He prospered greatly, rising
high in office; and in the next reign, when Henry VIII dissolved the
monasteries, Russel came in for a handsome share of the spoils,
including Woburn Abbey; he was created a peer, and so founded the great
house of Bedford, made a dukedom in 1694 by William III. One of his
descendants, the third son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, was Lord John
Russell (the name being then able to afford an extra letter), who
brought the Great Reform Bill into Parliament in the year 1832. He was
Prime Minister then and in several subsequent Parliaments, and his name
was naturally a household word all over the kingdom; but what made my
brother more interested in this family was that as early as the year
1850 he was nicknamed "Lord John," after Lord John Russell, who was then
the Prime Minister.
We were now quite near Dorchester, but all we knew about that town
previously was from a song that was popular in those days about "Old
Toby Philpot," whose end was recorded in the last verse, when--
His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut,
And he died full as big as a Dorchester butt!
Our expectations of finding a brewery there were fully realised, and, as
anticipated, the butts we saw were of much larger dimensions, especially
about the waist, than those we had seen farther north.
Pages:
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941