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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



THE LATE DUKE OF BEDFORD. 



The Duke of Bedford, who had for some months 

 past been iu declining health, died on Tuesday, May 14, at 

 Wobum Abbey. He was the eldest son of John, sixth Duke, by 

 his first marriage with the Hon. Miss Byng, second daughter of 

 the fourth Viscount Torrington. He was born May 13, 17S8, 

 and married, August 8, 1808, Lady Anna Maria Stanhope, 

 eldest daughter of Charles, third and late Earl of Harrington, 

 by whom, who died in July, 1857, he leaves issue an ouly son, 

 William, Marquis of Tavistock, now Duke of Bedford. The 

 deceased peer was educated at Westminster School, whence 

 he removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, to complete his 

 studies. Before he graduated as M,A. in 1808 he had gone 

 the tour of Europe, as customary in those days. On his re- 

 turn to England he entered the House of Commons as M.P. 

 for Bedfordshire, which county he represented in six con_ 

 secutive Parliaments, until he was summoned in December, 

 1832, to the House of Lords in his father's barony of How- 

 land. On the death of his father, in October, 1 839, he suc- 

 ceeded to the Dukedom. In J 852 he was appointed Special 

 Deputy- Warden of the Stannaries, and on the death of the 

 late Earl de Grey was made Lord Lieutenant of Bedfordshire. 

 In 1846 he was made a member of the Privy Council, and 

 the year following a Knight of the Order of the Garter. On 

 the death of Lord Macaulay he became High Steward of 

 Cambridge. By his death the extensive estates belonging to 

 the honse of Kussell in Bedfordshire, Devonshire, Herts, 

 Cambridgeshire, and Middlesex, as well as the titular honours; 

 devolve upon his only son, William, born in 1809. The pre- 

 sent Duke was M.P. for Tavistock from 1832 to 1841. 



Just as Agriculture is beginning to rejoice under 

 the approving smile of Royalty itself, she turns aside 

 for a moment to mourn the loss of a true friend. And 

 right worthily may he who has just left us ask the tri- 

 bute of a tear. He was a good man, who used his 

 great means in doing- great good to those around him. 

 Descended of a noble race that has long stood high iu 

 the annals of Agriculture, his own uuchequered career 

 of usefulness will eclipse even the fame of his ancestors. 

 Seldom has a man worked so steadily onwards. Rarely 

 has any one left so many lasting monuments to his 

 memory. At every turn wheresover his path was fol- 

 lowed, you saw what a blessing it was for the poor to 

 own such a friend, the tenant to boast of such a land- 

 lord, and the gentry to feel the force of such an ex- 

 ample. The blocks of clean comfortable cottages — the 

 complete well-finished homesteads — the thriving 

 schools, and the spiring churches — either alike in town 

 or country, there is that record of him that the sculp- 

 tor's art or the poet's pen will seek in vain to vie with. 

 The Duke of Bedford has done his duty in that state 

 of life iu which it pleased God to place him. The 

 charge was, no doubt, a heavy one ; but be ably ful- 

 filled it. 



This is a high character j but it is an honest one. Re- 

 garded strictly as a landowner, there is perhaps scarcely 

 such another illustration of his order as the late 

 Duke of Bedford, now left amongst us. Liberality 



and Management were the watchwords of his system; 

 and amply indeed did it succeed. His Grace's own 

 home-fai-m was a very model for others; and an emi- 

 nent agriculturist from a distance, who went over this 

 only the day before the Duke's death, was alike grati- 

 fied and surprised — at having seen such a farm, and 

 at having previously heard so little of it. Then so per- 

 fect in their way had the Woburn holdings become, so 

 well were the occupiers started and treated, that the 

 very fact of being a tenant on the Bedford Estate gave 

 a man a name and a standing. One amongst 

 them, who but a few years since thought he re- 

 quired a new range of farm-buildings, was in- 

 vited to go through the country, and to see what 

 he should like ; and having made his choice, some of 

 a similar description were erected for him. But there 

 was method in all this liberality ; and the Duke's pro- 

 perty had with every justice the repute of being the 

 best-managed estate in the Kingdom. Much as his 

 Grace did himself towards this, excellent man of busi- 

 ness as he was, he was ever well represented ; for few 

 agents have ever more fairly earned the esteem he has 

 than Mr. Bennett, while it is not often that two such 

 farm stewards have been found, the one to follow the 

 other, as Mr. Baker and Mr. Coleman. If you may 

 judge of a man alike by his works as by those about 

 him, then did the Duke of Bedford deal discreetly 

 with the talent with which he had been trusted. 



If we search further, we only find what is 

 already famous. The home farming in the park 

 may not be so well known to all as it 

 should be, but the housing of the labouring man 

 has long been held up as the example for others. The 

 Duke of Bedford spent upwards of sixty thousand 

 pounds in building cottages for the labourers in his 

 native county, and he hit the happy medium in doing so. 

 They were not too good nor too costly for their actual 

 purpose. The Royal Agricultural Society published 

 plans of them ; the Farmer's Magazine gave prints 

 of them ; and the Quarterly Review wrote essays on 

 them in this wise : — •' As they embrace, moreover, 

 every variety of ordinary cottage accommodation, none 

 have been published, even by professed architects, so 

 useful to the country builder as those which emanate 

 from the study of Woburn. The Duke has been as 

 conspicuous in his deeds as in his i^lans. He has 

 erected scores upon scores of new tenements for the 

 labourer, and the result has been a marked improve- 

 ment in the wellbeing of theii- inhabitants." 



That last line or so might be taken for his epitaph. 

 Whether it were in the crowding of St. Giles, or the 

 pleasant paths around the Abbey — to wherever the Duke 

 of Bedford's influence extended, there was a /narked 

 improvement in the loell-heing of the inhabitants. 

 You witnessed it alike in the tenantry and the pea- 



