughly 
 transformed from Cavaliers and Roundheads. Parlia- 
 ment had become the arena and the indispensable in- 
 strument of political power ; the royalist long parlia- 
 ment, carried on though condemning the work which 
 the revolutionary long parliament had undertaken ; 
 the restored monarchy triumphed with the same 
 weapons that had overthrown it ; the king governed 
 the country by the parliament, and the parliament 
 through its leaders became the advisers of the crown. 
 By a coincidence not to be observed without emo- 
 tion, it was about the same time that Lord Russell 
 married Lady Vaughan, and that he joined the country 
 party against that of the court. Domestic happiness 
 and ardent patriotism took possession of his mind at 
 the same period. Gifted with a generous, pure, and 
 benevolent disposition, an elevated mind, but limited
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 25 
 
 in its perceptions, a character more obstinate than firm, 
 allowing himself to be easily led away to rule or to de- 
 ceive, as party feeling prompted him, he soon became 
 one of the most powerful opponents of the court, and 
 moral ornament if not the chief political leader of the 
 country party. Ever ready to peril himself in the 
 cause he adopted, for eleven years in the House of 
 Commons he undertook the defence, and frequently 
 the initiative of the extremest measures of opposition, 
 among others the exclusion of the Duke of York on 
 account of his religion, from the succession to the 
 crown. He had in his party and in the nation, beside 
 the merit of devoting himself to them, the charm of 
 participating almost always in their prejudices, their 
 passions, their blunders, their excitements; superior 
 to all by his rectitude, similar to all from the bent of 
 his mind and his opinions. Thus he became the 
 most popular as well as the most respected man in the 
 kingdom, and the mutual relations and harmony which 
 existed between him and the national party were such, 
 that Lord Russell was little aware either of his own 
 faults or those of his old friends, for they were only 
 brought under his notice by enemies to whom no 
 credit is given. 
 
 Lady Russell alone, in spite of her affection and 
 modesty, entertained doubts on the propriety, or fears 
 for the results of the policy of her husband, and ex- 
 --ed them to him with a frankness as firm as it was 
 affectionate. In politics as in religion, she participated 
 in the belief, the opinions and the wishes of Lord
 
 26 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 Russell ; she, like him, was endowed with a firm spirit, 
 and patriotically interested in the fate of her country, 
 but with a mind more just and more liberal, less -pre- 
 judiced and more discriminating. In March, 1678, 
 at the moment when Lord Russell undertook to sup- 
 port in the House of Commons a very bitter measure 
 of the opposition, he received, whilst the house was 
 sitting, the following note from his wife : " My sister 
 being here, tells me she overheard you tell her Lord 
 last night, that you would take notice of the business 
 (you know what I mean) in the House : this alarms 
 me, and I do earnestly beg of you to tell me truly if 
 you have or mean to do it. If you do, I am most as- 
 sured you will repent it. I beg once more to know 
 the truth. It is more pain to be in doubt, and to your 
 sister too ; and if I have any interest, I use it to beg 
 you silence in this case, at least to-day." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to read this letter a second 
 time to come to the conclusion that this was not the 
 first occasion on which Lady Russell had held similar 
 language to her husband ; her earnestness in con- 
 juring him to tell her the truth breathes a gentle com- 
 plaint of his having frequently concealed it from her, 
 and a lively anxiety on what she dared not hope to 
 prevent. Lord Russell was without doubt struck by 
 this step on the part of his wife, for he carefully pre- 
 served the note, indorsing with his own hand the 
 day and the place where he had received it. I am, 
 however, of opinion, that he did not on this day, nor 
 probably at any other time, follow the advice she 
 gave him.
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 27 
 
 The time arrived when the king, although little 
 inclined to a hazardous policy, and the parliament, 
 however loyal and attached to the sovereignty, could 
 no longer act together. The national party insisted 
 that Charles II. by disinheriting his brother, should by 
 his own act destroy the monarchy ; Charles required 
 of the national party submission at all risks to a prince 
 who evidently aimed at changing the religion and the 
 constitution of the country. Driven to extremity, 
 the king endeavoured to establish despotism, and the 
 national party rebellion. At the epoch of the crisis 
 in 1681, when the last parliament of Charles II. was 
 dissolved, two men, Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Rus- 
 sell, were at the head of the struggle : Shaftesbury, 
 already advanced in years, equally ambitious as inde- 
 fatigable and corrupt, rendered so by every source of 
 corruption, by the court, by power, by popularity ; 
 habituated from his youth to seek and to find success 
 in intrigue and plotting, a bold and supple mind, saga- 
 cious and fertile, powerful over men, alike skilful to 
 serve or injure, to please or embroil ; allied, however, 
 by pride and foresight to the protestant and national 
 party, in his view certainly the strongest and event- 
 ually victorious, and thoroughly determined at all 
 hazards to save his own life, to reap the reward of his 
 intrigues, or to begin them again. Lord Russell, still 
 young, sincere, zealous, inexperienced, of an inflexi- 
 ble mind, a heart replete with faith and honour, faith- 
 ful to his party, ready to sacrifice his life for his 
 cause, but too highly principled to dare everything
 
 28 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 indifferently, either to succeed or to save himself. 
 Between these two men associated in different degrees 
 in the same enterprise, it was very easy to predict 
 which would be the instrument in success, or the vic- 
 tim in the case of reverse. 
 
 Parties of the conspirators sometimes assembled, 
 suspicious of each other, and without sufficient con- 
 fidence in each other to confide their designs. Lord 
 Russell proposed an armed resistance to royal tyranny, 
 perhaps accepting from the bottom of his heart with- 
 out avowing it, the consequences of such a resolution. 
 Lord Shaftesbury took a clear view of his own inten- 
 tion, and was prepared at all cost for the overthrow 
 of the king, and the establishment of a successor 
 instead of the legitimate heir. Some proposed a sud- 
 den rising and the assassination of Charles II. There 
 were among them republicans who cherished their 
 dreams, and also traitors, either already in the pay of 
 the court, or ready to surrender their secret and ac- 
 complices, as the price of their own safety. At one 
 of these meetings, Lord Russell observed entering w r ith 
 Colonel Sidney and Hampden, Lord Howard, a man 
 whom he despised. " What have we to do with this 
 knave ?" said he to his intimate friend Lord Essex, 
 and he wished to withdraw ; but Essex dissuaded him, 
 entertaining a better opinion of Lord Howard, little 
 suspecting that he was the man, whose testimony 
 would soon destroy them both. 
 
 A few days after, Lord Mordaimt, a zealous royal- 
 ist, and little disposed to conspiracy, but entertaining
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 29 
 
 a good will for Lord Shaftesbury, was present at the 
 Duchess of Portsmouth's, the king's mistress, with 
 whom, in order to promote his fortune, he had con- 
 tracted a secret and very familiar intimacy. Sud- 
 denly it was announced to the Duchess, that the king 
 had arrived, and was already at the top of the stair- 
 case. She immediately concealed Lord Mordaunt in 
 an adjoining closet. Curious, and perhaps a little 
 jealous, he looked through the key-hole, and perceived 
 Lord Howard entering, who remained and conversed 
 a long time with the king, but in so low a tone that 
 Mordaunt was unable to hear. Released by the 
 Duchess as soon as she was herself free, he left in 
 great haste, took a hackney coach and repaired imme- 
 diately to Lord Shaftesbury, whom he acquainted 
 with what he had seen. " Are you quite sure of it ?" 
 said the Earl, looking steadily at him. " Perfectly 
 certain," replied Mordaunt. " Well ! my lord, you 
 are a young man of honour ; you would not deceive 
 me ; and if it is so, I must depart this evening." In 
 fact, the same evening Shaftesbury left his house, con- 
 cealed himself elsewhere in London, where, on the 
 next day, a warrant was issued to arrest him, and a 
 few days after he embarked at Harwich, took refuge 
 in Holland, promising himself, with the Prince of 
 Orange, an asylum and an avenger. When Chancel- 
 lor he had violently promoted the war with Holland, 
 repeating more than once : " Carthage must be de- 
 stroyed." On his arrival at Amsterdam, he asked 
 permission of the burgomaster to reside there ; who
 
 30 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 replied : " Carthage, not yet destroyed, willingly re- 
 ceives the Earl of Shaftesbury within its walls." 
 
 At the same time that the warrant was issued to 
 arrest Lord Shaftesbury, a similar one was given to 
 arrest Lord Russell, and to bring him before the coun- 
 cil. The messenger charged with the warrant pre- 
 sented himself before the principal entrance of his 
 house ; but the back door had been left open, most 
 probably intentionally. Lord Russell might have 
 escaped ; he would not, saying that his flight would 
 be construed into a confession, and that he had done 
 nothing which caused him to dread the justice of his 
 country. However, he sent Lady Russell, in haste, 
 to consult his principal friends ; on the representations 
 she submitted to them on his part, they were of opinion 
 that he ought not to fly. He appeared before the king 
 in council. " You are not suspected," said Charles, "of 
 any design against my person, but I have strong evi- 
 dence of your intentions against my government." 
 After a long interrogation, Lord Russell was sent to 
 the Tower. On his entrance he said to his valet Taun- 
 ton, that there was a resolution taken against him, 
 and that they wished to have his life, and on Taunton's 
 expressing a hope that his enemies would not succeed 
 in doing so : " They will have it," he replied ; " the 
 devil is loose." 
 
