Can any of your correspondents inform me where the virtuous and patriotic
William Lord Russell was buried? It is singular that neither Burnet, who
attended him to the scaffold, nor his descendant Lord John Russell in
writing his life, nor Collins's _Peerage_, nor the accounts and letters of
his admirable widow, make any allusion to his {101} remains. At last I
found, in the _State Trials_, vol. ix. p. 684., that after the executioner
had held up the head to the people, "Mr. Sheriff ordered his Lordship's
friends or servants to take the body and dispose of it as they pleased,
being given them by His Majesty's favour." Probably, therefore, it was
buried at Cheneys; but it is worth a Query to ascertain the fact.
My attention was drawn to this omission by the discovery of the decapitated
man found at Nuneham Regis ("N. & Q.," Vol. vi., p. 386.), and from
observing that the then proprietor of the place appears to have been
half-sister to Lady Russell, viz. daughter of the fourth Lord Southampton,
by his second wife Frances, heiress of the Leighs, Lords Dunsmore, and the
last of whom was created Earl of Chichester. But a little inquiry satisfied
me this could not have been Lord Russell's body; among other reasons,
because it was very improbable he should be interred at Nuneham, and
because the incognito body had a peaked beard, whereas the prints from the
picture at Woburn represent Lord Russell, according to the fashion of the
time, without a beard.
But who then was the decapitated man? He was evidently an offender of
consequence, from his having been beheaded, and from the careful embalming
and the three coffins in which his remains were inclosed. The only
conjecture I see hazarded in your pages is that of MR. HESLEDEN (Vol. vi.,
p. 488.), who suggests Monmouth; but he has overlooked the fact stated in
the original communication of L. M. M. R., that Nuneham only came into the
possession of the Buccleuch family through the Montagues, _i.e._ by the
marriage of Henry, third Duke of Buccleuch, to Lady Elizabeth Montagu; the
present proprietor, Lord John Scott, being their grandson. This marriage
took place in 1767, or eighty-two years after Monmouth's execution, and
thirty-three years after the death of his widow, the Duchess of Buccleuch
and Monmouth, who is supposed to have caused the body to be removed from
Tower Hill.
Notwithstanding the failure of heirs male in three noble families within
the century, viz. the Leighs, the Wriothesleys, and the Montagus, the
present proprietor is their direct descendant, and there are indications in
the letter referred to, that the place of interment of his ancestors, as
well as of this singular unknown, will no longer be abandoned to be a
depository of farm rubbish.