LADY RACHEL RUSSELL

Summary

Few women have attained more universal sympathy and admiration, or have more justly deserved commendation, than the saint like daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Her mother was Rachael de Rouvigny, of an ancient Huguenot family in France; she died in the infancy of this, her second daughter, who was born in 1636.

Whether owing to the political disturbances which occurred in her youth, or from the circumstance of her having no mother's eye on her education, it seems to have been somewhat neglected, to judge by the grammatical errors in some of her letters; which, however, are by no means rare in the correspondence of ladies of her period who had a high reputation for erudition. But in piety and purity of heart she excelled from the tenderest age; and her father's freedom from sectarian prejudice probably guided her judgment, and prevented her from falling into the illiberal notions of the age, for that she had truly charitable and Christian feelings her letters prove.

Her father, who was three times married, gave his daughter Rachel to the eldest son of the Earl of Carberry, Francis Lord Vaughan, when both parties were too young to choose for themselves; as she herself expresses her opinion, speaking of early marriages, “It is acceptance rather than choosing on either side.”