Both Sir Henry and Sir Stephen were referred to as "Gascoigne" as well as "Russell", possibly due to their wine trade with France, as in a 1442 pardon under the Privy Seal referring to "Henry Russell of Weymouth, merchant," alias "Henry Gascoign, gentleman". It was long believed in the noble Russell family, certainly by the 2nd Earl of Bedford, that the family was descended from the ancient family of Russell of Kingston Russell in Dorset, three miles northeast of Berwick, which descent was declared unproven by Gladys Scott Thomson in her "Two Centuries of Family History", London, 1930, an exhaustive and scholarly work on the early pedigree of the Earls of Bedford. ("For a disambiguation of the Bedford Russells and the Russells of Kingston Russell, see" Kingston Russell).