 I have no intention of relating here this memora- 
 ble and celebrated trial. It is solely the private life 
 of Lord and Lady Russell, their personal relations 
 and mutual sentiments, in their sorrowful as in their
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 31 
 
 bright days, that I wish to describe. From the moment 
 of the arrest of her husband, Lady Russell devoted 
 herself with a zeal, as intelligent as it was firm and 
 earnest, to all measures which might be useful to him. 
 During the fortnight between his arrest and sentence, 
 she went, came, wrote without intermission, collect- 
 ing information, sustaining the courage of timid friends, 
 and arousing the interests of the indifferent, seeking 
 
 o * o 
 
 on all sides expedients whilst his lot remained unde- 
 cided, and for chances of escape in the last extremity. 
 In the mind and thought of every one, she was so 
 absolutely and actively identified with Lord Russell, 
 that when he complained that the list of the jury had 
 not been communicated to him, previous to his trial, 
 the Chief Justice and the Attorney General considered 
 themselves justified by proving that Lady Russell 
 was acquainted with their names. The evening be- 
 fore the day on which he was to appear at the court, 
 she wrote to him : " Your friends, believing I can do 
 you some service at your trial, I am extremely willing 
 to try; my resolution will hold out, pray let yours. 
 But it may be the court will not let me ; however, 
 do you let me try." The 13th of July, 1 683, the trial 
 commenced, the court was crowded with spectators. 
 " AVe have no room to sit down," said the counsel. 
 Lord Russell asked for pen, ink, and paper, and the 
 use of any papers he had ; which request being granted, 
 he said : " May I have somebody write to help my 
 memory?" "Yes, a servant." "My wife is here, 
 ready to do it." Lady Russell rose to express her
 
 32 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 assent; the whole audience trembled with pity and 
 respect. " If my Lady please to give herself the 
 trouble," said the judge : and during the whole trial 
 Lady Russell sat by the side of her husband, his only 
 secretary and most vigilant adviser.* 
 
 When the fatal sentence was pronounced, neither 
 the courage nor the activity of Lady Russell gave 
 way ; she possessed a mind in which love, duty, and 
 trust in God sustained in her, above all human calcu- 
 lation, fortitude and hope. Efforts of every kind were 
 employed to save the life of Lord Russell ; several of 
 the most eminent men who surrounded the court 
 pleaded earnestly in his behalf to the king ; it would, 
 they said, impose a debt of gratitude upon a powerful 
 family, which rejected with severity, would never for- 
 get the injury, and on the other hand some regard was 
 due to the daughter, of Lord Southampton. From 
 several quarters letters were written to Lady Russell 
 recommending such and such steps to be taken, point- 
 ing out the hour, the day, and the place she ought to 
 throw herself at the feet of the king, who would be 
 unable to refuse her. The Duke of York was addressed 
 in the same manner as the king. The duke listened 
 quietly but gave no answer. The king impatiently 
 answered Monmouth, " I Avould grant him a pardon, 
 but I cannot do it without embroiling myself with my 
 brother: say no more about it." And in answer to 
 
 * The picture painted by Mr. Hayter, representing this 
 memorable event is now in the " Paris Universal Exhibition," 
 lent by the Duke of Bedford.
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 33 
 
 Lord Dartmouth : " All that is true, but it is as true, 
 that if I do not take his life, he will soon have mine." 
 Other influences were now appealed to. The Earl of 
 Bedford offered the Duchess of Portsmouth fifty or 
 even a hundred thousand pounds for the pardon of his 
 son; Charles replied: " I will not purchase my own 
 blood and that of my subjects at so easy a rate." 
 Lady Russell thought that her uncle, the Marquis 
 de Ruvigny, coming express from Paris with the 
 consent of Louis XIV., might perhaps have some 
 influence* with Charles. Ruvigny promised to come 
 
 * Lord John Russell has recalled as doubtful, in the life of 
 his illustrious ancestor [fourth edition, p. 314] the attempts 
 made in the name of Louis XIV. to save the life of Lord Rus- 
 sell, mentioned in the letters of Barillon, and the fragments 
 quoted by Dalrymple. The doubt expressed by Lord John 
 Russell was natural, since permission -was denied to him to 
 verity by the foreign archives of France, the quotations of Dal- 
 rymple. [In the new edition, p. xxi. Lord John Russell records 
 the subsequent liberality of the French government.] I have 
 made this verification, and the result convinces me that Louis 
 XIV. did really desire Barillon to convey to Charles some few 
 expressions, probably very cold, in favour of Lord Russell. 
 We give the text of the letter, dated 29th of July, (19th of July 
 according to the old style then in use in England,) 1683, in 
 which Barillon gives an account to the king of his proceeding : 
 " I shewed to-day to the king of England, a letter that M. de 
 Ruvigny had written to me, and 'I told him your Majesty's 
 directions upon the subject. The king in answer said : ' I am 
 well convinced that the king my brother would not advise me 
 to pardon a man who would have given me no quarter ; I do 
 not wish to prevent M. de Ruvigny coming here, but my Lord 
 Russell will be beheaded before he arrives. I owe this example 
 both for my own safety, and the good of my kingdom." [Ar- 
 chives des Affaires Etrangcra de 1- Vance.] 
 
 D
 
 34 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 to London. " I am impatient, my dear niece," he 
 writes, " to be with you. Three days ago the king 
 arrived, and he has the goodness to consent to my 
 journey." It was even said, that he would be the 
 bearer of a letter from Louis XIV. to Charles re- 
 questing him to grant a pardon : " I cannot hinder 
 M. de Ruvigny from coming here," said Charles to 
 Barillon, " but before he arrives Lord Russell will be 
 beheaded." Ruvigny did not come. At the earnest 
 solicitations of his father, his friends, and without 
 doubt his wife, Lord Russell resolved himself to write 
 to the king and the Duke of York, to ask his pardon, 
 setting forth : " that he had never had the least 
 thought against your Majesty's life, nor any design 
 to change the government; but humbly and sor- 
 rowfully confesses his having been present at those 
 meetings, which he is convinced were unlawful, for 
 which he is* truly and heartily sorry ; and therefore 
 humbly offers himself to your Majesty, to be deter- 
 mined to live in any part of the world which you shall 
 appoint, and never to meddle any more in the affairs 
 of England." This step, Avhich like previous attempts, 
 was unproductive of any result, caused great pain to 
 Lord Russell, and as he folded up his letter to the 
 Duke of York, he said to Dr. Burnet : " This will be 
 printed, and will be selling about the streets as my 
 submission, when I am hanged." 
 
 A last chance was still possible, the best perhaps, 
 although singular and indirect. The question of actual 
 legality or absolute illegality of all armed resistance
 
 EACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 35 
 
 to sovereign power at that time strongly agitated the 
 public mind ; the court party as well as that of the 
 country wished equally to establish itself on principle, 
 and to govern by right as well as by deed ; for such is 
 the noble nature of man, that he cannot resist the path 
 of rectitude, nor can he safely rely upon force, when 
 opposed to truth and justice. The English church 
 maintained unreservedly the unlawfulness of resist- 
 ance by armed force. Two of the most honest and 
 moderate divines, Burnet and Tillotson, were in hopes, 
 that if Lord Russell could be brought to allow that 
 resistance was unlawful, the king would grant him a 
 pardon. For a short time they entertained hopes of suc- 
 cess, and Lord Halifax, when informed of it, told them 
 that the king, to whom he had mentioned what had 
 passed, was more moved by this prospect than by all 
 other entreaties. The two theologians redoubled their 
 efforts ; Lord Russell listened to them with gentleness. 
 Tillotson wrote a letter to him, in order to establish, 
 in the name of the Christian faith, the maxim of non- 
 resistance. Lord Russell took the letter into another 
 room; after a short absence he said to Tillotson, that 
 " he had read the letter and was willing to be con- 
 vinced, but could not say he was so : for my part I 
 cannot deny, but I have been of opinion, that a free 
 nation like this, might defend their religion and liber- 
 ties when any attempt was made to invade or take 
 them away. If I have sinned in this, I hope God will 
 not lay it to my charge, since he knows it was only 
 a sin of ignorance." Burnet still tried to persuade him,
 
 36 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 but Lord Russell put an end to the discussion, saying : 
 " I cannot lie, I should do so if I went further." The 
 point had been discussed with his wife, who far from 
 tempting him to any act of weakness, sorrowfully ap- 
 proved and supported him in his sincerity. She is 
 said even to have expressed displeasure at the perti- 
 nacity with which Tillotson pressed him on this sub- 
 ject. 
 
 All means, all hopes, successively disappeared ; the 
 fatal day approached. " I could have wished," said 
 Lord Russell to Burnet, " that my wife would cease 
 to beat thus among the bushes, and to run hither and 
 thither to save me, but when I reflect that it will be 
 one day some mitigation of her sorrow, that she left 
 nothing undone that could have given any probable 
 hope, I am resigned." When they were together, 
 they seemed both wholly taken up by efforts of self- 
 control and mutual support ; on her departure he fol- 
 lowed her with his eyes ; his emotion was on the point 
 of overcoming him, he abruptly subdued it, and gave 
 himself up entirely, whether alone, or with Burnet and 
 Tillotson, to meditation, reading, and holy conversa- 
 tion. On the 19th of July, having been informed 
 that the request for a respite had been refused, and 
 that his execution would take place two days after, 
 he wrote a letter to the king, to be given to him after 
 his death, the chief point of which is contained in the 
 last sentence : " I crave leave to end my days with 
 this sincere protestation, that my heart was ever de- 
 voted to that which I thought was your true interest ;
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 37 
 
 in which, if I was mistaken, I hope your displeasure 
 against me will end with my life, and that no part of 
 it shall fall on my wife and children, which is the last 
 petition will ever be offered from your Majesty's most 
 faithful, most dutiful, and most obedient subject." The 
 next day, the 20th, early in the morning, he received 
 the sacrament from the hands of Tillotson, who asked 
 him if he believed all the articles of the Christian reli- 
 gion as taught by the Church of England : " Yes, 
 truly." " Do you forgive all persons ?" " From my 
 heart." After dinner he read again and signed the 
 speech he proposed putting into the hands of the 
 Sheriff on the scaffold, as his farewell to life and coun- 
 try, and gave Lady Russell directions for having it pub- 
 lished and circulated after his death. Lady Russell 
 went for her children, and brought them to him. He 
 kept them some time, discoursed with her as to their 
 education, their future prospects, embraced and blessed 
 them, and dismissed them without any apparent dimi- 
 nution of his serenity. " Stay and sup with me," he 
 said to his wife, " let us eat our last earthly food to- 
 gether." During and after supper, he spoke particu- 
 larly of his two daughters, and also of the great 
 examples of death submitted to with calmness and 
 freedom of spirit. At ten o'clock he rose, took Lady 
 Russell by the hand, embraced her four or five times, 
 both silent and trembling, their eyes filled with tears 
 which fell not. She left him. " Now," said Russell 
 to Burnet, " the bitterness of death is past; " and aban- 
 doning himself suddenly to his emotions : " What a
 
