SAVILE, William (1665-1700)

SAVILE, William (1665–1700)

styled 1687-95 Ld. Eland; suc. fa. 5 Apr. 1695 as 2nd mq. of HALIFAX

First sat 16 Apr. 1695; last sat 1 Aug. 1700

MP Newark 1689, 1690-5 Apr. 1695

b. 1665, 3rd but o. surv. s. of Sir George Savile, 4th bt. (later mq. of Halifax) and 1st w. Dorothy (d.1670), da. of Henry Spencer, sis. of Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland. educ. Geneva 1678-81, Christ Church, Oxf. matric. 5 Dec. 1681 (aged 16), BA 1685, MA 1688; travelled abroad (Italy, Spain, France, Low Countries) 1684-7. m. (1) lic. 24 Nov. 1687 (with £15,000 to be paid on father’s death), Elizabeth (1671-94), da. and h. of Sir Samuel Grimston‡, 3rd bt. of Gorhambury, Herts. 1s. d.v.p., 2da. (1 d.v.p.), (2) 2 Apr. 1695 (with £20,000), Mary (1677-1718), da. of Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, 2s. d.v.p., 3da. d. 31 Aug. 1700; will 16 Aug. 1695-21 Aug. 1700, pr. 11 Mar. 1701.1

Dep. lt. Notts. ?1689-d.2

Gov. Charterhouse 1697-d.3

Associated with: Rufford Abbey, Notts.; Halifax House, St James’s Square, Westminster; Acton, Mdx.

Likeness: oil on canvas by unknown artist, 1700, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Lakeland Arts Trust.

The hopes of George Savile, marquess of Halifax, and his close kin and colleagues were all concentrated on Halifax’s middle son, Lord William Savile, who seemed to show the intellectual promise and seriousness that were not evident in his rebellious and dissolute elder brother, the heir Henry Savile, styled Lord Eland, nor in his timid and ‘cowed’ younger brother George.4 Lord William’s uncle Henry Savile‡ and particularly his great-uncle Sir William Coventry‡ took a keen interest in preparing the boy for the life of a courtier and statesman and carefully watched over his education at Geneva and Christ Church, Oxford (where John Fell, bishop of Oxford, also appreciated the young man’s promise), his early forays at court, and his development during the grand tour.5 Coventry thought that Lord William, unlike his elder brother Eland, was ‘of a temper capable of advice and direction from you [Halifax], so as forms him to what you think best’. 6 When Lord William went to The Hague during his travels in 1686-7, Halifax had sufficient confidence in him to entrust him with a confidential letter of introduction to William of Orange which initiated an important correspondence between the marquess and the prince.7

Upon Lord William’s return from the continent in the autumn of 1687, negotiations began in earnest for a match between him and Lady Elizabeth Grimston. Lady Elizabeth was the granddaughter of two famous jurists, Sir Harbottle Grimston‡, and Heneage Finch, earl of Nottingham, a connection which probably appealed to Halifax, while his son would have appreciated the prospect of his bride’s portion of £15,000. This, however, was not to be paid until the death of her father, who managed to survive both his own daughter and his son-in-law. The marriage negotiations were hastened by the unexpected death of Lord Eland, thus overnight making Lord William the heir presumptive to the titles and estates of the marquessate of Halifax. The marriage between Lord Eland, as William was now styled, and Elizabeth Grimston was celebrated shortly after this change of fortune, in late November 1687.

At the Revolution Gilbert Burnet, shortly to become bishop of Salisbury, recommended that Eland be honoured with a position in the household of the princess of Orange, soon to be queen.8 This did not transpire, but Eland was returned for the Nottinghamshire borough of Newark for the Convention. Eland showed an independence of judgment and opinion which his father may have appreciated in theory, even though in practice it entailed Eland voting against the motion that the throne was vacant, contrary to his father’s own stance in the Lords. Eland was returned for Newark again in 1690. Categorizing his political views initially baffled observers and political managers such as his father’s enemy Thomas Osborne, marquess of Carmarthen (later duke of Leeds). Eland did exhibit a mistrust of William III and his pretensions to wield unrestrained executive power, which led him increasingly to identify with country positions.

