Portrait of William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford (1616-1700), full-length, in garter robes

Executed in 1692, this imposing portrait of William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford, in Garter Robes, dates from a period when the sitter was once again in royal favour, having returned to public life at the time of the Glorious Revolution and carried the sceptre at the coronation of William and Mary. However, the Duke’s relationship with the Crown prior to this had been a chequered one after he sided with

At the outbreak of the English Civil War, Russell had sided with his father, Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, against the King. This led to his being appointed a commissioner to treat with the king in 1641 and his being named Lord Lieutenant of Devon and Lord Lieutenant of Somerset in 1642, fighting with Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex against the Royalist troops at the Battle of Edgehill in October of the same year. In spite of this, by the following summer, Bedford had become one of the ‘peace lords’ and had joined Charles I at Oxford. This was, however, only a brief flirtation with the Royalist cause, and the young Earl (his father having died in 1641) returned to the Parliamentarians in December.

The increasingly radical course of Cromwell’s forces did not sit well with Bedford, who retired from public life to his estate, Woburn Abbey, where he essentially remained until the Restoration in 1660. Though never close to Charles II, political machinations and the King's need for support in the Third Anglo Dutch War meant that Bedford was made Governor of Plymouth in 1671 and invested as a Knight of the Garter in May 1672. However, due to his religious persuasion – he was a Presbyterian – Bedford was against the notion of Anglian, and therefore Royalist, dominance. This led to his supporting Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, during the Exclusion Crisis, which sought to remove the King’s brother, James, from the line of succession. Bedford’s popularity with the Crown was further undermined when his son, William, was implicated in the Rye House Plot, a plan to assassinate the King.

It was only with the Glorious Revolution and the deposition of James II that Bedford regained favour, being invested as a Privy Counsellor in 1689 and created Duke of Bedford and Marquess of Tavistock in 1694. The present portrait may have been executed on his appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex in 1692. Another portrait of Bedford in garter robes by Sir Godfrey Kneller, likely dating from his elevation to the dukedom in 1694, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London (inv. no. NPG 298). Kneller was extensively employed at Woburn, as the Duke was one of his earliest patrons.