 38 THE MAREIED LIFE OF 
 
 blessing she has been to me ! How miserable I should 
 have been, if, with her tenderness she had not pos- 
 sessed so much greatness of soul, never to have de- 
 sired me to do a base thing to save my life ! Whereas, 
 what a. week I should have passed if she had been 
 crying on me to turn informer and to be a Lord 
 Howard ! .... It was a signal providence of God in 
 giving me such a wife ; where there was birth, fortune, 
 great understanding, great religion, and great affection 
 for me ! but her carriage in my extremity was beyond 
 all ! It is a great comfort to me to leave my children 
 in such a mother's care ; she has promised me to take 
 care of herself for their sakes ; she will do it." He 
 paused, and his thoughts reverting to himself : " What 
 an immense change death will make in us ! and how 
 wonderfully those new scenes would strike on a soul ! 
 I have heard that persons born blind have been struck 
 with amazement, when the cataract falling from their 
 eyes sight was bestowed upon them ; what would it 
 be if the first thing they beheld was the sun rising ? " 
 He pulled out his watch and gave it to Burnet, say- 
 ing : " I have done with time ; now eternity comes." 
 On the next day, July 21, 1683, Lady Russell was 
 a widow, and alone in her residence of Southampton 
 House, with her three children ; two daughters, aged 
 nine and seven years, and one son three years old.
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 39 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IT is rather surprising, that in referring to the let- 
 ters written by Lady Russell after so cruel -a blow, 
 we find two addressed directly or indirectly to Charles 
 II., the king who had just refused to spare the life of 
 her husband. Hardly had she quitted London, from 
 whence she had fled to retirement in the country with 
 her children at Woburn, with her father-in-law, the 
 Earl of Bedford ; she wrote to her uncle, the Honour- 
 able John Russell, Colonel of the first regiment of Foot 
 Guards. " Apologies, dear uncle, are not necessary 
 to you for any thing I do, nor is my discomposed mind 
 fit to make any ; but I want your assistance, so I ask 
 it freely. You may remember, Sir, that a very few 
 days after my great and terrible calamity, the king 
 sent me word he meant to take no advantage of any 
 thing that was forfeited to him, but terms of law must 
 be observed, so now the grant for the personal estate is 
 done and in my hands. I esteem it fit to make some 
 compliment of acknowledgement to his Majesty; to 
 
 do this for me is the favour I beg of you 
 
 'Tis not without reluctancy I write to you myself, 
 and I do not love to give the least trouble to the 
 friends and nearest relations of my dear and blessed 
 husband." 
 
 A rumour from town soon reached the ears of Lady 
 Ru>sell in her retreat ; she understood that the court, 
 uneasy at the effect produced through the country by
 
 40 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 the publication of the paper written by Lord Russell 
 and given to the sheriff on the scaffold, had denied 
 its authenticity ; she considered this attack as an 
 injury to the memory of her husband, and wrote in 
 haste to the king. " May it please your Majesty, I 
 find my husband's enemies are not appeased with his 
 blood, but still continue to misrepresent him to your 
 Majesty. It is a great addition to my sorrows to hear 
 that your Majesty is prevailed upon to believe that 
 the paper he delivered to the sheriff at his death was 
 not his own. I can truly say, and am ready in the 
 solemnest manner to attest, that I often heard him dis- 
 course the chiefest matters contained in that paper, in 
 
 the same expression he therein uses I do 
 
 therefore humbly beg your Majesty would be so cha- 
 ritable to believe, that he, who in all his life was ob- 
 served to act with the greatness, clearness and sincerity, 
 would not at the point of death do so disingenuous 
 and false a thing as to deliver for his own what was 
 
 not properly and expressly so I hope I have 
 
 written nothing in this that will displease your 
 Majesty. If I have, I humbly beg of you to consider 
 it as coming from a woman amazed with grief; and 
 that you will pardon the daughter of a person who 
 served your Majesty's father in his greatest extremi- 
 ties, and your Majesty in your greatest posts, and one 
 that is not conscious of having ever done any thing to 
 offend you. I shall ever pray for your Majesty's 
 long life and happy reign." 
 
 This simple and profound respect for monarchy,
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 41 
 
 this regard for established usages, this susceptibility, 
 so humble in language, at the same time so dignified, 
 proceeded from a disconsolate widow, a woman pas- 
 sionately attached to the conspirator, so recently exe- 
 cuted for maintaining the right of resistance, and the 
 liberties of his country. Days, months, and years 
 passed ; she remained the same, entirely given up to 
 one single feeling without being overwhelmed by it ; 
 herself engrossed by her own inner world, yet at the 
 same time attentive to, and interested in, the external 
 ne. Dr. Fitzwilliam, formerly her father's chaplain, 
 now rector of Cottenham, and canon of Windsor, 
 was her intimate and confidential friend ; he was a 
 thoroughly pious clergyman, with a sympathising 
 heart, of a lofty and liberal mind, who took the deep- 
 est interest in the noble daughter of his former patron, 
 and exerted himself to support and console her, to 
 bring her through her trials nearer to God, and her 
 own eternal salvation. To him Lady Russell opens 
 her heart, to him she confides all her griefs, her mo- 
 ments of despondency, and the emotions of religious 
 hope. I intend selecting a few of the most striking 
 features of this correspondence ; sufficient, not entirely 
 to develop, but to give an insight into this noble spirit, 
 extraordinary and wonderful in this, that passion and 
 good sense, and tenderness of heart, with strength of 
 mind never interfered with each other; and that, 
 during forty years of widowhood she belonged exclu- 
 sively to the memory of her adored husband, con- 
 tinuing interested and active in the business, the affec-
 
 42 THE MARRIED LIFE OP 
 
 tions, the duties, and I might almost say to all the 
 concerns of life and of the world which surrounded her. 
 
 Shortly after her calamity, Dr. Fitzwilliam sent 
 her spiritual advice, and some forms of prayer, to 
 raise her mind to God ; she replied to him : " I need 
 not tell you, good Doctor, how little capable I have 
 been of such an exercise as this. You will soon find 
 how unfit I am still for it, since my yet disordered 
 thoughts can offer me no other than such words as ex- 
 press the deepest sorrows, and confused as my yet 
 amazed mind is. But such men as you, and particu- 
 larly one so much my friend, will, I know, bear with 
 my weakness, and compassionate my distress, as you 
 have already done by your good letter and excellent 
 prayer. 
 
 You, that knew us both, and how we lived, must 
 allow I have just cause to bewail my loss. I know 
 it is common with others to lose a friend, but to 
 have lived with such a one, it may be questioned how 
 few can glory in the like happiness, so, consequently 
 lament the like loss. Who can but shrink from such 
 a blow ?" and a few days later : " All kinds of painful 
 ideas assail my weakened and desolate heart: and when 
 I have surmounted one I fall into another. If my 
 affliction abates for a moment, a thousand reflections 
 on the past arise before me. Who knows if some im- 
 portant act has not been omitted ? If we had perse- 
 vered more, he would perhaps have gone away ; if 
 such or such an error had been corrected during the 
 trial, if other steps had been taken, he would perhaps
 
 KACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 43 
 
 have been acquitted, and he would have been still in 
 
 the land of the living I think I am wrong to 
 
 torment myself thus by all these unavailing regrets ; 
 
 but they not the less increase my grief Lord ! 
 
 let me understand the reason of these dark and wound- 
 ing providences, that I sink not under the discou- 
 ragement of my own thoughts! I know I have 
 deserved my punishment, and will be silent under it : 
 but yet secretly my heart mourns, too sadly, I fear, 
 and cannot be comforted, because I have not the dear 
 companion and sharer of all my joys and sorrows. I 
 want him to talk with, to walk with, to eat and sleep 
 with ; all these things are irksome to me now ; the 
 day unwelcome, and the night so too; all company 
 and meals I would avoid, if it might be ; yet all this 
 is, that I enjoy not the world in my own way, and 
 this sure, hinders my comfort : when I see my chil- 
 dren before me, I remember the pleasure he took in 
 
 them ; this makes my heart shrink ! O ! if I 
 
 did but stedfastly believe, I could not be dejected ! . . . . 
 I most willingly forsake this world this vexatious, 
 troublesome world, in which I have no other business 
 but to rid my soul of sin ; secure by faith and a good 
 conscience my eternal interests ! " 
 
 After passing ten months at Woburn in solitude 
 and inaction, she felt the necessity of a change of 
 scene. The 20th of April, 1684, she writes to Dr. 
 Fitzwilliam : " I am entertaining some thoughts of 
 going to that now desolate place, Stratton, for a few 
 days, where I have lived in sweet and full content ;
 
 44 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 considered the condition of others, and thought none 
 deserved my envy : but I must pass no more such 
 days on earth ; however, places are indeed nothing. 
 Where can I dwell that his figure is not present to me? 
 Nor would I have it otherwise, so I resolve there shall 
 be no bar, if it proves requisite for the better acquit- 
 ting any obligation upon me." 
 
 And five months after, the 1st of October, she 
 acquaints him with her resolution, " to try that deso- 
 late habitation of mine at London this winter. The 
 Doctor agrees that it is the best place for my boy, 
 
 ancfcL. have no argument to balance that but 
 
 byi&ofl's permission I will try how I can endure that 
 place/ jn thought a place of terror to me : but I know 
 if sorrow had not another root, that will vanish in a 
 few days." 
 
