Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Russell, John (fl.1440-1470)
RUSSELL, Sir JOHN (fl. 1440–1470), speaker of the House of Commons, was son of Sir Henry Russell, a west of England knight who had fought in France in the hundred years' war, who was several times M.P. for Dorchester and once for Dorset, and who married a lady of the family of Godfrey of Hampshire. John was a member of parliament in 1423, when he was chosen speaker of the House of Commons (Statutes of the Realm, ii. 216, &c.) He was again speaker in 1432, and a third time in 1450. The inquisition post mortem on one John Russell, whose lands were in Wiltshire, was taken in 1473. The speaker is doubtfully said to have had two sons, John and Thomas. John (1432?–1505) married Elizabeth, daughter of John Froxmere of Froxmere Court, Worcestershire, and by her left two daughters and a son James (d. 1509); the latter was father of John Russell, first earl of Bedford [q. v.]
[Wiffen's House of Russell, i. 162; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, i. 248; Hutchins's Dorset, ii. 782 (which does not credit Russell with the ancestry of the earls and dukes of Bedford); Rolls of Parl. iv. 198, 200; Inquisitiones post mortem, iv. 359; Ramsay's Lancaster and York; Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons.]