In 1694-5 Eland’s life changed dramatically. In late August 1694 his wife died of smallpox at her father’s residence of Gorhambury in Hertfordshire, leaving behind one surviving child, a daughter Anne. Negotiations were almost immediately commenced for another marriage for the young widower. Halifax and his old friend Nottingham, were quickly in discussions for a match between Eland and Nottingham’s eldest daughter Mary, with a dowry of £20,000. Eland’s first wife had been Nottingham’s niece, and this second marriage thus further strengthened the connections between Lord Eland and the extended Finch clan. On the day of the wedding at Nottingham’s Rutland estate, 2 Apr. 1695, Halifax, having stayed behind in London, became seriously ill and three days later unexpectedly died painfully by a ‘twisting of the guts’ caused by ‘great fits of vomiting’.9

Nottingham quickly took the bereft and fatherless young second marquess of Halifax under his wing and became his protector, political patron and mentor, for the remainder of Halifax’s life – as it appears the ailing marquess had enjoined on his son in his last moments.10 With the protection of Nottingham came collaboration, friendship and correspondence with the extended Finch kinship and client networks. Halifax received frequent letters on political and social matters from his father-in-law, but also enjoyed a similar correspondence with Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, who was the first marquess of Halifax’s first cousin (through their Coventry mothers) and who was married to a second cousin of Nottingham.11 Halifax also received frequent letters from Nottingham’s first cousin Edward Southwell‡, clerk of the Privy Council, on news and political developments.12

Halifax lost little time in taking up his seat in the House, first sitting there on 16 Apr. 1695 on which day he was named to the committee for the bill to indemnify Sir Thomas Cooke‡ for his testimony concerning the East India Company. After that first day Halifax only came to one additional sitting of that session, already in its final days, and he appears to have returned to Nottingham’s estate at Exton to complete his nuptials with Lady Mary Finch and to settle with Nottingham outstanding business about his father’s estate.

Even before the dissolution of Parliament was formally announced on 11 Oct. 1695, Weymouth was encouraging Halifax ‘to be active in the choice of Parliament men’, for ‘since a Lord Halifax cannot be a spectator in this busy world, he ought to have his attendants’.13 Halifax had earlier taken little positive action to promote a replacement for his seat for Newark, merely agreeing with the corporation’s ‘unanimous’ choice of Sir George Markham‡.14 Weymouth went on to detail to Halifax news of the unexpected electoral setbacks among the Tories in his own area of the West Country, and assumed that Halifax was keeping an equal eye on matters in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.15

It is not clear what involvement Halifax had in the elections of those northern areas, but his influence can be found in an unexpected place. For most of his life Halifax appears to have acted as a patron and friend of the admiral Sir George Rooke‡, who was also his kinsman in that they had both married granddaughters of the first earl of Nottingham. There are almost 100 letters surviving from Rooke to Halifax, dating from February 1694, when he was still Lord Eland, to just before his death in 1700. Halifax also had Colonel Robert Crawford‡, governor of Sheerness, as another naval contact and intermediary between him and Rooke.16 In October 1695 Crawford informed Halifax of the date of the election for the Kentish borough of Queenborough, located adjacent to the fort at Sheerness, and assured him that he and his running mate Caleb Banks‡ would be there in time for the poll and would duly drink Halifax’s health – ‘as’, Crawford hastened to add, ‘I do every day’.17 When Caleb Banks unexpectedly died in 1696, Halifax found himself involved in the ensuing by-election, in which Rooke, with the support of Crawford and Halifax, tried (unsuccessfully) to enter Parliament through the Queenborough seat.18

Halifax was a diligent attender of the Parliament elected in 1695. He was present from the first day of its first session of 1695-6, on 22 Nov. 1695, and sat in almost three-quarters of its sittings. In December he took an active part in the committees of the whole considering the ‘state of the nation’, in which perceived foreign threats to the military and to trade were discussed. On 6 Dec. he was placed on a subcommittee to draft an address requesting the king to lay before the House a list of the officers in the army and their nationalities. He was similarly placed on a drafting subcommittee on 12 Dec. for an address against the danger to English trade presented by the formation of the Scottish East India Company and the following day was placed on a committee to inspect papers regarding the damage to its trade.19 He continued to be involved in mercantile and naval matters throughout the session. In the first week of January 1696 he was placed on large committees entrusted to examine papers laid before the House by the commissioners of the Admiralty and of the customs. In the period 7-11 Feb. 1696 he was placed on committees to draw up clauses for the bill for the encouragement of privateers and to consider conditions for establishing a new East India Company. At the end of the session he was placed on the committee to draw up reasons for the House’s insistence on its amendments to the bill for encouraging privateers (14 Apr.) and was appointed a reporter for a conference on the House’s amendments to the Greenland trade bill (25 April). He was also appointed to four other select committees on legislation in this session.

The problems with the debased coinage in particular appear to have preoccupied him. On 4 Dec. 1695 he was placed on the committee of 17 members assigned to draw up the address to request the king to prohibit the use of clipped coin as currency and the following day was a manager for the conference in which this address was presented to the Commons for their concurrence. On 30-31 Dec. 1695 he was named to committees appointed to draft additional clauses to the coinage bill. These were approved of on 2 Jan. 1696 and the following day Halifax was placed on the drafting committee and made a manager for the conference at which this revised bill was discussed. At the second conference, on 7 Jan., the Commons claimed that the Lords did not have the right to amend the clauses concerning penalties in a supply bill. The House, under pressure to pass this important bill, agreed to recede from three of its amendments but did, however, establish a select committee, on which Halifax was not placed, to draw up an address vindicating its right to make amendments to money bills. Although not directly involved in drafting this response to the Commons’ assertion, it would appear Halifax agreed with it, for Weymouth, absent from the House that session, congratulated him on 14 Jan. for ‘the heroic vote you have left upon your books, as well as the noble lament upon it, in receding from your amendments, and that for the necessity of saving a bill, which neither the Commons, nor those they represent, will give a clipped sixpence for’.20 The controversy over the recoinage rumbled on, and on the last day of March Halifax subscribed to the protest against the passage of the Act setting the reimbursement rate for plate brought into the mint for recoining.

Proceedings on the coinage bill were interrupted by the news of the assassination attempt on William III, and on 24 Feb. 1696 Halifax was named to the drafting committee for the address to the king in response to his speech detailing the plot and was delegated to represent the House in a conference on the matter. It is not known if in this role he had a hand in discussions on composing the Association, but in the months and years following Halifax consistently refused to subscribe to this oath of loyalty to the Williamite regime.21

Halifax did not sit in the 1696-7 session until 2 Nov. 1696 but still proceeded to attend 78 per cent of its sittings, and again showed his opposition to the government, then led by the Whigs, and his adherence to the Tories in the House through his actions surrounding the bill to attaint Sir John Fenwick‡. Halifax signed three protests against this measure: against the resolution to hear Cardell Goodman’s evidence against Fenwick (15 Dec.); against the bill’s second reading (18 Dec.) and against it passage (23 December). He continued to agitate against the crown’s handling of the Fenwick affair even after the attainder bill had gone through. On 15 Jan. 1697 he was placed on the drafting committee for the address against the meddling of Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough) in the proceedings against Fenwick and a week later he was placed on the committee of 17 members assigned to draft an address, ultimately fruitless, begging for a reprieve.

His actions against the Association and the Fenwick attainder cemented Halifax’s place in a tight circle of Tory peers in the House. Halifax’s youth led many of the older members to look on him as their spokesman and representative. Earlier, Weymouth had relied on Halifax to convey to the House his inability through gout to heed the summons of the House to sign the Association. Weymouth eventually addressed the House himself to explain why he felt unable to swear allegiance to William III as de jure king.22 In his opposition to the attainder of Fenwick, Halifax was joined by, among others, Nottingham, Weymouth, Robert Shirley, 8th Baron Ferrers (later Earl Ferrers and another Finch kinsman), Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet and Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon – all of whom had likewise refused to sign the Association. On 21 Jan. 1697 Huntingdon chose Halifax, Weymouth and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester (another Fenwick protester but one who had agreed to the Association) to represent him in the negotiations for a settlement between him and his Williamite son, George Hastings, styled Lord Hastings (later 8th earl of Huntingdon), and it was Halifax who reported to the House eight days later that a reconciliation could not be effected. Another peer who did not subscribe to the Association, Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield, who had been a close friend of Halifax’s father and whose son Philip Stanhope, styled Lord Stanhope (later 3rd earl of Chesterfield) was married to Halifax’s stepsister, relied entirely on the young marquess as his representative in the House to explain the reasons which prevented him from coming to the proceedings on the Fenwick attainder.23 Perhaps in expectation of further divisions on the Fenwick attainder after the Christmas recess, Henry Yelverton, Viscount Longueville, registered his proxy with Halifax on 26 Dec. 1696 for the remainder of the session, and Halifax had his full complement of two proxies after 11 Feb. 1697 when Nottingham registered his proxy with him as well. On 23 Jan. 1697 Halifax joined Nottingham, Thanet, Weymouth and ten other Tory peers against the resolution to reject the bill which enforced a property qualification on Members of the Commons.

In other matters of the 1696-7 session, Halifax was on the last day of November 1696 appointed a manager for a conference at which the Commons delivered their vote limiting their right to claim privilege in legal suits, and on 10 Dec. placed on the committee assigned to prepare a bill ‘for the better ease of the subject’ in relation to the abuse of parliamentary privilege. Weeks later, on 1 Feb. 1697, he chaired and reported from a committee of the whole on this bill where a clause was removed.24 On 8 Mar. he reported from another committee of the whole that the bill to restore Blackwell Hall market to the clothiers was ready to pass. He was appointed to an additional 12 select committees considering legislation. Some idea of his reputation, at least among Tories, is given by a letter of 26 Mar. where Weymouth, referring to the controversy over the Commons’ objections to the Lords’ amendments to the bill to restrain the import of East Indian silks, saluted Halifax as ‘a noble lord, who is whetting his sword to combat the House of Commons, who by their votes seem very forward’.25

Halifax came to just under three-quarters of the sittings in the 1697-8 session, where he continued to act as an organizer and representative of his Tory colleagues. In the weeks before the session both Weymouth and Nottingham set out for him their own views on the peace sealed by the Treaty of Rijswick and the proposed maintenance of the standing army (Nottingham thought that ‘After 50 million, an Association in England and Scotland, and an Abjuration in Ireland, such subjects might be trusted’) in the knowledge that Halifax would be their representative in the first weeks of the session. Once the session began – and Halifax was there from the start, 3 Dec. 1697 – Weymouth relied on Halifax to convey his excuses for his absence, while Nottingham kept him regularly updated with his own plans for his late arrival.26 A week into the session, on 11 Dec., Weymouth sent Halifax his proxy to be registered in the name of their kinsman Ferrers. Weymouth made it clear that he would have preferred Halifax to have been his proxy, ‘but my Lord Ferrers, having made me his constant proxy, for three sessions when he was absent, I cannot without a disobligation commit it to another’.27 On 21 Apr. 1698, Weymouth sent Halifax another proxy, this time blank, with instructions to fill in the name of a suitable peer to hold his vote. After some time, Weymouth’s proxy to Rochester was recorded in the register on 3 May, almost certainly the choice of Halifax.28 Halifax did not take over Weymouth’s proxy himself because by that time he had his full complement of two. On 31 Mar. his father-in-law had sent Halifax his proxy to be registered in the House, and on 12 Apr. Thanet also had his proxy registered with the marquess.29 Halifax kept Nottingham informed of bills that came before the House during his absence, and Nottingham was pleased to hear of the abandonment of the ‘intended bill of taxing all grants’ and fee farm rents, which he considered potentially ‘the most unjust and shameful bill that ever was offered to a Parliament since the Restoration’.30

On 10 Jan. 1698 Halifax was appointed a manager for a conference on the House’s amendments to the bill against corresponding with James II and a week later he was placed on the committee to consider methods to restrain the expense and duration of legal suits. On 29 Jan. he was placed on the large drafting committee for an address to the king recounting the House’s proceedings on the claim to the earldom of Banbury, and on 14 Feb. he was on the committee to draw another address, this one to request the king to discourage the wearing of clothes of foreign manufacture. Yet again he was placed on a drafting committee on 20 May – for the address stating that the appeal to the English House of Lords of William King, bishop of Derry [I], against the London Society of Ulster was not valid. He was again reasonably prominent in nominations to select committees on legislation, being placed on 26 of them throughout the session.

