The town of Bedford will remain the town of Bedford.
After briefly entertaining a proposal to restore the community’s original name of Liberty, the town council voted unanimously last week to stay Bedford.
Among the reasons why: the association with “the Bedford Boys,” the community’s soldiers who died in disproportionate numbers on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day.
Had the town changed its name, it would have been the first name change in Virginia since … well, that’s hard to say. The Franklin County town of Boone Mill became Boones Mill in 1942 but that doesn’t seem much of a change. The town of Gladeville in Wise County changed to Wise in 1924; that’s a more substantial change. What makes it hard to come up with a definitive answer is the case of Chesapeake — formed in 1963 by the merger of South Norfolk with Norfolk County. Did that count as a name change or the start of something new? Through history, lots of places have changed their names: Roanoke began as Big Lick. Eagle Rock began as Rat Hole. Bedford began as Liberty, until the name was changed in 1890.
Regardless, Bedford’s decision to stick with Bedford gives us occasion to look at the origin of that name — which takes us back to the turbulent politics of Great Britain in the mid-1700s, some of which relate to our own founding, but all of which are quite, shall we say, colorful.
The Bedford for whom the town and the county are named comes from John Russell, the 4th Duke of Bedford, who held several important positions in the British government. He was also regarded as a puffed-up political schemer who was haughty and insulting. At least twice he found himself at risk of getting roughed up by a mob. The duke found himself at odds with both King George II and George III, who wished he would go away, but the duke was too rich to ignore so he stayed in politics, sometimes in the cabinet, sometimes in opposition. He was also regarded as lazy but was a tireless promoter of a relatively new sport that was taking hold in the 1700s: cricket. He liked Italian artists and often commissioned Giovanni Antonio Canal to produce paintings. He was no friend of the American Colonies but got counties in Virginia and Pennsylvania named after him anyway.
This is their namesake. Hang on for a ride through history.
Russell was born into one of the wealthiest dukedoms in 18th century Britain, which gave him a seat in the House of Lords — and a following big enough that he was considered “a valuable catch for any ministry.” He held important posts: first lord of the Admiralty (essentially the political head of the Navy), southern secretary (which meant he was in charge of the American Colonies) and lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Throughout, he had a history of bickering with whoever was in charge. This was a time when political parties were not fully formed but often united around leaders rather than ideas. Bedford led one group that Encylopedia.com remembers this way: “The office-hungry Bedfordites were criticized, even by contemporaries, as a faction motivated principally by self-interest.”
When Bedford was southern secretary, the prime minister thought him more interested in hunting pheasants and playing cricket than attending to his duties. Bedford did seem to enjoy the backroom politics, though, with constantly changing allegiances. When George Grenville became prime minister, Bedford refused to serve under him and angled in support of William Pitt instead. Pitt, though, apparently agreed to become prime minister only if Bedford was kept out of the government. That infuriated Bedford so much that he threw his support to Grenville and became a cabinet minister in the Grenville government anyway.
While serving in Grenville’s cabinet, Bedford provoked a riot. He argued against a bill aimed at raising tariffs on imported silk, which would have helped protect Britain’s silk industry from foreign competition — an issue we still deal with today, just with different industries. In his book “The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III,” historian Andrew Roberts writes: “The next morning, thousands of outraged unemployed silk weavers and other affected workers marched … with the intention of burning down Bedford House in Bloomsbury. A paving stone was thrown at the Duke’s carriage on his way to the House of Lords, leaving his face bloody and bruised, although he disdained to display anything but contempt for the mob.” This set in motion “six full days of violent rioting in the capital.” Roberts writes that Bedford spread rumors that his political rivals were paying the rioters “without any evidence or even likelihood that this was true.”
Of particular relevance to us is Bedford’s role with the American Colonies. However erratic his political alliances might have been, Bedford was consistent with one thing: He saw the American Colonies as good for British merchants and wanted them protected against the French, according to a doctoral dissertation at Oxford University by Karen Philp. That was a common view in Britain at the time. For a while, that interest in North American trade was appreciated in the Colonies — until they realized that Britain was preventing them from trading with other countries. The American frustration with that British monopoly on trade was one of the things that eventually led to the rupture with the crown.
Bedford was one of the key negotiators of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, which brought an end to the Seven Years War (our part was known as the French and Indian War). That peace also set in motion complaints that led to the American Revolution a little more than a decade later. One of the questions in those negotiations was whether Britain should take Canada from the French or the Caribbean island of Guadalupe. That may seem an odd choice today, but in those days Guadalupe was a major source of sugar and Canada was seen as a frozen backwater, good only for fish and furs. The George III historian Roberts writes that Bedford preferred to take Guadalupe and let the French keep Canada. Part of Bedford’s reasoning, Roberts writes, was that “if Canada were returned to France, the consequent strategic threat to the thirteen North American colonies from the French might keep them loyal to Britain.”
Instead, Bedford was overruled. Britain took Canada and Bedford was proven right: Without a threat from the French, the American Colonists soon came to believe they didn’t need the British to guard them anymore — and started to resent paying taxes to London. Bedford wound up being among the British hardliners who felt the Americans were an ungrateful lot. Britannica says that failing eyesight eventually sent Bedford to the political sidelines after 1765, so he was out of office as things became more heated. He died in early 1771.
By then, though, he’d already had those two counties named after him and even after the revolution, Colonists weren’t in a mood to change place names — with the exception of Virginia’s Dunmore County, which was renamed Shenandoah County because we really, really, really didn’t like Lord Dunmore, our last royal governor.
In keeping its name, the town of Bedford may be doing more honor to the memory of the Bedford Boys than to an 18th century British duke — although if the town wanted to remember its namesake, it could organize an occasional game of cricket.
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