 She did not put her project immediately into execu- 
 tion. Six weeks after she writes to him : " I have, 
 you find, Sir, lingered out my time here ; and I think 
 none will wonder at it that will reflect, the place I am 
 going to remove to was the scene of so much lasting 
 sorrow to me, and where I acted so unsuccessful a part 
 for the preservation of a life, I could sure have laid 
 down mine to have had continued. It was, Doctor, 
 an inestimable treasure I did lose, and with whom I 
 had lived in the highest pitch of this world's felicity. 
 But I must remember I have a better friend, a more 
 abiding, whom I desire with an inflamed heart to know, 
 not alone as good in a way of profit, but aimable in a 
 way of excellency ; then, spiritual joy will grapple with
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 45 
 
 earthly griefs, and so far overcome as to give some 
 tranquillity to a mind so tossed to and fro as mine has 
 been with the evils of this life : yet I have but the ex- 
 perience of short moments of this desirable temper, and 
 fear to have fewer when I first come to that desolate 
 habitation and place, where so many several passions 
 will assault me ; but having so many months mourned 
 the substance, I think, by God's assistance the sha- 
 dows will not sink me." 
 
 God indeed came to her aid, and though occasion- 
 ally giving way to moments of despair, or of weakness, 
 she soon overcame them, and again recovered, the 
 impartial firmness of mind and profound piety of 
 heart, which enabled her to avoid all exaggeration of 
 feeling in the contemplation of her lot ; as the two 
 following letters amply testify. 
 
 LADY RUSSELL TO DR. FITZWILLIAM. 
 
 Woburn, 11 Oct. 168-3. 
 
 " THE great thing is to acquiesce with all one's heart 
 to the good pleasure of God, who will prove us by 
 the ways and dispensations He sees best, and when 
 He will break us to pieces we must be broken. Who 
 can tell His works from the beginning to the end? 
 But who can praise His mercies more than wretched 
 I, that He has not cut me off in anger, who have 
 taken His chastisements so heavily, not weighing His 
 mercies in the midst of judgments! the stroke was of 
 the fiercest sure ; but had I not then a reasonable
 
 46 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 ground to hope that what I loved as I did my own 
 soul, was raised from a prison to a throne ? was I not 
 enabled to shut up my own sorrows that I increased 
 not his sufferings by seeing mine? how were my 
 sinking spirits supported by the early compassions of 
 excellent and wise Christians, without ceasing, admon- 
 ishing me of my duty, instructing, reproving, com- 
 forting me He has spared me hitherto the 
 
 children of so excellent a friend, giving them hopeful 
 understandings, and yet very tractable and sweet dis- 
 positions; spared my life in usefulness I trust to 
 them ; and being I am to linger in a world I can no 
 more delight in, has given me a freedom from bodily 
 pain to a degree I almost never knew, not so much 
 as a strong fit of the headache have I felt since that 
 miserable time, who used to be tormented with it 
 very frequently. This calls for praises my dead heart 
 is not exercised in, but I hope this is my infirmity ; 
 I bewail it. He that took our nature, and felt our 
 infirmities, knows the weakness of my person, and 
 the sharpness of my sorrows." 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 11 July, 1686. 
 
 " I KNOW, Sir, I am very tedious ; and if it be im- 
 pertinent, I know also you will take it as if it were 
 not so. Now I take this freedom scarce with any 
 body else : but it is a great indulgence to myself, and 
 I am very certain you are pleased I should 'use it.
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 47 
 
 I find it most especially useful on the return of these 
 my saddest days, when dismal and yet astonishing 
 
 remembrances crowd fastest into my mind It 
 
 is true we can, you are sure, bear the occasions of 
 grief without being sunk and drowned in those pas- 
 sions ; but to bear them without a murmuring heart 
 then is the task, and in failing there lies the sin. O 
 Lord, lay it not to the charge of thy weak servant ; 
 but make me cheerfully thankful that I had such a 
 friend to lose ; and contented that he has had dis- 
 mission from his attendance here, an expression you 
 use I am so much pleased with. When my time 
 comes that I shall have mine, I know not how it will 
 find me then ; but I am sure it is my best reviving 
 thought now ; when I am plunged in multitudes of 
 wild and sad thoughts, I recover and recollect a little 
 time will end this life, and begin a better that shall 
 never end, and where we shall discover the reasons 
 and ends of all those seeming severe providences we 
 have known. Thus I seem to long for the last day, 
 and yet it is possible if sickness, or any other fore- 
 runner of our dissolution were present, I would defer 
 it if I could ; so deceitful are our hearts, or so weak is 
 our faith. But I think, one may argue again, that 
 God has wisely implanted in our nature a shrinking 
 at the approach of a separation ; and that may make 
 us content, if not desire a delay. If it were not so im- 
 planted there, many would not endure the evils of 
 life that now do it, though they are taught duty that 
 obliges us thereto."
 
 48 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 She wrote sometimes also, if not with the same 
 freedom, at least with the same feelings to others, 
 who rendered her important services or had shown 
 true sympathy with her misfortune. Lord Halifax, 
 amongst others, had interceded with the king after 
 the execution of Lord Russell, for permission, which 
 was not easily granted, that the family escutcheon 
 might be affixed after his death, as it would have been 
 under ordinary circumstances, over the door of his 
 house. He had subsequently maintained friendly re- 
 lations with Lady Russell, and endeavoured undoubt- 
 edly to offer some of those frigid consolations which 
 satisfy those who do not need consolation; for she 
 writes to him : " My Lord, for my part I think the 
 man a very indifferent reasoner, that to do well, he 
 must take with indifference whatever happens to him. 
 It is very fine to say, why should we complain that is 
 taken back which was but lent us and lent us but for a 
 time, we know, and so on. They are the receipts of 
 philosophers I have no reverence for, as I have not for 
 any thing which is unnatural. It is insincere ; and I 
 dare say they did dissemble and felt what they would 
 not own. I know I cannot dispute with Almighty 
 power, but yet if my delight is gone, I must needs be 
 sorry it is taken away, according to the measure it made 
 me glad. The Christian religion only, believe me, my 
 Lord, has a power to make the spirit easy under great 
 calamity ; nothing less than the hope of being again 
 made happy can satisfy the mind : I am sure I owe 
 more to it than I could have done to the world, if all
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 49 
 
 the glories of it had been offered me, or to be disposed 
 of by me." 
 
 God reserved for her consolation full of anguish 
 indeed, but effectual, in the imminent approach of new 
 sorrows. Her son, scarcely four years old, fell seri- 
 ously ill. She was on the very point of losing him 
 when he recovered. Writing to Dr. Fitzwilliam : 
 " God has been pitiful to my small grace, and re- 
 moved a threatened blow, which must have quickened 
 my sorrows, if not added to them, the loss of my poor 
 boy. He has been ill, and God has let me see the 
 folly of my imaginations, which made me apt to con- 
 clude I had nothing left, the deprivation of which 
 could be matter of much anguish, or its possession of 
 any considerable refreshment. I have felt the false- 
 ness of the first notion, for I know not how to part 
 with tolerable ease from the little creature. I desire to 
 do so of the second, and that my thankfulness for the 
 real blessing of these children may refresh my labour- 
 ing weary mind with some joy and satisfaction, at least 
 in my endeavours to do that part towards them their 
 most dear and tender father would not have omitted, 
 and which, if successful, though early made unfor- 
 tunate, may conduce to their happiness for the time to 
 come here and hereafter. "When I have done this piece 
 of duty to my best friend and them, how gladly would 
 I lie down by that beloved dust I lately went to visit, 
 that is, the case that holds it. It is a satisfaction to 
 me you did not disprove of what I did in it, as some 
 
 E
 
 50 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 do that it seems have heard of it, though I never 
 mentioned it to any besides yourself. 
 
 Doctor, I had considered, I went not to seek the 
 living among the dead ; I knew I should not see him 
 any more wherever I went, and had made a covenant 
 with myself, not to break out in unreasonable fruit- 
 less passion, but quicken my contemplation whither 
 the nobler part was fled, to a country afar off, where 
 no earthly power bears any sway, nor can put an end 
 to a happy society ; there I would willingly be, but 
 we must not limit our time : I hope to wait without 
 impatiency." 
 
 She had to wait a long time for that happy reunion 
 which she so sincerely desired, without permitting her 
 passion to deceive her as to the weakness of human 
 nature. In the meanwhile, and in proportion as her 
 years passed away, she treated her grief, as we do an 
 incurable malady, but to which we learn to submit. 
 In spite of the void in her heart, her life was active : 
 and she occupied herself without ever being diverted 
 from her sorrow. The education of her children, 
 their pursuits, the regulation of her household, the 
 interests and well-being of her relations, were the 
 objects of her most assiduous care. " I am very 
 glad," says Burnet, writing to her, " that you intend 
 to employ so much of your own time in the education 
 of your children, that they shall need no other gover- 
 ness." And in fact her daughters had no other teacher 
 than herself. She took care that her habitual melan- 
 choly should not interfere with the pleasures natural
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 51 
 
 to their age: when she returned to Stratton, she writes; 
 " The poor children are well pleased to be a little 
 while in a new place, ignorant how much better it has 
 been both to me and them; yet I thought I found 
 Rachel not insensible, and I could not but be content 
 with it in my mind. Those whose age can afford them 
 any remembrance, should, methinks, have some solemn 
 thoughts for so irreparable a loss to themselves and 
 family ; though after that I would cherish a cheerful 
 temper in them with all the industry I can ; for sure 
 we please our Maker best, when we take all his pro- 
 vidences with a cheerful spirit." She bore a great 
 affection for her father-in-law, the Earl of Bedford. 
 He lost his wife ; she gave up her plans of travelling, 
 and remained with him. " I would not," she said, 
 " choose to leave a good man under a new oppression 
 of sorrow, that has been and is so very tender to me." 
 She was consulted on all important events in the 
 family, among others, the marriage of her brother-in- 
 law, Edward Russell, to one of the daughters of Lord 
 Gainsborough, father-in-law to her sister Elizabeth. 
 It was known that her advice would be good, and her 
 approbation would have great influence : " I have done 
 it," she says, "though I wish she had made choice 
 of any other person than myself, who, desiring to know 
 the world no more, am utterly unfitted for the manage- 
 ment of any thing in it, but must, as I can, engage in 
 such necessary offices to my children, as I cannot be 
 dispensed from, nor desire to be, since it is an eternal 
 obligation upon me, to the memory of a husband, to
 
