To these recorders, so full of good-nature to the great and prosperous,
I would willingly leave the first Baron Russell and Earl of Bedford, and
the merits of his grants. But the aulnager, the weigher, the meter of
grants will not suffer us to acquiesce in the judgment of the prince
reigning at the time when they were made. They are never good to those
who earn them. Well, then, since the new grantees have war made on them
by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let
us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure
in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.
The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr.
Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by being a
minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of
character to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihood
much such another as his master. The first of those immoderate grants
was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent
confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having
sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in
waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favorites
became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from
the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of
the first, was from the plunder of the Church.
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