of King William she wrote, “Regard for the public welfare carried me to advise the princess to acquiesce in giving William the crown.  However, as I was fearful about everything the princess did while she was thought to be advised by me, I could not satisfy my own mind till I had consulted with several persons of wisdom and integrity, and particularly with the Lady Russell of Southampton House, and Dr. Tillotson, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.  I found them all unanimous in the opinion of the expediency of the settlement proposed, as things were then situated.”

Her friends and her country shared with her own family the heart and the correspondence of Lady Russell.  Her children she lived to see well provided for in honourable and influential positions.  Her second daughter was married to the son of her husband’s dearest friend, Lord Cavendish, and she became the Duchess of Devonshire.  The eldest daughter was unmarried, but the third became the Duchess of Rutland.  Her only son, afterwards Duke of Bedford, was in high favour in the reign of William and Mary, and acted as High Constable of England at the coronation of Queen Anne.  His education and training was carefully directed by his mother.  One of her letters is to his grandfather, then Earl of Bedford, interceding with him for one of the errors of her son’s early life.  He had been tempted, as many young Englishmen still are, to gamble when on his travels, but his debt taught him a lesson which saved him from ever after getting into trouble in this way.  Lady Russell, while pleading for his forgiveness, undertook to be answerable for the whole loss which had been incurred.  It is a sensible and motherly letter.

To give adequate idea of the whole correspondence would occupy much space, and we can only briefly refer to a few of the letters at different periods of her long life of widowhood.  To Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, she writes, in 1690:  “When anything below is the object of our love, at one time or other it will be a matter of our sorrow.  But a little time will put me again into my settled state of mourning; for a mourner I must be all my days on earth, and there is no need I should be other.  My glass runs low:  the world does not want me nor do I want it:  my business is at home and within a narrow compass.  I must not deny, as there was something so glorious in the object of my biggest sorrow, I believe that in some measure kept me from being overwhelmed.”

At one time Lady Russell was in danger of losing her sight, but being couched for cataract, she recovered sufficiently to continue her correspondence.