From the time of his death, Lady Russell, from a sort of common tribute, had taken a high place in society. She bore her sorrows with the patience of an humble believer in a future state of peace and of re-union with the lost and the beloved; but not all the too late tributes to the motives and excellence of him whom she had lost—neither the reversal of the attainder by parliament, nor the ducal honours conferred upon the family, nor even the universal respect and national sympathy—could recal her to the busy world, bereaved, to her, of all that was valuable. She lived in a dignified and devout seclusion at Bedford House, formerly Southampton House, in Bloomsbury Square, that beloved abode, at the sight of which the eyes of her noble husband had been filled with tears, as he passed to the place of his execution in Lincoln’s-inn-fields. Here, consoled by the society of the pious and the learned, cheered by the hopes of an hereafter, and honoured in her dark old age, Lady Russell resided, until death, in 1723, released her from an existence rendered still more mournful by blindness, brought on by continual weeping.[142] One of the brightest ornaments of the age in which she lived, Lady Russell was as accomplished as she was high-minded. To her counsels the celebrated Dr. Tillotson often recurred. By him, as by all who knew her, she was regarded as the first of women;[143] nor could that woman continue her friend, whose motives were not pure, and whose conduct was not irreproachable. The other counsellor to whom Lady Churchill put forth her case, was the good, the learned, but calumniated Archbishop Tillotson. In this selection, also, she showed great prudence. Tillotson was the common friend of both the Princesses, and the spiritual adviser of Mary, who entrusted to him the chief charge of the concerns of the church, with which William the Third did not consider himself justified to interfere.