 After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540 , Henry VIII took for himself the land belonging to Westminster Abbey , including the convent garden and seven acres to the north called Long Acre ; and in 1552 his son , Edward VI , granted it to John Russell , 1st Earl of Bedford . The Russell family , who in 1694 were advanced in their peerage from Earl to Duke of Bedford , held the land from 1552 to 1918 . 
