128 
AGRICULTURE AND THE HOUSE 
OF RUSSELL. 
The death of the ninth Duke of Bedford has deprived the Royal 
Agricultural Society of one of its staunchest and most dis- 
tinguished supporters — of one who, though rarely prominent in 
its public proceedings, filled the office of President in the year 
1880, when the Country Meeting was held at Carlisle, and whose 
memory will be long cherished as that of a nobleman who, with 
unstinted and continuous generosity, assisted in developing by 
experimental science the practical resources of the farm. It is 
therefore but just that special reference should be made in these 
pages to his worth and work ; and advantage may be taken of 
the opportunity to give some account of other members of his 
House who were in their time similarly noteworthy as pro- 
moters of British agriculture. 
It is, of course, simply in the nature of things that the 
possessors of vast landed estates should be more or less 
interested in agriculture. In several instances, however, the 
Earls and Dukes of Bedford have not been content with the 
general concern indicated by these words — for which, indeed, 
no credit coi^ld be claimed — but have devoted themselves with 
ardour and enterprise to this great national pursuit. 
The first of these to make for himself a name in agricultural 
annals was Francis, second Lord Russell of Thornhaugh, and 
fourth Earl of Bedford, who succeeded to the earldom in 1627, 
and was mainly instrumental in accomplishing for the vast 
district now known as the Bedford Level that which was 
achieved for Norfolk a century and a half later by "Mr. Coke, 
of Holkham." And in considering his work it should be borne 
in mind that, although he was possessed of vast estates, their 
revenues were insignificant compared with the princely income 
derived from them in these later days. The great estate 
surrounding Southampton House — on which the Earl's patriot 
grandson cast his wistful eyes on his way to the block in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1683 — was, as Macaulay tells us, 
" renowned for peaches and snipes " ; but its owner did not 
dream of the rent-roll now yielded by the squares and streets that 
occupy its site. We learn, on the same authority, that the Earl's 
son, the first Duke, was most reluctant to accept advancement to 
the highest rank in the Peerage, for " an earl who had a nnmerous 