 52 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 whom and his, I have dedicated the few and sad re- 
 mainder of my days." The day when she would be 
 called upon to discharge this great maternal duty 
 arrived sooner than she anticipated : her daughter 
 Rachel was only fourteen years old when Lord Ca- 
 vendish, Earl of Devonshire, made a proposal of mar- 
 riage for her with his eldest son, then only sixteen. 
 Lord Cavendish had been the most intimate and 
 devoted friend of Lord Russell, so thoroughly devoted 
 that he had earnestly endeavoured to persuade him to 
 change clothes with him, and to escape from the Tower, 
 remaining himself a prisoner in his place, to which 
 Lord Russell would not consent. Deeply affected by 
 the motives which prompted the proposal, and sensi- 
 ble of the distinction of such an alliance, Lady Rus- 
 sell accepted it with entire satisfaction : " I hope," 
 she writes to Dr. Fitzwilliam, " if I perfect this great 
 work, my careful endeavours will prosper ; only the 
 Almighty knows what the event shall be ; but sure it 
 is a glimmering of light I did not look for in my dark 
 day. I do often repeat in my thoughts, the children 
 of the just shall be blessed. I am persuaded their 
 father was such, and if my heart deceive me not, I 
 intend the being so, and humbly bless God for it." 
 The settlements were difficult to arrange ; the most 
 elevated sentiments are sometimes allied with meanness 
 and obstinacy. " I have," says Lady Russell, " a 
 well-bred Lord to deal with, yet inflexible if the point 
 is not to his advantage." These conferences and dis- 
 cussions annoyed her. " I meet with hard difficulties in
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 53 
 
 the lawyers' hands ; we are forced to be with a great 
 many of that profession, which is very troublesome at 
 this time to me, who would fain be delivered from 
 them, conclude my affair, and so put some period to that 
 inroad methinks I make in my intended manner of 
 living the rest of my days on earth. But I hope my 
 duty shall always prevail above the strongest inclina- 
 tion I have. I believe to assist my yet helpless chil- 
 dren is my business; which makes me take many 
 dinners abroad, and do of that nature many things, 
 the performance of which is hard enough to a heavy 
 and weary mind ; but yet I bless God I do it." The 
 business came at leno-th to an end, and on the 24th of 
 
 o * 
 
 June, 1688, her daughter married the young Lord 
 Cavendish, who almost immediately departed to travel 
 some time abroad. 
 
 Judging by appearances, it might be imagined that 
 Lady Russell lived in strict seclusion, absorbed in her 
 tender but painful recollections, holy thoughts, and 
 the duties and cares of her family. We should be 
 deceived. Hers was not a mind naturally very varied 
 or fertile, nor willingly disposed to seek and find every- 
 where subjects of excitement or interest. Left to her- 
 self and to her ordinary life, she might have remained 
 a stranger to the great ideas, and to the great trans- 
 actions of her time ; but she followed in the path of 
 her husband, through her sympathy with him, and 
 with a mind capable of understanding and appreciating 
 all that was noble. She remained as faithful to the 
 cause of Lord Russell as to his memory, and constantly
 
 54 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 occupied in her isolation with the same subjects, the 
 same principles of religious and political liberty which 
 would have been the subject of their common anxiety 
 and their most intimate conversation, had he been alive. 
 The revocation of the edict of Nantes, awoke in her 
 not only the most lively sympathy for the proscribed 
 protestants, but reflections of profound and original 
 morality : " Doctor," she writes to Fitzwilliam, " I 
 will take your advice and vie my state with others, 
 and begin with him in the highest prosperity, as him- 
 self thinks, the king of a miserable people ; but truly 
 the most miserable himself, by debasing as he does 
 the dignity of human nature ; and though for secret 
 ends of providence, he is suffered to make those poor 
 creatures drink deep of a most bitter cup, yet the dregs 
 are surely reserved for himself! What a judgment is 
 it upon an aspiring mind, when perhaps half the world 
 knows not God, nor confesses the name of Christ as 
 a Saviour, nor the beauty of virtue, which almost all 
 the world has in derision, that it should not excite him 
 to a reformation of faith and manners ; but with such 
 a rage turn his power to extirpate a people that own 
 the gospel for their law and rule." 
 
 Her own country and what was passing in it still 
 engaged her most thoroughly ; the trial and death of 
 Algernon Sidney, the accession of James II., the pro- 
 gress of his tyranny, the insurrection of Monmouth, 
 and the severities then exercised towards the friends 
 of the cause which was dear to her, revived her sad- 
 dest remembrances. At times she found in these very
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 55 
 
 misfortunes an unexpected consolation. " The new 
 scenes," she writes, " of each day make me often con- 
 clude myself very void of temper and reason, that I still 
 shed tears of sorrow and not of joy, that so good a 
 man is landed safe on the happy shore of a blessed eter- 
 nity, doubtless he is at rest though I find none with- 
 out him, so true a partner he was in all my joys and 
 griefs." But these outpourings of a pious soul do not 
 for long appease real anxiety, nor real sorrow : the 
 religious and political condition of England became 
 daily more gloomy, and Lady Russell, passionately 
 interested in the scene, became every day more sad and 
 anxious about her children, her country, and the fu- 
 ture of that cause for which Lord Russell had suffered. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE Revolution of 1688 drew her from this state 
 of anguish and monotony. After five years of widow- 
 hood, in the midst of defeat, Lady Russell, with the 
 burden of her grief, passed suddenly to triumph. 
 
 She was at Woburn during the two months which 
 passed between the disembarkation of the Prince of 
 Orange and the final flight of King James. Far from 
 the events and the turmoil of London, alone with her 
 father-in-law and her children, she was, notwithstand- 
 ing, well informed as to what was going on, and she 
 followed its course with the subdued ardour of a sen- 
 sible mind, which knows the uncertainty of great 
 undertakings, and with a piety which commits her
 
 56 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 country as well as her family to the hands of God. Her 
 letters show, that she read with assiduity the journals, 
 the pamphlets published on both sides, and that the 
 details of the incidents both of the court and city fre- 
 quently reached her. Anxious to know more, when 
 she learnt that the Prince of Orange, and Burnet in 
 his train, had arrived at Salisbury, she wrote to the 
 latter by a special messenger : " I have, I may say, 
 created this, since the bearer of it has no other errand 
 than to carry this paper, and return charged, I hope, 
 with such good reports as every good soul wishes for. 
 Curiosity may be too eager, and therefore not be justi- 
 fied ; but sure it is unavoidable. I do not ask you 
 should satisfy any part of it, further than you can do 
 in six lines. But I would see something of your hand- 
 writing upon English ground, and not read in print 
 only the labour of your brains." When the event 
 approached its completion, she Avent, with the Earl of 
 Bedford, to spend a few days in London, and it was 
 probably at that tune that King James requesting the 
 support of the Earl of Bedford, received from him this 
 answer : " Sire, I had a son who might have been 
 now the support of your Majesty." Lady Russell had 
 a near view of the decisive measures which placed 
 William III. on the throne : writing to Doctor Fitz- 
 william, she says, " those who have lived longest, and 
 therefore seen the most change, can scarce believe it 
 is more than a dream ; yet is indeed real, and so 
 amazing a reality of mercy, as ought to melt and ravish 
 our hearts with subjection and resignation to Him who
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 57 
 
 is the dispenser of all providences." Although she had 
 held no intercourse with the Prince of Orange, they 
 were neither indifferent nor unknown to each other ; 
 William knew too well the value of the name of Lord 
 Russell, and the estimation which his widow obtained 
 in England, not to take at once an especial advantage 
 of it. When, in 1687, he sent his ambassador Dyke- 
 veldt to London, he ordered him to pay a visit to Lady 
 Russell, and to express to her in his name, the pro- 
 found esteem and the great interest that he entertained 
 for her. I subjoin the detailed narrative of the visit, 
 written on the 24th of March by Lady Russell : " I 
 received a visit from M. Dyckveldt the Dutch ambas- 
 sador. He spoke in French to this effect : To con- 
 dole on the part of the Prince and Princess of Orange 
 my terrible misfortunes, of which they had had a very 
 feeling sense, and continued still to have so ; and as 
 my loss was very great, so they believed my sorrow 
 still was such, for whose person in particular, as also 
 my own family and that I had married into, they had 
 great respect and value, and should always readily take 
 all occasions to shoAV it: that it would be a great 
 pleasure to them, if it would give any ease to my 
 thoughts, to take the assurance that if it -ever came 
 to be in their power, there was nothing I could ask 
 that they should not find a content in granting. 
 
 " That for the re-establishing of my son, what I 
 should at anytime see reason to ask, would be done in as 
 full and ample a manner as was possible. That he did 
 not deliver this message in a private capacity, but as
 
 58 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 a public minister. Then, again, he hugely enlarged 
 his compliment, giving me the content to tell me the 
 high thoughts the Prince always had and still pre- 
 served of my excellent Lord, that his Highness had 
 never accused his intentions, even at the time of his 
 suffering, and had considered and lamented it as a great 
 blow to the best interest of England and the protes- 
 tant religion. That he had frequently before heard 
 the Prince take occasion to speak of him, and that he 
 ever did it as of one he had the best thoughts one could 
 have of a man. 
 
 " And he said with protestation, that he did so with 
 design to make an agreeable compliment to me that he 
 found the very same justice given to his memory here, 
 and that so universal, that even those who pretended 
 no partiality to his person or actings, yet bore a rever- 
 ence to his name ; all allowing him that integrity, 
 honour, courage, and zeal to his country to the high- 
 est degree a man can be charged with, and in this age, 
 perhaps^ singular to himself; and he added at this, com- 
 pleted with a great piety. 
 
