hundred years' war, who was several times M.P. for Dorchester and once for Dorset, and who married a lady of the family of Godfrey of Hampshire. John was a member of parliament in 1423, when he was chosen speaker of the House of Commons (Statutes of the Realm, ii. 216, &c.) He was again speaker in 1432, and a third time in 1450. The inquisition post mortem on one John Russell, whose lands were in Wiltshire, was taken in 1473. The speaker is doubtfully said to have had two sons, John and Thomas. John (1432?–1505) married Elizabeth, daughter of John Froxmere of Froxmere Court, Worcestershire, and by her left two daughters and a son James (d. 1509); the latter was father of John Russell, first earl of Bedford [q. v.]
[Wiffen's House of Russell, i. 162; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, i. 248; Hutchins's Dorset, ii. 782 (which does not credit Russell with the ancestry of the earls and dukes of Bedford); Rolls of Parl. iv. 198, 200; Inquisitiones post mortem, iv. 359; Ramsay's Lancaster and York; Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons.]
RUSSELL, JOHN (d. 1494), bishop of Lincoln and chancellor of England, was born in the parish of St. Peter Cheeshill, Winchester. There does not appear to be any authority for connecting him with the Dorset family from which the dukes of Bedford descend, and which bears a different coat-of-arms. Russell entered at Winchester College in 1443, and in 1449 became fellow of New College, Oxford. He disputed as LL.B. on 13 March, and as LL.D. on 15 Dec. 1459 (Boase, Reg. Univ. Oxon. p. 33, Oxf. Hist. Soc.). He was moderator in the canon law school in 1461 (Wood, Hist. and Antiq. ii. 769), and in the following year resigned his fellowship and apparently left Oxford. On 28 Feb. 1466 he was appointed archdeacon of Berkshire (Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 635). He had probably already entered the royal service, and in April 1467 was at Bruges on an embassy to the Duke of Burgundy. In January 1468 he was employed in the negotiation of the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret, sister of Edward IV (Fœdera, xi. 590, 601). He was one of the envoys sent to invest Charles with the order of the Garter in February 1470. In February 1471, during the restoration of Henry VI, he was employed in treating with France; and in March 1472, when he is styled secondary in the office of the privy seal, was again employed in an embassy to Burgundy (ib. xi. 651, 682, 737). He probably succeeded Archbishop Thomas Rotherham [q. v.] as keeper of the privy seal in May 1474, and is so designated on 26 June of that year (ib. xi. 791). On 29 June 1474 he was sent to negotiate a marriage between the king's daughter Cicely and James, son of the king of Scotland (ib. xi. 814).
Russell was rector of Towcester on 6 Aug. 1471 (Tanner, p. 647), and received the prebend of Mora at St. Paul's on 9 July 1474 (Le Neve, ii. 411). On 6 Sept. 1476 he received custody of the temporalities of Rochester (Fœdera, xii. 31), and was consecrated bishop of that see by Cardinal Bourchier on 22 Sept. (Stubbs, Reg. Sacr. Angl. p. 71). Through a confusion with his predecessor, John Alcock [q. v.], he is sometimes said to have been preceptor of the young Prince of Wales. On 14 Dec. 1478 he was employed to treat for a marriage between Earl Rivers and Margaret of Scotland (Fœdera, xii. 171). In 1480 he was translated to the see of Lincoln, receiving the temporalities on 9 Sept. (ib. xii. 136). Russell was one of the executors of the will of Edward IV, and took part in the funeral ceremonies for that king on 17–19 April 1483 (Gairdner, Letters, &c., i. 5–9; Archæologia, i. 352–5). Up to this time he had retained his office as keeper of the privy seal, but before 13 May he was made chancellor, though apparently he accepted this new post with great reluctance (Ramsay, ii. 473, 481). He seems to have supported Richard of Gloucester, and was employed with Cardinal Bourchier to induce the queen to surrender the little Duke of York (Cont. Croyland Chron. 566; Excerpta Historica, p. 16). According to Polydore Vergil (p. 543, ed. 1555), Richard avoided summoning Russell to the council when Hastings was arrested. Russell sat as a judge in chancery on 22 June, and on 27 June, the day after Richard III assumed the crown, was confirmed in his office (Fœdera, xii. 185, 189). In October he was lying ill in London, and the seal was for a time taken into the king's hands to be used during Buckingham's rebellion (Ellis, i. 159). It was, however, restored on 26 Nov., and as chancellor Russell opened parliament with the customary speech on 23 Jan. 1484 (Rolls of Parliament, vi. 237). He seems to have been trusted by Richard, and in September 1484 was employed in the negotiations with the Scots at Nottingham, and in November in those with Brittany (Gairdner, Letters, &c., i. 64–7; Fœdera, xii. 260). But on 29 July 1485 the seal was taken out of his hands (ib. xii. 271), apparently through a suspicion that he favoured Henry of Richmond. At all events, Russell was favourably regarded by Henry VII, and was not only a trier of petitions in the parliament of November 1485, but was also employed in the negotiations with the king of Scots and
