As Lord John Russell he became Recorder of Bedford and M.P. for Tavistock 1788-1790 and 1790-1802. In 1786, against the wishes of his grandmother and guardians, he married the Hon. Georgiana Elizabeth Byng who, after having given birth to three sons---Francis, William and John---died in 1801. At this time the Duchess of Gordon, having secured two Dukes for her daughters, was trying to engage the interests of John's brother, the 5th Duke of Bedford, in her daughter Lady Georgiana Gordon. When the 5th Duke died suddenly at only thirty-six, she dressed her daughter in mourning; after all, the Duke's last request had been to cut off a lock of his hair and sent to Lady Georgiana.
This sudden death made Lord John Russell the 6th Duke of Bedford; the sudden responsibilities only six months after his wife's death caused an instability in which he refuted the Duchess of Gordon's announcement that there had been a private engagement between Georgiana and his deceased brother. However, it was John who took the lock of hair and delivered it personally to the lovely Lady Georgiana. Eighteen months later he married her himself. It was a very happy marriage, producing twelve children. Duchess Georgiana was a kind and attentive stepmother to John's three sons, but the devious traits in her character, no doubt inherited from her own mother, made them mistrust her once they had grown up.
Until his brother's death, John had been interested only in politics, but now his horizons expanded as he could indulge many other interests. In 1806 he was sent as Viceroy to Ireland, but this was to
be only a shortlived posting. A long journey from 1813 until 1815 took him and his wife to Spain, Portugal and Italy. Being accompanied by some of their younger children, they included as a precaution a cow in their party. In 1815 they arrived in Rome where he bought antique sculptures as well as commissioning Canova. From 1822 on he suffered attacks of apoplexy and, hating grand dinners, his shyness made him happiest to be with his wife and children. Although John may have
preferred his more intelligent sons of his first marriage, he was an affectionate father to all his children.
In 1823 the forty-two year old Georgiana fell in love with the painter, Edwin Landseer, who was half her age. Although the affair ended only in 1853 when Georgiana died, the Duke and the painter
remained great friends, and to the amazement of their children the painter spent a great deal of time alone with the Duke. However, the Duke had his own sentimental amourettes with both Lady Sandwich and Lady Elizabeth Vernon. At the same time the Duke refused to listen to venom about his wife emanating from his son William and William's wife.
When the Duke of Wellington was Premier, he was invited to come shooting at Woburn but was not regarded as a very good shot. The apoplectic seizures the Duke had suffered from middle age finally killed him in October 1839, aged seventy-three, while he was staying at The Doune near Rothiemurchus in Inverness-shire.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas