POLITICAL HISTORY 



Richard Hampden (the patriot's son) called it.^"" He seconded the Exclu- 

 sion Bill, and himself carried it to the Lords at the head of 200 of the 

 Commons, November 1680.*°" It was at once rejected, and Parhament was 

 dissolved in the beginning of the next year,'"'^ amidst apprehensions of civil 



war.*"' 



In the last Parliament of Charles II, which met at Oxford on 2 1 March 

 1680-1, Bedford county and borough were represented as in the two pre- 

 ceding Parliaments.*"* The opposition was now discredited, and the king 

 had secured the enthusiastic support of the Church by publishing a decla- 

 ration of his reasons for the dissolution of the last Parliament. Uncom- 

 promising opposition to the succession of the Duke of York, encroachments 

 on the liberty of the subject under colour of privilege, and an inclination to 

 favour Nonconformists, had turned public opinion against the opposition. ' The 

 Whigs,' says Hallam, ' so late in the heyday of their pride, lay, like the 

 fallen angels, prostrate upon the fiery lake.' *"* A petition presented by the 

 lord-lieutenant of Bedfordshire, with 200 signatures, speaks of the ' benign 

 influence of His Majesty's Government.' *°' Russell and his friends gradually 

 dissociated themselves from the more desperate measures advocated by 

 Shaftesbury, but they met in conclave at Southampton House *°* and else- 

 where, contemplated the possibility of armed resistance, entered into com- 

 munication with Scotland, and arranged apparently for a ' contingent ' rising.*"^ 

 Russell was arrested as an accomplice in the Rye House Plot ; and although 

 no direct complicity was proved against him he was executed 21 July 1683.*°* 

 Algernon Sidney followed him to the block. When another decade had 

 passed, and James had demonstrated the reality of the dangers which the 

 ' Southamptons ' had striven to prevent. Englishmen first honoured, and soon 

 revered, the names of Russell and Sidney, ' two names that will, it is hoped, 

 be for ever dear to every English heart.' *"' 



The 'ignoramus' with which a friendly Middlesex grand jury foiled 

 the Crown on the prosecution of Shaftesbury led the Government into ' the 

 most dangerous aggression on public liberty that occurred in the present 

 reign.' *^° By the institution of quo warranto proceedings against corporate 

 towns, or by the threat of such proceedings, the forfeiture or surrender of 

 many charters was obtained, and they were then regranted with alterations or 

 additions securing to the Crown a veto upon the appointment of one or other 

 of the chief members of the corporation. In 1664, upon the death of his 

 father, the Earl of Ailesbury had been elected recorder, steward, and town 

 clerk of the Bedford Corporation.*" Soon after the dissolution of the Oxford 

 Parliament of 1681 inquiry was made at Bedford, and two chamberlains 

 were found not to have taken the sacrament according to the Corporation 



"* Diet. Nat. Biog. The speech has been erroneously attributed to Richard's son John. 



™ Wiffen, op. cit. ii, 253. "' Ibid. 255. "" Reresby, Mem. 197 ; Hallam, op. cit. 587-8, 594. 



^'^ Ret. ofMemb. of Pari. *" Hallam, op. cit. 593, 598. "» Brown, John Bunyan, 326. 



*"* Hence they were called the ' Southamptons.' Southampton House was built by Thomas Wriothes- 

 ley. Earl of Southampton ; it occupied the south side of what is now Bloomsbury Square, and was 

 brought in 1667 to the Bedford family by Rachel, the earl's daughter and heiress, who married William Lord 

 Russell (Collins, Peerage, i, 122). Evelyn dined there in Feb. 1665 (see Diary). It was for more than a 

 century the town house of the Russells, and well known as Bedford House. It was pulled down in 1800. 



"" Hallam, op. cit. 601-2. 



"^ Ibid. 602 and n. ; Wiffen, op. cit. ii, 280. 



*^ Charles James Fox, quoted by Wiffen, op. cit. ii, 281. 



♦"' Hallam, op. cit. 599-600. "' Rec. of Corp. 98. 



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