RUSSELL OF KINGSTON-RUSSELL, DUKE OF BEDFORD 1694, EARL OF BEDFORD 1550. [Illustration] Although this family may be said to have made their fortune in the reign of Henry VII., first by Mr. John Russell's accidental meeting with Philip Archduke of Austria, and his consequent introduction to the King, and secondly by the large share of ecclesiastical plunder acquired by this same John at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, yet there is no reason to doubt that the Russells are sprung from a younger branch of an ancient baronial family, of whom the elder line were known by the name of Gorges, and were Barons of Parliament in the time of Edward III. The Russells were seated at Kingston as early as the reign of Henry III. See Wiffen's House of Russell, and Brydges's Collins, i. 266, &c. ARMS.--_Argent, a lion rampant gules, on a chief sable three escallops of the first_. Present Representative, William Russell, 8th Duke of Bedford, K.G. DIGBY OF TILTON, BARON DIGBY OF SHERBORNE 1765, BARON DIGBY OF GEASHILL IN IRELAND 1620. [Illustration] An ancient Leicestershire family, to be traced nearly to the Conquest, and supposed to be of Saxon origin. The name is derived from Digby, in Lincolnshire; but Tilton, in the county of Leicester, where AElmar, the first recorded ancestor of the Digbys, held lands in 1086, also gave name to the earlier generations of the family. These ancient possessions have long ceased to belong to the Digbys; and by the will of the last Earl Digby, who died in 1856, the manor of Coleshill, in Warwickshire, granted by Henry VII. to Simon Digby, and the Castle of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, have also been alienated from the male line of the family. There have been several branches of the Digbys both in England and Ireland, besides the extinct Earls of Bristol. During the seventeenth century the history of the family, as evinced in the lives of the celebrated Sir Kenelm Digby and the Earl of Bristol, is very remarkable. See Leland's Itin., iv. fo. 19; Dugdale's Warwickshire, 2nd ed., vol. ii. 1012; and Pedigree of Digby of Tilton, Eye, Kettleby, Sisonby, North Luffenham, and Welby, in Nichols's Leicestershire, ii. pt. i. p. *261; for a more extended Pedigree see vol. iii. pt. i. p. 473, under Tilton; Brydges's Collins, v. 348; Hutchins's Dorset, iv. 133; and for an account of the famous Digby Pedigree, compiled by order of Sir Kenelm in 1634, at the expense, it is said, of £1200, see Pennant's Journey from Chester to London, 8vo. 1811, p. 441; and for portraits of the Digbys at Gothurst, ib. p. 449. ARMS.--_Azure, a fleur-de-lis argent_. Present Representative, Edward St. Vincent Digby, 9th Baron Digby of Geashill. +Gentle.+ FRAMPTON OF MORETON.