of Suffolk, Henry VIII.'s younger sister, and assumed. the name, in addition to their own, of Brydges-Chandos. At the same time with the elevation of the Marquess to the long coveted Dukedom the descent of the Earldom of Temple of Stowe was extended, in default of male heirs, to his granddaughter, Lady Anna-Eliza (now the wife of W. Gore-Langton, Esq.) and her male issue. The Duke was Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and Joint Paymaster-General in his uncle's administration, and on the 28th of May 1830 was appointed Lord Steward; but he resigned office with the Wellington Cabinet in November of that year, having gradually receded into moderate Toryism. His tastes, like those of his father, were expensive, and he was obliged for a time to shut up Stowe and live abroad. It may be doubted, however, whether much saving was effected by this proceeding, as the Duke sailed and travelled in a style more like a Prince Royal than a private nobleman. He spent large sums of money on rare collections, particularly of prints, including a most curious series of scarce portraits illustrative of Granger's Biographical History of England. Besides this he left collections of natural history, which with the foregoing disappeared under the hammer of the auctioneer at different periods in the life of his successor. He was succeeded by his son, Richard Plantagenet-TempleNugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. This nobleman will be chiefly recollected as the mover of the celebrated "Chandos (tenant-at-will) clause" in the Reform Bill, which transferred the representation of the counties from the Whigs to the Tories. He was an ardent Tory and anti-free-trader, and a man of some ability,

but of indifferent private character. The mad family pride of the race broke out in him in a new form. He tried to become a great weight in the State by enormous purchases of land, and as he bought at prices which gave him 2 per cent and paid with money raised at 4, he completed the family ruin which the lavish expenditure of the two preceding generations had paved the way for. The catastrophe which ensued and the great sale at Stowe are matters of recent memory. The Duke married a sister of the late Marquess of Breadalbane; but she obtained a divorce from him. He died in July 1861, and was succeeded by his son, Richard Plantagenet-Campbell-TempleNugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, the present and third Duke, a man of far higher moral character, and an excellent man of business, though probably not much more than this. The family fortunes have begun to revive under his auspices. Stowe has been again tenanted by the family, and the acquisition of some of the Breadalbane money will probably give them a new start, and enable them to regain some portion at least of the influence which has been exercised for so many years by the house of Grenville-a house which has done good service to the State, as well in opposing the Crown as in an official capacity, and which, by force of its independent character, as well as of its errors, has connected itself inseparably with the history of England.

The Russells.

HE Russells belong to the second list of English nobles-the houses founded on the great Sequestration-but they may possibly have an old pedigree. Immense labour has been expended in

tracing it by genealogists dependent on the family, and it now lacks nothing except historic proof. Up to "James Russel, Esquier," of Swyre in Dorsetshire, and "Alys his wife, daughter of John Wyse," one or both of whom, according to a monument of coarse grey granite in Swyre Church, died in the first year of Henry VIII., the stream runs clear, but after that all is genealogical-i.e., more or less plausible guesswork. This James Russell may be accepted as son of JOHN RUSSELL, for John's monument, recording his death in 1505, is opposite that of James; and he may have been the man who commanded the artillery in Carisbrook Castle under Edward IV., and was sent with Lord Hastings and others as Ambassador to Burgundy. The Swyre monument, too, is in a pew still belonging to Bewick House, and Bewick manor seems to have belonged to a Russell who acquired it by marriage from the ancient family of De la Tour. If this Russell was, as the first

Earl of Bedford believed, and as is recorded on his own monument, of the same line, then the Russells spring from a family who held Kingston-Russell* in Henry VI.'s reign, and they undoubtedly possessed their lands by direct grant from William the Bastard or his immediate successors, on the tenure of serving as King's cupbearer at the feast of Pentecost an honour which, if the family are not content with a dozen generations of statesmen and patriots, they might yet recover, and so establish their claim to the bluest English blood, the group of adventurers who graved their names so deep into English soil. Mr Wiffen, the biographer of the house, thinks he can go farther, for he has found a Sir Hugh de Rozel, of Le Rozel, who signed a charter of the Countess Matilda's in Normandy on the eve of the battle of Hastings, who may have been a scion of the Bertrands, Lords of Briquebec, who may have been Turstans, who probably were descendants in the female line of Sigurd of Sweden, who certainly was the heir of Olaf the Sharpeyed, King of Rurik; but as there is not the faintest evidence that Hugh de Rozel ever came to England, and as there is evidence that he died a monk in Normandy, and as no one of the name appears in Domesday Book, Wiffen's long researches do not amount to much. The Dukes of Bedford must be content to know that they belong to a family ori

* At Kingston-Russell the Duke has a farm of 800 acres, but this is only part of a grant of the manor, &c., made to Francis, second Earl, out of the lands of Beaulieu Abbey, Hants. The manor is in another family. Bewick, Dorsetshire, has long ceased to be a manor, but the house and farm belong to the Duke of Bedford. Unless it was an early purchase, this seems to connect the family directly with the old Russells of Bewick.

ginally French, which came over from somewhere immediately after the Conquest, but whether from Le Rozel in Briquebec, or Rozel near Caen, or Rozel in Jersey, neither they nor anybody else will probably ever know.*

What is quite certain is, that the Russells are descended from one JOHN RUSSELL, who, in the reign of Henry VIII., worked himself with dauntless perseverance and energy into the succession to countless monks, nuns, and other inefficient persons, and, born a simple gentleman, died Earl of Bedford, and one of the most potent nobles at a time when nobles were very few. This John may have been a Privy Councillor of Henry VII., and have attended the Archduke of Austria in Dorsetshire as interpreter, or spy, or both; but he certainly was a Gentleman of the Chamber to Henry VIII.,—“ King's fire-screen," enemies called him,— and received from him in 1513 a grant of lands in Tournay, which he afterwards had to give up. He was one of the forty-five selected to accompany Henry to meet Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and was wounded in Surrey's expedition against Morlaix, losing his right eye by an arrow, and being knighted on the deck of the flag-ship for his gallantry, along with Thomas More and others. He was employed by the King in several important missions, was present at the battle of Pavia, in which Francis of

* There are two historical Russells, neither of whom can be assigned to the existing Russell family with any show of evidence. A Sir John Russell was Speaker of the House of Commons in the 2d and 10th years of Henry VI., and there was also a John Russell who was Chancellor to Richard III., and the first Chancellor for life of the University of Oxford. We also find the name occurring among the early mayors of the city of London.