wanted. From that day, however, the Duke of Leeds was morally extinguished. The subsequent Dukes led worthy and honorable lives, but were not otherwise notable. The seventh married (24th of April, 1828) an American lady, Louisa Catharine, third daughter of Mr. Richard Caton of Maryland, and widow of Sir Felton Bathurst Hervey.

The two next of the ducal houses, those of Bedford and Devonshire, are invested by Whig writers with almost a halo of glory, though in truth they have produced respectable rather than great men. The beginnings of the house of Russell are somewhat curious. One of the earliest ancestors of the family of whom anything is accurately known was Speaker of the House of Commons in the second and tenth years of Henry VI. His grandson, John Russell, a gentleman of property, resided at Berwick, about four miles from Bridport, in the county of Dorset. He was a bookish man, and would probably never have gone to seek out fortune; but fortune, as is her wont, came to him in the person of the Archduke Philip of Austria. This Prince, the son of the reckless Maximilian, having encountered a violent hurricane in his passage from Flanders to Spain, was driven into Weymouth, where he landed, and was hospitably received by a Sir Thomas Trenchard, who immediately wrote to court for instructions. Meanwhile he deputed his first cousin, Mr. Russell, to wait upon the Prince. His Highness was so fascinated by the conversation of Mr. Russell, that he begged that gentleman to accompany him to Windsor, where he spoke of him in such high terms to the King (Henry VII.), that the monarch at once took him into his favor. He subsequently accompanied Henry VIII. in his French wars, and afterward becoming a supple instrument of his master's ecclesiastical policy, was rewarded with a peerage and a grant of the Abbey of Tavistock, and the extensive lands thereto belonging. To these possessions the Protector Somerset added the monastery of Woburn and the Earldom of Bedford. Nor did the star of John Russell grow dim under the reign of the Catholic Mary, who named him Lord Privy Seal, and Ambassador to Spain, to conduct Philip II. to England. He died in 1555. From him were descended various Russells who enjoyed as many of the good things of this life as they could decently lay hands upon, and two of whom were famous men in their day. William, Lord Russell, is best known to posterity as the husband of the admirable Rachael Wriothesley, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Southampton, and widow of Francis, Lord Vaughan. With respect to his execution there has been some difference of opinion; but the probability is that it was a judicial murder of the worst kind. Immediately after the Revolution, Lord Russell's attainder was reversed by Parliament. His widow survived him forty years, and lived to see George I. on the throne and the Protestant succession firmly established. What is not so generally known, perhaps, is that the mother of Lord Russell was the daughter of Carr, Earl of Somerset, by the divorced wife of Essex. She was herself a virtuous lady, and is said to have fallen down in a fit when she first learned the horrible details of her family history.

Lord Russell's cousin was the victor of La Hogue, created Earl of Orford in 1697. He died in 1727 without issue, when the title became extinct—to be renewed fifteen years later in favor of Sir Robert Walpole.

Lord Russell's father was created Duke of Bedford by William III., May 11, 1694. He was succeeded by his grandson, Wriothesley, who was married at the ripe age of fourteen and elevated to a separate peerage the same year. He had previously been requested to come forward as a candidate for the county of Middlesex; but the prudent Lady Russell refused to allow him. In the then state of public opinion he would have been elected without opposition.

The eighteenth century was the golden age of Whig families, at least till George III. became king, and the house of Russell continued to provide the country with a succession of dignified placemen. John IV., Duke of Bedford, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1756. In 1762 his Grace, as the plenipotentiary of England, signed the preliminaries of peace at Fontainebleau with France and Spain—a work on which he can scarcely be congratulated, seeing that by it England was juggled out of nearly every advantage she had won by seven years of victory. The Duke's son, Francis, called by courtesy Marquis of Tavistock, married Lady Elizabeth Keppel, who literally died of grief when her husband was killed by a fall from his horse. Dr. Johnson's characteristic comment on this event was that if her ladyship had been a poor washerwoman with twelve children to mind, she would have had no time to die of grief. Lord Tavistock left three sons, Francis and John, successively fifth and sixth Dukes of Bedford, and William (posthumous), the unfortunate nobleman who, within living memory, was murdered by his French valet Courvoisier.

John, Earl Russell, the distinguished statesman who "upset the coach," is a son of the sixth duke, Lord Odo Russell, one of the ablest of modern diplomatists, a grandson of the same peer.

On the day after the head of the house of Russell was raised to ducal rank, the head of the Cavendishes received the same honor, being created Marquis of Hartington and Duke of Devonshire. This family claims descent from Sir John Cavendish, Lord Chief Justice of England in 1366, 1373, and 1377. "In the fourth year of Richard II. his lordship was elected chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and was next year commissioned, with Robert de Hales, treasurer of England, to suppress the insurrection raised in the city of York, in which year the mob, having risen to the number of fifty thousand, made it a point, particularly in the county of Suffolk, to plunder and murder the lawyers; and being incensed in a more than ordinary degree against the Chief Justice Cavendish, his son John having killed the notorious Wat Tyler, they seized upon and dragged him, with Sir John of Cambridge, prior of Bury, into the marketplace of that town, and there caused both to be beheaded." Thus far Burke, who has small sympathy to bestow on Wat Tyler, albeit that reformer was murdered in a cowardly way, whether it were Walworth or Cavendish who struck the blow. "For William Walworth, mayor of London, having arrested him (Wat Tyler), he furiously struck the mayor with his dagger, but being armed [i.e. the mayor being in armor], hurt him not; whereupon the mayor, drawing his baselard, grievously wounded Wat in the neck; in which conflict an esquire of the King's house, called John Cavendish, drew his sword and wounded him twice or thrice, even unto death. For which service Cavendish was knighted in Smithfield, and had a grant of £40 per annum from the King." The great-great-grandson of this Sir John Cavendish was gentleman usher to Cardinal Wolsey; after the death of his master King Henry took him into his own employment, to reward him for the fidelity with which he had served his former patron. His elder brother William was in 1530 appointed one of the commissioners for visiting and taking the surrenders of divers religious houses. Needless to add that from that day Mr. Cavendish had but to do as the King told him and make his fortune. Before his death he had begun to build the noble seat of Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, which his descendants still possess. His second son, and eventual heir, was created Earl of Devonshire by King James I. in 1618. The first earl's nephew was the renowned cavalier general created Marquis and subsequently Duke of Newcastle. He was at one time governor of the Prince of Wales (afterward Charles II.), and there is a touching epistle extant in which his youthful charge entreats the Marquis that he may not be compelled to take physic, which he feels sure would do him no good.

William, fourth earl of Devonshire, although raised to a dukedom by William III., distinguished himself, as did his son, the Marquis of Hartington, in the House of Commons, by