John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

Biography

John Russell, the third son of the 6th Duke of Bedford, was born in London in 1792 and educated at Westminster School and the University of Edinburgh. He entered the House of Commons as a Whig in 1813 and became one of the leading advocates of parliamentary and religious reform, taking a prominent part in the 1828 repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and in Catholic emancipation.

As Paymaster of the Forces in Earl Grey's government from 1830, he was one of the main authors of the Reform Act 1832. Under Lord Melbourne he served as Home Secretary (1835-1839) and Secretary for War and the Colonies (1839-1841) while leading the House of Commons. In 1845 he declared for repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 1846 he became prime minister of a minority Whig government. That ministry was overwhelmed by the Irish Famine, and its anti-Catholic Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1851 caused lasting controversy; it fell in 1852 after a quarrel with Palmerston.

Russell later served under Aberdeen as Foreign Secretary and Lord President of the Council, briefly as Colonial Secretary under Palmerston, and again as Foreign Secretary from 1859 to 1865, a period in which he backed Italian unification. Raised to the peerage as Earl Russell in 1861, he succeeded Palmerston as prime minister in 1865, but his second ministry fell in 1866 over a new reform bill. He died at Richmond Park in 1878.