page_title: Diana Russell, Duchess of Bedford
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Diana Russell, Duchess of Bedford / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Pencil drawing of Lady Diana Spencer, by Henry Bone
context_page_description: Diana Russell, Duchess of Bedford, was a member of the Spencer family, chiefly remembered because of an unsuccessful attempt to arrange a marriage for her with Frederick, Prince of Wales.
  Orphaned by the age of 6, Lady Diana, known by her family as "dear little Di", joined the household of her rich and ambitious maternal grandmother, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. She was her grandmother's favourite grandchild and closest confidante. The highly influential Duchess of Marlborough tried to arrange a secret marriage between Lady Diana and the Prince of Wales, King George II's eldest son and heir apparent to the throne. When the scheme was frustrated by Prime Minister Robert Walpole, Lady Diana was married off to Lord John Russell, later 4th Duke of Bedford. The couple's only child was a son named John, whose preterm birth was induced by a carriage accident and who lived for a day. Following a further miscarriage, the Duchess of Bedford died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
  Her brother John's descendant Lady Diana Spencer, who married Charles, Prince of Wales, in 1981, was named after her.
context_section_description: Wimbledon House, which the Duchess had stood to inherit according to her grandmother's plan, passed instead to her brother John, the favourite grandson. In 1961, her brother John's descendant, Viscount Althorp, became the father of a daughter whose name was not chosen until a week after the birth. The infant was christened Diana, after the Duchess of Bedford. Unlike her ancestor, the 20th-century Lady Diana Spencer married her Prince of Wales, Charles, in 1981. She died in 1997, aged 36, a year after their divorce. Victoria Massey, biographer of the earlier Lady Diana Spencer, noted the similarities between the lives of the two namesakes: as children, they both lived at Althorp and socialised with royalty; both grew up without a mother from the age of six; both were proposed as a bride for a Prince of Wales; both had an accident during their first pregnancy; and both died unexpectedly at a young age.
caption: Pencil drawing by Henry Bone, September 1823
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