Part 15

SIR,

I have the honour to make application to you that you will be pleased to sanction my retirement from my office, by Patent, of Her Majesty's Serjeant-at-Arms attending the Speaker of the House of Commons. I have held this honourable office for twenty-seven years, and I feel that the time is come when it is desirable that I should no longer retain it.

I have the honour to be, Sir, Your very obedient servant, CHARLES J. F. RUSSELL, Serjeant-at-Arms.

THE RIGHT HONBLE. THE SPEAKER.

Thursday, April 8, 1875:

Mr. DISRAELI: I beg to move, Sir, that the letter addressed to you by Lord Charles Russell, the late Serjeant-at-Arms, be read by the Clerk at the Table.

Letter [5th April] read.

Mr. DISRAELI: Mr. Speaker, we have listened to the resignation of his office by one who has long and ably served this House. The office of Serjeant-at-Arms is one which requires no ordinary qualities; for it requires at the same time patience, firmness, and suavity, and that is a combination of qualities more rare than one could wish in this world. The noble Lord who filled the office recently, and whose resignation has just been read at the Table, has obtained our confidence by the manner in which he has discharged his duties through an unusually long period of years; and we should remember, I think, that occasions like the present are almost the only opportunity we have of expressing our sense of those qualities, entitled so much to our respect, which are possessed and exercised by those who fill offices attached to this House, and upon whose able fulfilment of their duties much of our convenience depends. Therefore, following the wise example of those who have preceded me in this office, I have prepared a Resolution which expresses the feeling of the House on this occasion, and I now place it, Sir, in your hands.

Mr. Speaker, read the Resolution, as follows: "That Mr. Speaker be requested to acquaint Lord Charles James Fox Russell that this House entertains a just sense of the exemplary manner in which he has uniformly discharged the duties of the Office of Serjeant-at-Arms during his long attendance on this House."

The MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: Sir, on behalf of the Members who sit on this side of the House, I rise to second the Motion of the Right Hon. Gentleman. He has on more than one occasion gracefully, but at the same time justly, recognized the services rendered to the State by the house of Russell. That house will always occupy a foremost place in the history of the Party to which I am proud to belong, and I hope it will occupy no insignificant place in the history of the country. Of that house the noble Lord who has just resigned his office is no unworthy member. There are, Sir, at the present moment but few Members who can recollect the time when he assumed the duties of his office; but I am glad that his resignation has been deferred long enough to enable a number of new Members of this House to add their testimony to that of us who are better acquainted with him, as to the invariable dignity and courtesy with which he has discharged his duties.

The Resolution was adopted by the House, nemine contradicente.

* * * * *

Lord Charles now retired to his home at Woburn, Bedfordshire, where he spent the nineteen years of his remaining life. He had always been devoted to the duties and amusements of the county, and his two main joys were cricket and hunting. He was elected to M.C.C. in 1827, and for twenty years before his death I had been its senior member. Lilywhite once said to him: "For true cricket, give me bowling, Pilch in, Box at the wicket, and your Lordship looking on."[*] He was a good though uncertain shot, but in the saddle he was supreme--a consummate horseman, and an unsurpassed judge of a hound. He hunted regularly till he was eighty-one, irregularly still later, and rode till his last illness began. Lord Ribblesdale writes: "The last time I had the good fortune to meet your father we went hunting together with the Oakley Hounds, four or five years before his death. We met at a place called Cranfield Court, and Lord Charles was riding a young mare, five years old--or was she only four?--which kicked a hound, greatly to his disgust! She was not easy to ride, nor did she look so, but he rode her with the ease of long proficiency--not long years--and his interest in all that goes to make up a day's hunting was as full of zest and youth as I recollect his interest used to be in all that made up a cricket-match in my Harrow days."

In religion Lord Charles Russell was an Evangelical, and he was a frequent speaker on religious platforms. In politics he was an ardent Liberal; always (except in that soon-repented heresy about Free Trade) rather in advance of his party; a staunch adherent of Mr. Gladstone, and a convinced advocate of Home Rule, though he saw from the outset that the first Home Rule Bill, without Chamberlain's support, was, as he said, "No go." He took an active part in electioneering, from the distant days when, as a Westminster boy, he cheered for Sir Francis Burdett, down to September, 1892, when he addressed his last meeting in support of Mr. Howard Whitbread, then Liberal candidate for South Bedfordshire. A speech which he delivered at the General Election of 1886, denouncing the "impiety" of holding that the Irish were incapable of self-government, won the enthusiastic applause of Mr. Gladstone. When slow-going Liberals complained of too-rapid reforms, he used to say: "When I was a boy, our cry was 'Universal Suffrage, Triennial Parliaments, and the Ballot.' That was seventy years ago, and we have only got one of the three yet."

In local matters, he was always on the side of the poor and the oppressed, and a sturdy opponent of all aggressions on their rights. "Footpaths," he wrote, "are a precious right of the poor, and consequently much encroached on."

It is scarcely decent for a son to praise his father, but even a son may be allowed to quote the tributes which his father's death evoked. Let some of these tributes end my tale.

June 29th, 1894.

My DEAR G. RUSSELL,

I am truly grieved to learn this sad news. It is the disappearance of an illustrious figure to us, but of much more, I fear, to you.

Yours most sincerely, ROSEBERY.

June 30th, 1894.

DEAR G. RUSSELL,

I saw with sorrow the announcement of your father's death. He was a good and kind friend to me in the days long ago, and I mourn his loss. In these backsliding days he set a great example of steadfastness and loyalty to the faith of his youth and his race.

Yours very truly,

W. V. HARCOURT.

July 31rd 1894.

DEAR RUSSELL,

I was very grieved to hear of your revered father's death.