Catherine Russell, Countess of Bedford

Catherine Brydges, 1576-January 29, 1656/7, was the daughter of Giles Brydges, 3rd baron Chandos (1547-February 21, 1594) and Frances Clinton (1553-September 12, 1623). She does not seem to have served as a maid of honor, although many other women in her family did. With her sister Elizabeth (1574-October 1617), she was co-heiress to a fortune estimated at £16,500. On February 26, 1608/9, she married Francis Russell, baron Russell of Thornhaugh and later 4th earl of Bedford (1593-May 9, 1641) at St. Mary le Strand. In spite of her late marriage (at about thirty-two), she was the mother of ten children: William, 5th earl and 1st duke (August 1616-September 7, 1700), Francis (d.c.1696), John (d.1681), Edward (d. September 21, 1665), Catherine (d. December 1, 1676), Anne (d. January 27, 1696/7), Margaret (d. November 1676), Diana (1624-January 30, 1695), Elizabeth, and Frances. After the deaths of two of their daughters, in 1612 and 1616, Lord Russell built a tomb for himself and his wife at Chenies, Buckinghamshire. They lie on a tombchest with effigies of the two girls lying under a pair of arches with a broken pediment. Peter Sherlock's Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England gives the date of Catherine's death as 1653.