Francis Russell, Marquess of Tavistock (27 September 1739 – 22 March 1767) was a British politician and heir apparent to the dukedom of Bedford until his death in 1767.
In 1759 his father the Duke, as Lord Lieutenant of Bedfordshire, commissioned the 19-year-old Marquess as Colonel of the Bedfordshire Militia, which was being reformed for home defence because of the Seven Years' War. The enthusiastic young man confessed that he was 'militia mad ... you don't know how dangerous it was to let me loose'. His parents suspected that this only meant that he was developing a taste for low company, but he denied this indignantly. The regiment, he said, was 'my ruling passion in life. I mean my rage for everything that has connection with a Military life – I own the prevelency of it and confess it to be a madness'. In 1762 he could still say that 'my old hobby horse has entirely distanced all the new ones'. When the regiment was due to be disembodied at the end of the war, he wanted to have a painting done of four or five of his men in uniform: '(like every other lover) I cannot part with my favourite mistress my regiment without desiring to have her picture'. When the regiment was disembodied in December 1762, a 'dead' time of the year for finding work, he arranged for those who could find none to be employed on the Bedford estates. He told his father the Duke that he had always tried to preserve the morals of his men and not make them bad citizens by making them good soldiers, and their orderly behaviour to the end made him think that he had succeeded.[4][5]
He was elected as a Bailiff to the board of the Bedford Level Corporation in 1761, a position he held until his death.[6]
Lord Tavistock died in 1767 after falling from his horse while hunting. Their eldest son succeeded his grandfather as 5th Duke of Bedford in 1771.[1] His widow died two years later of tuberculosis.[7]
^Lt-Col Sir John M. Burgoyne, Bart, Regimental Records of the Bedfordshire Militia 1759–1884, London: W.H. Allen, 1884, pp. 2–4, 101.
^J.R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue 1660–1802, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965, pp. 286, 310.
^Wells, Samuel. History of the Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens Called ..., Volume 1. p. 500.