It was from early March 1698 that Halifax became involved in a number of controversial issues. He and Rochester were the only two peers who on 3 Mar. protested against the divorce bill of Charles Gerard, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, on the grounds that no ecclesiastical court had decreed a separation of the couple prior to Parliament’s legislation. While the Junto-inspired bill to punish Charles Duncombe‡ was still in the Commons, Halifax was sure that ‘Mr Duncomb will come off in the House of Lords if the bill should pass against him’.31 He tried to effect this himself when the bill did come before the House. He formally protested against the decision of 4 Mar. to give a second reading to the bill and the following day was put on a committee to draft a statement of the House’s argument for a conference on this matter. He managed the two ensuing conferences on 7 and 11 Mar. and voted against the commitment of the bill four days later. On 11 May he was a manager for the conference on the bill for erecting hospitals and workhouses in Colchester and two weeks later again represented the House in the conference on the bill for suppressing blasphemy and profaneness. He was also involved in the protracted discussions surrounding the impeachment of John Goudet and other merchants in June and early July. On 15 June he was appointed a manager for a conference with the Commons on Goudet and his fellows and managed an ensuing free conference on the matter five days later, although his name is not listed as such in the Journal.32 On 22 June he was appointed to a committee established to examine precedents for the proper relations between the two Houses after a free conference. He was again deputized to represent the House when it informed the Commons in conference on 2 July that they would not have time to try the merchant Peter Longueville because so much time had been spent trying to determine the proper penalties to be levied on those merchants who had pleaded guilty. In the last days of the session he acted as a teller in a division in a committee of the whole on the Lustring Company bill, and on 1 July he joined other Tories in a protest against the bill to raise two million pounds by establishing a new East India Company, largely supported by Whig subscribers, in place of the existing company. This competition between the new and old East India Companies continued to be a matter of concern for Halifax, and in May 1698 he was alerting Nottingham in the country that by the votes of the Commons ‘the old East India Company are like to be broke, and another set up with some hardships to the former’.33

Halifax and his colleagues were involved in the elections of summer 1698 following the dissolution of 7 July 1698. The Tory candidate for Nottinghamshire, Gervaise Eyre‡ enlisted Halifax’s support for his candidacy with Sir Thomas Willoughby‡ from as early as March, and asked Halifax’s advice on whether they should approach the Whiggish John Holles, duke of Newcastle, for his interest.34 Both Eyre and Willoughby eventually unseated the sitting Whig members by quite a margin. When not actively involved in the election, Halifax received news of candidacies and election results from his wide range of correspondents throughout the spring and summer of 1698.35 Nottingham confided in Halifax his view that ‘the new Parliament must be better than the old’.36 Halifax also appears to have acted as a patron, if not companion, of Sir Thomas Dyke‡, a protégé of Nottingham and an outspoken critic of the government in the 1695 Parliament who had declined to stand in 1698.37 In the weeks before the convening of Parliament Halifax and Nottingham together promoted the candidacy of John Granville, later Baron Granville of Potheridge, as Speaker of the new Commons and were frustrated when the Tory grandee Sir Edward Seymour‡ declared his intention for the post as well. This potentially split the Tory vote and Nottingham forecast correctly when he wrote to Halifax that ‘if one of our friends does not, the third will carry it, which in itself would be very ill’. The court Whig Sir Thomas Littleton‡ took advantage of the failure of either Seymour or Granville to stand down or make an accommodation, and was chosen as Speaker.38

Halifax attended the first day of the new Parliament on 6 Dec. 1698 and proceeded to come to 70 per cent of its sittings. He may well have been entrusted once more to hold the proxies of fellow Tories, though the absence of the proxy register for this session precludes certainty, and he was again seen as Nottingham’s representative in the House. In early February 1699 (when Nottingham was in attendance) John Lowther, Viscount Lonsdale, incapacitated by illness in Westmorland, grew concerned at the danger posed to his estate by the appeal submitted by Thomas Wybergh. He turned to Halifax to enlist Nottingham’s support: ‘if I might presume so far I would beg of your Lordship to acquaint his Lordship with my distress, and how much I both need and do beg his protection as I do your Lordship’s’.39

