HISTORICAL MEMOIRS OF THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. - 1833. - PREFACE. - IT is nearly nine years since the notice in the British Museum of some valuable original letters of Sir John . Russell to Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey, first suggested to me the idea of collecting together all the records I could find, connected with the Russell family, in Normandy and England. I was attracted to this task by the veneration which from my very early youth I had cherished for the memory of that admirable patriot of their line, to whom the British nation is so deeply indebted for the vindication and perpetuity of its inherent liberties and rights. This feeling alone would not indeed have justified an undertaking like the present but during the prosecu- tion of long and very laborious researches, the various incidents and correspondence which I met with, particularly of the first two Earls of Bedford, presented so many features of interest, and were so intimately connected with the history of the times in which they flourished, as to hrnish me, upon deliberation, with a sufficient warrant and inducement for employing my best powers both of industry and perseverance in gathering together, and embodying in a systematic narrative, the most memorable actions of the family, from the earliest known period, that could now be gathered from the keep of tiine. I flattered myself that the survey would, in some degree at least, give back. an image of those past ages, manners, and achievements, which at all times strongly excite our curiosity and interest and that there might be a value and utility which posterity would not willingly let die, found couched in the records of a House, the members of which have borne an almost uninterrupted and conspicuous part in British story, from the time of the Norman Dukes to the Tudors, from the Tudors to the Stuarts, and from the domination of that intolerant and repudiated dynasty to the latest constitutional benefits effected under the more congenial sceptre of the. House of Hanover. The indulgence of this conviction will perhaps appear to some to...