John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, (30 September 17105 January 1771) was an 18th-century British statesman. Bedford was a leading Whig political figure around the time of the Seven Years' War, and negotiated the Treaty of Paris which ended the conflict in 1763. He was also an early promoter of cricket and a patron of the arts who commissioned many works from artists, most notably Canaletto. Early life He was the fourth son of Wriothesley Russell, 2nd Duke of Bedford, by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John Howland of Streatham, Surrey. Known as Lord John Russell, he married in October 1731 Diana Spencer, daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland; became Duke of Bedford on his brother's death a year later. Having lost his first wife in 1735, he married, secondly, in April 1737, to Lady Gertrude Leveson-Gower (died 1794), daughter of John Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Gower. In 1749, John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, was made a Knight of the Order of the Garter. Early political career In the House of Lords he joined the Patriot Whig opposition hostile to the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, took a fairly prominent part in public business, and earned the dislike of George II. When Carteret, now Earl Granville, resigned office in November 1744, Bedford became First Lord of the Admiralty in the administration of Henry Pelham, and was made a privy councillor. He was very successful at the admiralty, but was not equally fortunate after he became Secretary of State for the Southern Department in February 1748. Pelham accused him of idleness and he was constantly at variance with his colleague The Duke of Newcastle. Newcastle, who had previously admired The Earl of Sandwich, Bedford's successor as First Lord of the Admiralty, for his forthright and hardline views, had increasingly begun to distrust him and his relationship with Bedford. Newcastle engineered the dismissal of both of them, by sacking Sandwich in June 1751. Bedford resigned in protest, as Newcastle had calculated, allowing him to replace them with men he considered more loyal personally to him. During his time in the post, he was accused of spending far too much time at his country estate playing cricket and shooting pheasants. Cricket Bedford was very keen on cricket. The earliest surviving record of his involvement in the sport comes from 1741 when he hosted Bedfordshire v Northamptonshire & Huntingdonshire at