Sir Henry Russell, 2nd Baronet (27 May 1783 – 19 April 1852), was an English diplomat of the East India Company and landowner.
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Early life
Russell was born on 27 May 1783. He was the eldest surviving son of Sir Henry Russell, 1st Baronet, and his second wife, Anne Barbara Whitworth (1763–1814). Among his siblings were Charles Russell (MP for Reading), Francis Whitworth Russell (who married Jane Anne Catherine Brodie), the Rev. Whitworth Russell (who married Frances Carpenter), George Lake Russell (who married Lady Caroline Pery, a daughter of the 1st Earl of Limerick), and Henrietta Russell (who married Thomas Greene of Whittington Hall).
His paternal grandparents were Michael Russell of Dover, and the former Hannah Henshaw (a daughter of Henry Henshaw). His mother was the fifth daughter of Sir Charles Whitworth, and his maternal uncle was Charles Whitworth, 1st Earl Whitworth.
Career
Russell was Private Secretary and assistant to James Achilles Kirkpatrick, British Resident to the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad and Berar from 1798 until Kirkpatrick's death in 1805. Russell's career is discussed in some detail in William Dalrymple's 2002 history of British India, White Mughals, where he figures as a gifted but weak diplomat. Russell seduced Kirkpatrick's widow, the Hyderabadi noblewoman Khair-un-Nissa, but abandoned her after a brief affair. He was subsequently appointed a Resident in his own right to the court of the Peshwa at Pune in 1809, and was promoted the following year to Kirkpatrick's old Residency in Hyderabad, serving from 1810 until 1820, when he resigned to avert an investigation for corruption which would have led to his removal from office in disgrace. On an annual salary of £3,400, he had managed to accumulate a fortune of £85,000 over 10 years. In retirement he lived first at Sutton Park in Bedfordshire, then at Southernhay House, an architecturally notable listed building in Exeter. It was a newly built, freestanding, classical mansion of pillared grandeur.