 " Words to this effect, as near as my memory can 
 carry it, he several times repeated, and gave me, as 
 he termed- it, one remarkable instance at what rate 
 such who were not his professed friends esteemed his 
 loss. It was this : that dining at Mr. Skelton's, 
 then the king of England's resident in Holland, im- 
 mediately after the news was come thither of my 
 Lord's sufferings, &c., M. Dyckveldt, taking notice of 
 what had passed, and in such a manner as was most
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. o9 
 
 proper for him to do, to Mr. Skelton, Mr. Skelton sat 
 silent when he named the Lord Essex, but that upon 
 my Lord Russell's name he replied upon it, * The king 
 has, indeed, taken the life of one man, but he has lost 
 a thousand or thousands by it.' M. Dyck veldt then 
 added, ' this I know to be the very sense of so many 
 that I should not have repeated it, but for this reason 
 I do it, because it was Mr. Skelton said it.'" 
 
 William, when proclaimed king, did not hesitate 
 publicly to confirm the words which two years be- 
 fore his Minister conveyed to Lady Russell. The 13th 
 of February, 1689, William and Mary, having in the 
 morning accepted the crown from Parliament, held in 
 the evening at the palace of Whitehall, their first so- 
 lemn reception. Lady Russell was not there. Stranger 
 to all worldly pomp, even to that of her own party, 
 she neither quitted her house or put off her mourning ; 
 but her daughter, Lady Cavendish, appeared that 
 evening at court with her mother-in-law, the Countess 
 of Devonshire. She wrote the next day to her cousin, 
 Miss Jane Allington : " At night I went to court 
 with my Lady Devonshire, and kissed the Queen's 
 hand, and the King's also. There was a world of bon- 
 fires and candles in almost every house, which looked 
 extremely pretty. The king applies himself mightily 
 to business, and is wonderfully admired for his great 
 wisdom and prudence in ordering all things. He is a 
 man of no presence, but looks very homely at first 
 sight ; but if one looks long on him, he has something 
 in his face both wise and good. But as for the queen
 
 60 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 she is really altogether very handsome ; her face is 
 very agreeable, and her shape and motions extremely 
 graceful and fine. She is tall, but not so tall as the 
 last queen. Her room was mighty full of company as 
 you may guess." 
 
 Political acts followed closely on royal civilities. 
 A bill was passed in Parliament to abolish the sen- 
 tence against Lord Russell, by declaring it murder. 
 One of the clauses stated that " the bill was passed on 
 the demand of the Earl of Bedford and Lady Rus- 
 sell." Sir Thomas Clarges insisted that these words 
 should be expunged : " The justice of the nation," he 
 said, " is superior to all individual solicitations ; this 
 bill is not passed by favour, all England is interested in 
 it." This was the second act that King William signed 
 after his accession. A little later, and to testify at the 
 same time his favour to two families, united by family 
 ties and political opinions, he conferred on the Earls 
 of Bedford and Devonshire the title of Dukes, and 
 the letters patent to the new Duke of Bedford stated : 
 " That it was not the least among the reasons for this 
 favour, that he was the father to Lord Russell, the 
 ornament of his age, whose great merits it was not 
 enough to transmit by history to posterity, but they 
 (the king and queen) were. willing to record them in 
 their royal patent, to remain in the family as a monu- 
 ment consecrated to his consummate virtue, whose 
 name could never be forgot, so long as men preserved 
 any esteem for sanctity of manners, greatness of mind, 
 and a love to their country, constant even to death."
 
 HACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 61 
 
 Domestic gratifications attended Lady Russell at 
 the same time as the reparation of political honours ; 
 she married her second daughter, Catherine, to Lord 
 Roos, the eldest son of the Duke of Rutland, and her 
 son, Lord Tavistock, only fifteen years old, to Miss 
 Rowland, a rich heiress of the county of Surrey. She 
 did not decide hastily in either case, nor was she in- 
 fluenced by considerations alone of rank and fortune ; 
 she paused some time before placing her daughter in 
 the family of the Duke of Rutland, on account of some 
 scruples about a divorce, and she refused for her son 
 a more wealthy match than the one she contracted for 
 him. The celebrity of these alliances, and the pros- 
 perity of her family, attracted general attention to her 
 without causing surprise or envy ; the public loudly 
 proclaimed its sympathy for this justice of God and 
 man towards sorrowing virtue, and the relations, the 
 friends of the Russells, the Cavendishes and the 
 Wriothesleys took pleasure in relating to Lady Rus- 
 sell, in her retirement at Southampton House, the 
 joyous festivities to which she remained a stranger. 
 Her daughter Catherine, after her marriage with Lord 
 Roos, was taken by her husband to Belvoir Castle, 
 the seat of the Duke of Rutland, her father-in-law ; 
 on this occasion, the same gentleman, (Sir James 
 Forbes,) by whom, ten years previously, Lord Caven- 
 dish had conveyed to Lord Russell when under sen- 
 tence of death, the offer to take his place in person 
 that he might escape, writes to Lady Russell : " I 
 could not miss this opportunity of giving your Lady-
 
 62 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 ship some account of Lord Roos' and Lady Roos' 
 journey, and their reception at Belvoir, which looked 
 more like the progress of a king and queen through 
 their country than that of a bride and bridegroom 
 going home to their father's house. At their first entry 
 into Leicestershire, they were received by the High 
 Sheriff at the head of all the gentlemen of the county, 
 who all paid their respects, and complimented the lady 
 bride at Harborough. She was attended next day to 
 this place by the same gentlemen, and by thousands 
 of other people, who came from all places of the coun- 
 try to see her, and to wish them both joy, even with 
 huzzas and acclamations. 
 
 " As they drew near to Belvoir our train increased, 
 with some coaches, and with fresh troops of aldermen 
 and corporations, besides a great many clergymen, who 
 presented the bride and bridegroom (for so they are 
 still called) with verses upon their happy marriage. 
 I cannot better represent their first arrival at Belvoir, 
 than by the Woburn song that Lord Bedford liked so 
 well; for at the gate were four-and-twenty fiddlers 
 all in a row ; four-and-twenty trumpeters, with their 
 tan tara ra ras ; four-and-twenty ladies, and as many 
 parsons ; and in great order they went in procession 
 to the great apartment, where the usual ceremony of 
 saluting and wishing of joy passed. After this, time 
 passed away till supper in visiting all the apartments of 
 the house, and in seeing the preparations for the sack 
 posset, which was the most extraordinary thing I did 
 ever see, and much greater than it was represented to
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 63 
 
 be. After supper, which was exceeding magnificent, 
 the whole company went in procession to the great 
 hall ; the bride and bridegroom first, and all the rest 
 in order, two and two ; there it was the scene opened, 
 and the great cistern appeared, and the healths began ; 
 first in spoons, some tune after in silver cups; and 
 though the healths were many, and great variety of 
 names given to them, it was observed after one hour's 
 hot service, the posset did not sink above one inch, 
 which made my Lady Rutland call in all the family, 
 and then upon their knees the bride and bridegroom's 
 health, with prosperity and happiness, was drunk in 
 tankards brim full of sack posset. This lasted till 
 past twelve <jfblock." 
 
 At the same time that this account of aristocratic 
 and popular fetes was conveyed to her, Lady Russell 
 received from her pious friends, congratulations which 
 no doubt harmonized better with the state of her mind. 
 Burnet, become bishop of Salisbury, in a letter to her, 
 says : " You have passed through very different scenes 
 of life ; God has reserved the best to the last. I do 
 make it a standing part of my poor prayers twice a 
 day, that as now your family is the greatest in its 
 three branches that has been in England in our age, so 
 that it may in every one of these answer those bles- 
 sings by an exemplary holiness, and that both you and 
 they may be public blessings to the age and nation." 
 
 She had scarcely married her son when she received 
 a proposal for him as flattering as singular. A general 
 election was about to take place ; the Duke of Shrews-
 
 64 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 bury, Lord Steward, and Lord Somers, Lord Keeper 
 of the Great Seal, requested Lady Russell to consent 
 that her son, notwithstanding his youth, (he was only 
 fifteen,) should offer himself as a candidate for the 
 county of Middlesex: on this occasion Sir James 
 Forbes writes to her : " although I make all the ob- 
 jections against it that I think the Duke of Bedford 
 or your Ladyship can make, yet they were still of one 
 opinion that it is your interest, and for the honour of 
 the family that he should stand at present. And being 
 joined by Sir John Woolstonholme, a very honest 
 man, they doubt not but they will carry it with a high 
 hand, and thereby keep out two notorious Tories, which 
 can never be done otherwise. When I told their 
 Lordships that my Lord Tavistock was soon going to 
 Cambridge, and afterwards to travel for two or three 
 years, the Duke of Shrewsbury answered, that they 
 would not hinder any thing of that design, for he 
 needed not to appear but once at the election, when he 
 would be attended by several thousands of gentlemen 
 and other persons on horseback out of town, and the 
 charges would but be little or nothing ; and the Duke 
 of Shrewsbury bid me tell your Ladyship that if you 
 did consent he should stand, which he doubted not 
 but you would, since it was on so good an account, 
 that then they must have leave to set him up for that 
 day only by the name of Lord Russell, which would 
 bring ten thousand more on his side, if there be so 
 many freeholders in the county." 
 
 What temptations these to the love and the con- 
 jugal and maternal pride of Lady Russell !
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 65 
 
 X. 
 
