Lady Anne Russell (c.1620-1697), daughter of Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford (1587-1641) and the Hon. Catherine Brydges (d.1657), was married to George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol (1612-1677). They had two sons and two daughters.
During the English Civil War, George Digby supported the Royalist cause and in 1642 their home Sherborne Lodge (the original name of Sherborne ‘new’ Castle) was besieged by Parliamentarian forces commanded by Lady Anne’s brother, William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford (1616-1700). Lady Anne is reputed to have told her brother that if he persisted in his hostile intentions he would find his sister’s bones in the ruins of the Lodge. On the 20th September 1642, Anne extracted from her brother a promise, or ‘Saveguard’, that his soldiers would not ‘meddle with, molest or trouble’ the occupants of Sherborne Lodge. The ‘Saveguard’ is still held in the archives at Sherborne Castle.
In her Beauties of the Court of King Charles the Second (1833), the historian, Anna Brownell Jameson (1794-1860) described Anne as ‘a woman of the most amiable character and unblemished life’.
Anne Digby, Countess of Bristol, died on 26 January 1696/7.
Rachel Hassall