Halifax’s first significant involvement in the session came on 23 Jan. 1699 when he was named to a small subcommittee of seven peers assigned by a committee of the whole to redraft a clause concerning trade to Africa in the bill to prohibit the export of corn and other staples. On 4 Feb. he was placed on the drafting committee assigned to compose an address of thanks for the king’s speech concerning his need of troops. He clearly disagreed with the thrust of the address composed by the committee, which promised the king assistance in preserving his Dutch Guards from the general disbandment, for on 8 Feb. Halifax voted against this motion and protested against its acceptance. He was named on 13 Mar. to another committee concerning the aftermath of the peace, this one to draft an address on the work needed to be done to repair and maintain the forts on the Medway. On 20 and 21 Apr. he was a manager for the conferences on the bills for restoring Blackwell Hall market and to make Billingsgate a free market. This latter matter became more controversial after the House decided to insist on its amendments rejected by the Commons, and on 25 Apr. Halifax was placed on the committee to draw up reasons for the House’s adherence to its clauses and was a manager at the conference held two days later where they were presented. He was nominated to 21 select committees and reported from one of them, on 24 Apr., that the petition of Francis Leigh for a rehearing of his case before the House should be dismissed.

Halifax spent the summer recess of 1699 at his Nottinghamshire estate of Rufford Abbey, where he received a steady stream of communication from informants on the daily gossip and intrigues surrounding the wholesale ministerial changes that had followed the prorogation in May. In particular, his naval contacts Robert Crawford and Sir George Rooke provided Halifax with a detailed account of the surprise resignation of the Junto member Edward Russell, earl of Orford, from the Admiralty commission on 15 May and the ensuing radical reconstitution of the commission, in which Halifax’s man Rooke, partly the cause of Orford’s departure, now played a prominent part.40

As in the previous session the lack of a surviving proxy register for 1699-1700 hinders knowing whether Halifax held the proxies of any of his colleagues. Halifax himself was present from the first day of this session on 16 Nov. 1699 and attended 78 per cent of its meetings. Throughout the session he was nominated to 27 select committees, and his first significant intervention in the proceedings came on 5 Feb. 1700 when he reported from one of these with the amendments to the bill for reducing the excessive number of attorneys. Trade matters loomed large in the other matters he dealt with at this time. Over the course of the following week he joined in two protests, on 8 and 10 Feb., against the address to the king condemning the Darien colony as prejudicial to the interests of the kingdom, on the grounds that the House had been given insufficient time and material to make a judgment on such an important matter. On 17 Feb. he chaired the committee of the whole dealing with the bill to employ the poor by encouraging native manufactures, which was opposed by the East India merchants importing silk. A week later he voted to adjourn into a committee of the whole to discuss the bill to maintain the old East India Company as a corporation and subsequently chaired the committee; upon his report the House passed the bill, in the face of a protest against the bill by 18 Whig supporters of the new East India Company.

On this same day, 23 Jan. 1700, Halifax was assigned to a committee to draw up reasons to justify in conference the House’s amendments to the bill for authorizing commissioners to negotiate a union between England and Scotland. He was opposed to any such union and had already publicly stated that Parliament ‘should run any risk rather than be bullied by the Scots’ menaces’, such as the Scottish East India Company and the colony at Darien.41 He signed protests against both the second reading (8 Mar.) and the eventual passage (12 Mar.) of the bill for the divorce of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk. He was appointed a reporter on 2 Apr. to attend a conference at which the Commons made known their objections to the House’s amendments to a bill lifting duties on certain goods. Shortly afterwards he was immersed in the furore surrounding the Commons’ supply bill which provided for the parliamentary resumption of William III’s Irish land grants. William III and his ministers were, initially, set against this bill, while country Tories – Halifax and John Sheffield, marquess of Normanby (later duke of Buckingham) being particularly singled out by James Vernon‡ in his account of the proceedings – were its principal supporters.42 Halifax was one of the large group of peers delegated to report the conference on 9 Apr. at which the Commons set out their objections to the House’s amendments. He was placed on the committee to draw up the reasons for the House’s adherence to their amendments and was manager of two more conferences on 10 Apr. as the Houses continued to argue their differences. Under pressure from the court, anxious to have its supply bill passed even with the offensive measures, the Lords reluctantly receded from their amendments. Halifax, who supported the measures for the resumption of the Irish grants, did not subscribe to the protest against the House’s decision to abandon its amendments.

