Portrait of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, 1740

A portrait of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford (1527-1585), 1740.

The engraving depicts a  a middle-aged white male dressed in a thick fur coat with a livery collar and a black cap. He has a long beard and looks out to the right, placed in an oval frame as if hung upon the wall, adorned with flock leaves. A cherub sits to the bottom left of the print.

Francis Russell was an English nobleman, soldier, and politician. He served as a Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire before taking his seat in the House of Lords in 1552. In 1549 he helped to quell the Western Rebellion (also known as "The Prayer Book Rebellion") in Devon and Cornwall. He served as a Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire before taking his seat in the House of Lords in 1552, and in 1553 became Lord Warden of the Stannaries for Devon and Cornwall, a position which exercised judicial and military functions, including managing the courts of stannary law that governed tin mining. In the same year he was one the signees for King Edward VI's "device" for the succession, which intended to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne in the stead of the King's sister, the Catholic Queen Mary I. As a consequence, and for his wider Protestant sympathies, he was imprisoned during the early years of Mary's reign.

When Queen Elizabeth I came to to the throne in 1558, Russell took on a relatively significant role in public life, and was made a Privy Councillor and the Lord Lieutenant of Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset. He assisted in negotiations between Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, and purportedly, in 1581, he sought to arrange a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. He was succeeded by his grandson Edward Russell, and his godson, the explorer Sir Francis Drake (1540-1597), is thought to be his namesake. 

The artist, Jacob (Jacobus) Houbraken, was the leading portrait engraver in eighteenth-century Holland. This particular portrait was included in the 1743 publication ‘The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain, Engraven by Mr. Houbraken, and Mr. Vertue, With Their Lives and Characters by Thomas Birch, A.M. F.R.S.’ Listed in the contents page as ‘Francis, the second Earl of Bedford’, page 37, the portrait is accompanied by a page and a half of text detailing information about his life, ending with the quote, “He was a person of such unbounded hospitality, that Queen Elizabeth used to say of him, that he made all the beggars, and was equally eminent for all the other virtues and graces, that form a compleat [sic] character.”

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