The next year Lord Bedford, with Lord Carlisle and four other Peers, who had come from the King's quarters, went to the House of Parliament and took the Covenant before the Commissioners of the Great Seal; this being the only compliance made by Lord Bedford with the faction he had abandoned. He now retired from public life, absented himself from Parliament, and sought that quiet and domestic peace in the bosom of his family, for which it may be well imagined he had often sighed amid the turmoil and strife of political and military life. He repaired to his home at Woburn Abbey, where, between the years 1645 and 1647, his royal master visited him on three separate occasions. After the execution of the King, and during the vicissitudes of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, Lord Bedford continued to live in seclusion, and it was not until the Restoration (to which event he contributed, as far as in him lay, both by his influence and his aid in pecuniary matters) that he reappeared in public. How ill was he repaid by an ungrateful and cruel King! Lord Bedford carried St. Edward's sceptre at the coronation of Charles the Second, and some time after received the Blue Ribbon of the Garter. He belonged to a large number of loyal spirits, who, after assisting and rejoicing in the return of the lawful Sovereign, experienced the most bitter disappointment at the tyrannical and unconstitutional course pursued by Charles, and following in the steps of his father, stood up manfully against the encroachments on civil and religious liberty; conduct which was supported and nobly carried out in the House of Commons by his son William, Lord Russell, whose union with Lady Vaughan about 1669 (better known to history as Rachel, Lady Russell) was a source of unalloyed satisfaction to Lord and Lady Bedford, to whom she became a tender and devoted daughter. In the life of William, Lord Russell, we have given full details of his political career, of the animosity his independent line of conduct aroused in the
