pastor of a baptist congregation at High Hall, West Smithfield. He was already known as an able controversialist. His first lance was hurled against the sabbatarians in ‘No Seventh Day Sabbath commanded by Jesus Christ in the New Testament,’ 1663, answered by Edward Stennet in the ‘The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord,’ 1664, 4to. Russel next replied to ‘The Twelve Pagan Principles held by the Quakers seriously considered,’ by William Loddington, with ‘Quakerism is Paganism,’ London, 1674, 8vo. Loddington, a baptist, who never was a quaker, retorted with ‘Quakerism no Paganism,’ London, 1674.
Russel launched an ‘Epistle concerning Infant Baptism, in Answer to Two Treatises by Thomas James, Baptist Teacher of Ashford, Kent,’ 1676. He then attacked the subject of congregational singing in ‘Some Brief Animadversions on Mr. Allen's Essay of Conjoint Singing,’ London, 1696. Richard Allen replied with ‘Brief Vindication of an Essay,’ 1696, to which Richard Claridge [q. v.] and Russel together wrote an ‘Answer’ in 1697. The dispute was also carried on by Isaac Marlow in ‘The Controversie of Singing brought to an End,’ London, 1696, 8vo, and came to an end with the anonymous ‘Singing of Psalms vindicated from the Charge of Novelty, in Answer to Dr. Russel, Mr. Marlow,’ &c., London, 1698.
The next year, at the request of the Midland baptists, Russel wrote ‘A Vindication of the Baptized Churches from the Calumnies of Mr. Michael Harrison of Potter's Pury, Northamptonshire,’ London, 1697. On 22 Feb. 1699 he supported baptist principles in a disputation at the presbyterian meeting-house at Portsmouth. The verbal polemic occasioned two tracts by Russel, which were answered by J. Hewerdine in ‘Plain Letters in defence of Infant Baptism,’ London, 1699, 12mo. Russel retorted to Hewerdine and other critics in ‘Infant Baptism is Will Worship,’ 1700.
From about 1680 Russel appears to have practised as a physician, and effected certain cures described in his ‘De Calculo Vesicæ,’ London, 1691. He died at an advanced age on 6 March 1702. He married early. Nehemiah, born in 1663, appears to have been his only child who reached manhood.
The controversialist must be distinguished from William Russell (1634–1696?), appointed ‘chymist in ordinary’ to Charles II, who carried on a pharmacy, with his brother, Richard Russell, in Little Minories, and later in Goodman's Fields. He was the manufacturer of a ‘royal tincture,’ patronised by the king, the Countesses of Derby and Ossory, and others of rank. He died before 1697. He was the author of a ‘Physical Treatise,’ London, 8vo, 1684 (cf. Headrich, Arcana Philosophia, 1697, 8vo).
[Ivimey's Hist. of Baptists, i. 555, ii. 77, 212, 600; Wilson's Hist. of Dissenting Churches, iii. 392–5; Wood's Hist. of General Baptists, pp. 127, 129, 147, 153; Life and Death of Jabez Eliezer Russel, by W. Russel, M.D., 1672; works above mentioned; Crosby's Hist. of English Baptists, iv. 259–61; Smith's Anti-Quakeriana, p. 384; Bodl. Libr. Cat.]
RUSSELL. [See also Russel.]
RUSSELL, ALEXANDER (1715?–1768), physician and naturalist, was born in Edinburgh about 1715, being the third son, by his second wife, of John Russell of Braidshaw, Midlothian, a lawyer of repute. John Russell's first wife, all of whose children died in infancy, died in 1705; by his second wife he had nine children, three of whom reached manhood, viz. John Russell of Roseburn, W.S., F.R.S.E., author of ‘Forms of Process’ (Edinburgh, 1768) and of ‘The Theory of Conveyancing’ (Edinburgh, 1788); William Russell, F.R.S., secretary to the Levant Company; and Alexander. By his third wife, Mary, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Anderson, minister of West Calder, John Russell of Braidshaw had four sons, viz. David, Patrick (1727–1803) [q. v.], Claud—administrator of Vizagapatam—and Balfour, M.D., who died shortly after being appointed physician at Algiers.
Alexander Russell was educated at the high school and university of Edinburgh, attending lectures at the latter from 1732 to 1734, while apprenticed to an uncle, a surgeon, possibly Alexander Russel, M.D., who published ‘Tentamen medicum de medicastrorum audacitate’ (Edinburgh, 1709) and ‘Disquisitio medica de morbi causa’ (Edinburgh, 1718), with prefaces dated Elgin. The former work has been wrongly attributed to the subject of this notice. In 1734 Russell was one of the first members of the Medical Society of Edinburgh University. In 1740 he came to London, and in the same year went to Aleppo as physician to the English factory. He learnt to speak Arabic fluently, and acquired great influence with the pasha and people of all creeds. In 1750 he was joined by his younger brother, Patrick, and in 1753 he resigned, returning to England by way of Naples and Leghorn, in order to supplement his study of the plague at Aleppo by visiting the lazarettos at those places. He had sent home seeds of the true scammony to his fellow-student and correspondent, John Fothergill, M.D. [q. v.], which had been raised