 SHE did not yield to them, having two powerful aids 
 in resisting them, her piety and grief. On the occa- 
 sion of the titles and honours conferred on the family 
 of Russell, " I would have done," said she, " all which 
 depended on me to procure them ; but all these out- 
 ward things cannot bring one any real joy." She 
 rejected, with a good sense full of modesty, the pre- 
 mature triumph which politics held out to her son. 
 Writing to her brother-in-law, Lord Edward Russell, 
 she says: " Friday's post brought me the enclosed 
 paper. Pray, my Lord, will you take the pains to 
 read it, and then if you do not know it will be im- 
 pertinent, I entreat you to wait on the Duke of 
 Shrewsbury, to whose judgment I have so great a 
 deference, that if I could imagine he was much in 
 earnest and is so still, .... it would make me doubtful 
 of the weight of my own reason against it, and I be- 
 lieve, would have the same effect upon your father, who 
 at present knows nothing of Sir James' letter, nor 
 what I am now doing; and if you remember how averse 
 he expressed himself but a few days ago, upon the 
 reading of a letter I had received with the same advice, 
 you will guess that nothing less than the authority of 
 his Grace's constant opinion can change Lord Bed- 
 ford's, which is grounded on the apprehensions that 
 Mich an interruption as being elected a parliament 
 man, would make in his education, might undo him 
 
 F
 
 66 THE MARRIED LIFE or 
 
 for the time to come to all intents and purposes ; and 
 really I am so much of that mind as to fear the mis- 
 chief would be past retrieving. However, as I am 
 very jealous to do everything I think best for my 
 son, so I am too in my submission to persons so much 
 wiser than myself, who wish well to us. I beg of 
 you not to forget to give me a line or two by the next 
 post for, till then, Good Sir James is kept in sus- 
 pense." 
 
 Maternal wisdom gained the victory over the in- 
 terests of party, and instead of presenting himself to 
 the electors of Middlesex, Lord Tavistock went to 
 the university of Oxford to complete his education, 
 " where our young nobility," says Lady Russell to 
 Dr. Fitzwilliam, " should pass some of their time, 
 which has been neglected for many years." 
 
 Good judgment, rectitude and moral delicacy were 
 displayed by this lady in the most simple incidents of 
 private life, warned and put on her guard against the 
 prejudices, the frivolities, and the assumptions too com- 
 mon in the old nobility. Before she decided on giving 
 her daughter Catherine to the son of the Duke of Rut- 
 land, she inquired of him, " whether your Lordship 
 does not think we owe this to the young couple, that 
 they should see one another a little more than they 
 have done ; and so at least guess at each other's hu- 
 mour, before we venture to make them, as I hope 
 they shall be, a happy couple." Some years later she 
 had two livings in her gift to dispose of: she wrote to 
 one of her friends, Sir Robert Worsley, " I find both
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 07 
 
 places well disposed to receive Mr. Swayne. I hope 
 he is worthy of the gift, and believe you think him 
 so. If you should know anything why he is not, 
 though as a friend you might wish he were the incum- 
 bent, yet I am persuaded that in a just regard to the 
 weight of the matter, and to me who ask it from you, 
 if you know any visible reason that he is not a proper 
 person for such a preferment, that you will caution me 
 in it ; for I profess to you, Sir, I think the care of so 
 many souls is a weighty charge; and I have been willing 
 to take time to consider whose hands I put these into. 
 I can with all my scruples, make no exception to 
 Mr. Swayne." 
 
 So much virtue arid wisdom, the same through trials 
 the most opposite, in the midst of the favours as well as 
 the severities of fortune, obtained for Lady Russell, 
 among the people as in the court of England, a con- 
 sideration and even almost moral authority, rarely 
 obtained by women who have made more noise in the 
 world. Both before and after their elevation to the 
 throne, King William and Queen Mary continued 
 to Lady Russell the same respect, and the same re- 
 gard to her wishes. At the time of the revolution, 
 when the formal adhesion of the Princess Anne to the 
 coronation of the Prince of Orange was necessary, 
 Lady Churchill, who afterwards became Duchess of 
 Marlborough and the confidant of the Princess, would 
 not counsel her in this resolution " until after she had 
 advised with parties of a wisdom and indisputable in- 
 tegrity, especially Lady Russell of Southampton
 
 68 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 House, and Tillotson, afterwards Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury." Tillotson hesitated a long time before ac- 
 cepting this archbishopric from the hands of a king 
 whose title was not recognised by one part of the 
 English Church; it was Lady Russell who decided 
 him. Consulted by her on several occasions, and 
 aware of the earnest solicitations which the king ad- 
 dressed to him, after having considered and weighed 
 the Dean's scruples, she wrote to him : " The time 
 seems to be come that you must put anew in practice, 
 that submission, you have so powerfully both tried 
 yourself, and instructed others to; .... I believe 
 you would be as much a common good as you can; con- 
 sider how few of ability and integrity this age pro- 
 duces. Pray do not turn this matter too much in 
 your head, when one has once turned it every way, 
 you know that more does but perplex, and one never 
 sees the clearer for it." 
 
 With her best friend, Dr. Fitzwilliam, Lady Rus- 
 sell had not the 8ame success; whether from real 
 scruples of conscience, or the fear of bearing the blame 
 of a portion of his church, he refused to take the oath, 
 and gave up his preferment. Lady Russell, equally 
 conscientious, tried to dissuade him from this resolu- 
 tion : " I am very sorry the case stands with you as 
 it does in reference to the oath ; and still wonder why 
 it does so ! and all this is the acceptation of a word 
 which I never heard two declare the meaning of, but 
 they differed in their sense of it. You say you could 
 have taken it in the sense some worthy men have
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 69 
 
 done? Why will you be more worthy than those 
 men ? It is supererogation. If you can avoid mental 
 reservation, that's the biggest thing to me, for I hate 
 that to God or man ; properly I know we can have 
 none to God, though we may wish to have it ; but I 
 
 abhor that wish When I began to write in this 
 
 paper, I meant not one word of all I have said on this 
 subject, but I know, good Doctor, you will take it 
 right ; accept well of my good meaning towards you, 
 and excuse my defects. I pretend not to argue, but 
 where my wishes are earnest, I speak without re- 
 serve; some times by surprise, but take it as it ML" 
 This difference of opinion did not for a moment alter 
 their pious intimacy. 
 
 On every occasion, with all her relations, Lady 
 Russell after the triumph of her cause, and in the 
 midst of her own triumph, was as judicious, as much 
 a stranger to all infatuation, as liberal in mind and 
 heart as she had been firm and constant in the midst 
 of adversity. In one single circumstance only, I find 
 her unreasonable and rather overbearing. She had 
 strongly recommended for admission as one of the 
 king's counsellors, William Cowper, a very distin- 
 guished young man, who afterwards in the reign of 
 George I. became Lord Chancellor, and was elevated 
 to the peerage by the title of Earl Cowper. This de- 
 mand was met by very strong opposition ; a dispensa- 
 tion on account of his age was necessary. Lady Rus- 
 sell insisted at first with Lord Halifax, then with Sir 
 H. Pollexfen, Attorney General, and her letter to the
 
 70 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 latter, terminated with this sentence : " I undertake 
 very few things, and therefore do very little good to 
 people, but I do not love to be baulked, when I thought 
 my end compassed." It is the only trace that I have 
 found of a pretension in this upright and humble mind, 
 legitimately founded on the worth of him who was its 
 object, but impressed with a slight degree of pride 
 and prejudice. 
 
 Lady Russell, moreover, knew herself better and 
 judged herself more severely than the most rigid 
 moralist would have done. After her death an un- 
 finished paper was found, written with a hand en- 
 feebled by age ; in which under a form of prayer, 
 and with that humility a little alarmed which is a 
 distinguishing feature of real Christianity, she passed 
 in review the changes of her life, and rendered an ac- 
 count of her errors and sins, and implored the pardon 
 of God. I read in it this passage ; " Vanity cleaves 
 to me, I fear, O Lord ! in all I say, in all I do. In 
 all I suffer, proud, not enduring slights or neglects 
 
 Failing in my duty to my superiors ; apt to be 
 
 soon angry, and without excuse too often ; and by it 
 may have grieved those who desired to please me, or 
 provoked others to sin by my rash anger. Not ready 
 to own any advantage I may have received by good 
 advice or example. Not well satisfied if I have not 
 all the respect I expected, even from my superiors. 
 Such has been the pride of my naughty heart." I 
 am not inclined to judge Lady Russell as harshly 
 as she did herself, but in thus severely accusing her-
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 71 
 
 self of pride, and of unreasonableness, she touched in 
 part the weak point of her mind, and evinced both an 
 act of penetration as well as of sincerity. 
 
 In proportion as she grew old, surrounded by so 
 much respect, honoured in her mourning, content with 
 her family and her country, a mild and gentle change 
 took possession of her : the same recollections, and 
 sorrows though still present, were not felt with the 
 same poignancy. Without curing her malady, tune, 
 habit, weariness, and that weaning from self which 
 age brings to rightly disposed minds, soothed her pain- 
 ful sorrows; affection for her children, anxiety for 
 their happiness and virtue, occupied a larger space 
 in her heart, and left room for the bitter and pas- 
 sionate reminiscences of her own past life ; religion, 
 its anxieties, its duties, its exercises became her study 
 and her habitual practice. In a word, she became 
 calm, and resigned herself as a Christian, ever devoted 
 to the same love, but more and more submissive to 
 God, trusting in eternity, and still more engaged in 
 deserving it, than in haste to attain it. These senti- 
 ments are displayed in a long letter, which, in 1691, 
 she wrote to her children before the marriage of her 
 second daughter and son, giving them in the most 
 intimate confidence, advice, example and exhortations 
 of her faith and her tenderness. " My dear children, 
 I write this upon the 21st of July, 1691 a day of 
 sad remembrances to me, it being that whereon your 
 excellent father was taken from us with much severity 
 to my lasting sorrow, and your loss. I have not yet
 
