46

HISTORY OE ENGLAND.

crui>. made, without any opposition on the part of the Tories, to thensa memQ1 7 an d the families of some other victims, who wereThe ai- themselves beyond the reach of human power. Soon after theHusseu° f Convention had been turned into a Parliament, a bill forreversed. revers ; n g the attainder of Lord Itussell was presented to thePeers, was speedily passed by them, was sent down to theLower House, and was welcomed there with no common signsof emotion. Many of the members had sate in that very cham-ber with Russell. He had long exercised there an influenceresembling the influence which, within the memory of thisgeneration, belonged to the upright and benevolent Althorpe;an influence derived, not from superior skill in debate or in de-clamation, but from spotless integrity, from plain good sense,and from that frankness, that simplicity, that good nature,which are singularly graceful and winning in a man raised bybirth and fortune high above his fellows. By the Whigs Rus-sell had been honoured as a chief; and his political adversarieshad admitted that, when he was not misled by associates lessrespectable and more artful than himself, he was as honest andkindhearted a gentleman as any in England. The manly firm-ness and Christian meekness with which he had met death, thedesolation of his noble house, the misery of the bereavedfather, the blighted prospects of the orphan children,* aboveall, the union of womanly tenderness and angelic patience in

Honour Vindicated, 1690; and tho London Gazettes of July 31. andAugust 4. and 7. 1690, in which Lady Essex and Burnet publicly contra-dicted Uraddon.

* Whether the attainder of Lord Bussell would, if unreversed, haveprevented his son from succeeding to the earldom of Bedford is a difficultquestion. The old Earl collected the opinions of the greatest lawyers oftho age, which may still be seen among the archives at Woburn. It isremarkable that one of these opinions is .signed by Pemberton, who hudpresided at the trial. This circumstaneo seems to provo that the familydid not impute to him any injustice or cruelty; and in truth he had behavedas well as any judge, before the devolution, ever behaved on a similar oc-casion.