 72 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 omitted on this day (but when prevented by sickness) 
 to humble and afflict myself under the mighty hand 
 of God, pouring out my soul before Him in prayer 
 and fasting, as first to testifie my humiliation for all 
 my sins .... I recollect as well as I can what they have 
 been, and, as a help to my memory, after the same man- 
 ner I set yours down, and gave it you when you first 
 received the sacrament." She relates to her children 
 the daily practices which she imposed upon herself, 
 so that none of her actions should escape scrupulous 
 examination. Her habitual prayers, her readings, 
 whether in the Holy Scriptures or in works of reli- 
 gious edification : " When I have done, I take my 
 paper and consider what I have been most faulty in 
 this week as Avandering in prayer, or negligent in 
 reading, or passionate, or envious, or what else. I 
 set it down (in as few words as I can) at the foot of 
 my daily notes for that week ; . . . . and on upon the 
 first Friday in every month, just before I use my 
 confession, I look upon my notes and consider the 
 actions of the whole month, if nothing but common 
 has happened the less examination will suffice ; only 
 I take care so to recollect as may represent any thing 
 that is remarkable or great, either to be matter of sor- 
 row or thanksgiving; .... this gets on a habit of 
 constant watchfulness, and at sacrament time, or at 
 any other tune that I would examine myself, I find 
 it a great help to read this. It saves much time in 
 
 looking back, and though it may seem a hard 
 
 task at first, yet a little use makes it none, yet if it
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 73 
 
 help us to live more reverently and usefully, doing 
 this upon trial be found less paines to such as mean 
 to be serious in religion ; . . . . and now my children 
 believe your mother, there is nothing now in this 
 world can touch me very sorely but my children's 
 concerns, and although I love your bodies but too 
 well, yet if my heart deceive me not 'tis as nothing in 
 comparison of your more precious souls ; when I have 
 the least jealousy that any of you have ill inclinations, 
 or not so good as I would gladly have them, or fear 
 that you tread though never so little out of the right 
 path, how it pierces my soul in fear and anguish for 
 yours if you love or bear any respect for the memory 
 of your father, do not endanger a separation from him 
 and me in the next life .... remember this life at 
 longest is short, and how short none can tell .... 
 'tis the witness of an honest and good life in the day 
 of trouble and distress, no refreshment then but in a 
 well founded hope to enjoy a happy eternity, and to 
 what a degree that calms and sweetens the most bitter 
 sorrows is inconceivable by such as have not felt it, 
 as I bless God I have ever since I could get over the 
 astonishment of so great and so sudden a blow ; when 
 I am cast down with some sad reflections what I have 
 lost, I do as soon as I can turn my thoughts to con- 
 sider that in a short time I shall leave this world and 
 go to a place, where I shall see him who died for me 
 .... and shall meet all my pious friends again, .... 
 O my beloved children take care we meet again .... 
 you may take all the innocent delights of life ; but
 
 74 THE MARRIED LIFE OP 
 
 if they shut out religious thoughts and performances, 
 and devour and take up all our time, then indeed we 
 sin; .... but be devout and regular in your duties 
 to God heaven will be secure and pleasures in- 
 nocent" 
 
 I believe it hardly possible to find an instance 
 of maternal exhortation at once so gentle and so seri- 
 ous, nor one in which love ever anxious is so closely 
 allied with fervent piety. Lady Russell had need to 
 collect all her fortitude ; her trials were not yet ter- 
 minated. TFen years after she had addressed this pious 
 language to her children, we find her at the bed-side of 
 her son, now Duke of Bedford, who had been suddenly 
 attacked by the small pox ; from fear of contagion the 
 young Duchess of Bedford and her children had been 
 sent away, the mother alone remained, sustaining the 
 courage and receiving the last words of her dying son. 
 He died. Some days after Lady Russell wrote to her 
 cousin, Henri de Ruvigny : " Alas ! my dear Lord 
 Galway, my thoughts are yet all disorder, confusion 
 and amazement ; and I think I am very incapable of 
 saying or doing what I should. 
 
 " I did not know the greatness of my love to his 
 person, till I could see it no more. When nature, who 
 will be mistress, has in some measure with time relieved 
 herself, then, and not till then, I trust the Good- 
 ness which hath no bounds, and whose power is irre- 
 sistible, will assist me by His grace to rest contented 
 with what His unerring providence has appointed 
 and permitted. And I shall feel ease in this contem-
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 75 
 
 plation, that there was nothing uncomfortable in his 
 death, but the losing him. His God was, I verily be- 
 lieve, ever in his thoughts. Towards his last hours 
 he called upon Him, and complained he could not pray 
 his prayers. To what I answered, he said, he wished 
 for more time to make up his accounts with God. 
 Then with remembrance to his sisters, and telling me 
 how good and kind his wife had been to him, and that 
 he should have been glad to have expressed himself to 
 her, said something to me of my double kindness to 
 his wife, and so died away. There seemed no reluc- 
 tancy to leave this world, patient and easy the whole 
 time, and I believe knew his danger, but loath to grieve 
 those by him, delayed what he might have said. But 
 why all this ? the decree is past. I do not ask your 
 prayers, I know you offer them with sincerity to our 
 Almighty God for your afflicted kinswoman." 
 
 Six months had hardly passed away, when a new 
 stroke fell upon Lady Russell ; her second daughter, 
 the Duchess of Rutland, died in child-birth. Of her 
 three children, her eldest daughter, the Duchess of 
 Devonshire alone remained to her, and she had just 
 been confined. Resolute in concealing from her the 
 death of her sister, and pressed by enquiries, Lady 
 Russell replied, " I have just seen your sister out of 
 bed." She had seen her in her coffin. 
 
 Nearly twenty years before this last misfortune, in 
 1692, Lady Russell was nearly deprived of her eye- 
 sight ; the operation for cataract, though successfully 
 performed, only afforded a difficult and precarious use.
 
 76 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 There remain consequently, in this late period of her 
 life but very few letters, profoundly sad, but calm, as 
 a prisoner who has witnessed the departure from their 
 common prison of all those she loved, and who awaits 
 her own deliverance. The 28th of May, 1716, she 
 writes to her cousin, Lord Galway, also suffering 
 under domestic afflictions : " I pray to God to fortify 
 your spirit under every trial ; till eternity swallows all 
 our troubles, all our sorrows, all our disappointments, 
 and all our pains in this life. The longest how short 
 to eternity !" In September, 1723, Lady Russell was 
 alone in London, still in her residence of Southampton 
 House, where she had lived with her father and her 
 husband, and since her widowhood. The 26th of this 
 month her granddaughter, Lady Rachel Morgan, 
 writes from Chatsworth to her brother, Lord James 
 Cavendish : " The bad account we have received of 
 grandmama Russell has put us into great disorder 
 and hurry. Mama has left us and gone to London. 
 * * * * I believe she has stopped the letters on the 
 road, for none have come here to-day, so that we are 
 still in suspense. I should be very glad that mama 
 should get to town time enough to see her, because it 
 might be some satisfaction to both, and I hear grand- 
 mama asked for her." God granted to the mother 
 and daughter this last happiness. Lady Russell ex- 
 pired on the 29th of September, 1723, in the arms of 
 her last remaining child. A journal of the day, the 
 British Gazette, on the 5th of October, announced her 
 death in the following words : " The Right Honour-
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 77 
 
 able the Lady Russell, relict of Lord Russell, died on 
 Sunday morning last, at five o'clock, at Southampton 
 House, aged eighty-six, and her corpse is to be carried 
 to Chenies, in Buckinghamshire, to be interred with 
 that of her lord." Two other journals only record the 
 event. The last words of Lord Russell to Burnet were 
 now true for his wife, as they had been for himself: 
 she had done with time, and entered into eternity. 
 
 I have taken a lively interest in portraying a cha- 
 racter so pure in love, so constant in grief, ever great 
 but humble in greatness, faithful and devoted to her 
 feelings and her duties, in sorrow and in joy, in ad- 
 versity and in triumph. Our age is tainted with a 
 deplorable malady ; it believes in no passion, unless 
 accompanied with exaggeration; unbounded love, 
 perfect devotion, all those exalted and ardent feelings 
 the masters of the mind, only seem possible to it, when 
 carried beyond the pale of the laws of morality and 
 social propriety ; all order is in its eyes a yoke, which 
 paralyses all submission ; a slavery which debases, 
 every flame is extinguished if it does not become a 
 conflagration. An evil the more serious, since it is 
 not an attack of fever, nor the outbreak of exuberant 
 force ; it has its source in perverse doctrines, in the 
 rejection of all law, all faith, all superhuman existence, 
 in the idolatry of man, putting himself in the place of 
 his Creator ; himself, and himself alone, his only plea- 
 sure and his sole desire : and to this evil another is 
 added, not less deplorable : man not only does not wor- 
 ship more than himself, but he worships himself only as
 
 78 THE MARRIED LIFE OF 
 
 one of the multitude in which all individuality is 
 lost ; he bears hatred and envy to all that rises above 
 the common level; all superiority, all individual 
 greatness, of whatever kind or name, seems to such 
 minds at once mad and degenerate, a sin and an op- 
 pression towards that chaos of undefined and ephemeral 
 beings which they call humanity. When some great 
 scandal is discovered in the highest ranks of society, 
 some odious instance of vice and crime, they triumph, 
 and bring forward these disgraceful occurrences against 
 social superiority. They wish us to believe that these 
 are the ordinary morals, the natural consequences 
 of high birth, great wealth, and aristocratic rank, no 
 matter by what title or on what foundation it is 
 raised. When we have been assailed by these base 
 doctrines, and the shameful passions which give them 
 birth and spring from them, when we have felt the 
 repugnance and weighed the danger, it is a refreshing 
 enjoyment to meet one of those noble examples which 
 give them so brilliant a contradiction. As much as I 
 respect human nature in its whole, so much I admire 
 and love these exalted images of mankind, which per- 
 sonify and place on a lofty eminence, under visible fea- 
 tures and with their real name, that which is most noble 
 and most pure. Lady Russell presents to the mind 
 this beautiful and honest gratification. She is a noble 
 Christian Lady. She is not a stranger to me, her feel- 
 ings touch me, her fate prepossesses me, as if she was 
 living and before my eyes; and I have the con-
 
 RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 79 
 
 fidence that in departing from this life, burdened with 
 so many cruel trials, she is gone to that world invisible 
 to us, until the day when God shall call us thither, to 
 receive in the presence of her well-beloved husband, 
 the recompense of her virtues and of her sufferings. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CHISW1CK PRESS : PRINTED BT C. WH1TTISGHAM, 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
 
 Lately Published. 
 
 LETTERS OF RACHEL LADY RUSSELL. 
 
 A New Edition. 
 
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