The king prorogued Parliament once the bill was passed and continued to prorogue it throughout the summer of 1700. Halifax was one of the few peers present at the prorogation on 1 Aug. but on the last day of that month he died of a malignant fever at his country estate at Acton. His death was a surprise and seen as a great loss and blow to the Tories. His close friend Weymouth described it to Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, as an ‘unspeakable loss … scarce to be repaired’, while Harley himself commented, ‘We need not lose such men’.43 The Whig Gilbert Burnet of Salisbury, was less generous, and years later caustically remarked that the great marquess of Halifax’s son was ‘an honest man, but far inferior’ to his father, ‘which appeared the more sensible, because he affected to imitate him; but the distance was too wide’.44

By his two wives Halifax had had three sons, all of whom had died young, and five daughters, four of whom survived him, the youngest born posthumously. The marquessate of Halifax thus became extinct at his death and the title was quickly conferred on the second marquess’s political opponent the Whig Junto leader, Charles Montagu, who on 13 Dec. 1700 was created Baron Halifax. Montagu may have chosen the title because of its associations with the intellectual, witty and politically forceful first marquess but his choice of title, so soon after the extinction of the Savile line, caused some outrage among the late marquess’s Tory allies. The baronetcy, the sixth in the Savile family, descended to a distant kinsman, John Savile, a descendant of a son of the first baronet’s second wife, and his descendants maintained the parliamentary involvement of the Savile family in the Commons throughout the eighteenth century.

Halifax’s executors Weymouth, Nottingham, Heneage Finch, later earl of Aylesford, and William Finch‡ were assigned to raise money for the portions of his four daughters – £15,000 each. The executors quickly found that the estates could not support those charges and in 1706, when the first portion had to be paid for the marriage of Halifax’s eldest daughter Anne to Robert Bruce, Lord Bruce (later Baron Bruce of Whorlton and 3rd earl of Ailesbury), the trustees petitioned the House for a bill to enable them to sell part of the estate. This was blocked by the late marquess’s stepmother Gertrude, dowager marchioness of Halifax (the long-lived widow of the first marquess) and her daughter Elizabeth, Lady Stanhope, who had a reversionary interest in the estate.45 This obstacle was removed in 1708 by Lady Stanhope’s death and in 1713, 1719 and 1721 the executors were able to have private estate acts passed allowing them to sell parts of the estate to raise money for the portions.46 Nottingham and his co-executors managed their task well, as the three daughters who grew to marriageable age maintained the Savile reputation and prestige by marrying into prominent aristocratic, and Tory, dynasties: Anne to Lord Bruce; Dorothy to Richard Boyle, 3rd earl of Burlington; and Mary to Sackville Tufton, 7th earl of Thanet.

C.G.D.L.

  • 1 TNA, PROB 11/459.
  • 2 CSP Dom. 1691-2, p. 276; 1694-5, p. 299.
  • 3 Davies, Charterhouse in London, 355.
  • 4 Savile Corresp. 291.
  • 5 Halifax Letters, i. 464-5; Savile Corresp. 74, 79, 207, 228, 288-93; Add. 75362, Sir W. Coventry to Halifax, 27 May, 25 Aug., 8 Mar. 1684, 27 May 1686.
  • 6 Add. 75362, Sir W. Coventry to Halifax, 21 Sept. 1683.
  • 7 Halifax Letters, i. 474-5.
  • 8 Add. 32681, ff. 317-18.
  • 9 Add. 46527, f. 77.
  • 10 Leics. RO, DG 7, Box 4950, bdle. 22, Halifax to Nottingham, 6, 9 Apr. 1695; Chatsworth, Letter Series 1, 84.0, Nottingham to Halifax, 7 Apr. 1695.
  • 11 Add. 75368.
  • 12 Add. 75370.
  • 13 Add. 75368, Weymouth to Halifax, 12 Aug. 1695.
  • 14 Add. 75370, Halifax to corporation of Newark, 25 Apr. 1695.
  • 15 Add. 75368, Weymouth to Halifax, 21 Oct., 2 Nov. 1695.
  • 16 Add. 75369; Chatsworth, Letter Series 1, 80.0-80.2.
  • 17 Add. 75369, R. Crawford to Halifax, 24 Oct. 1695.
  • 18 Ibid. Crawford to Halifax, 22 Aug., 19 Sept. 1696, Sir G. Rooke to Halifax, 27 Aug., 10 Sept 1696; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 314-15.
  • 19 HMC Hastings, iv. 315-16, 318-19.
  • 20 Add. 75368, Weymouth to Halifax, 14 Jan. 1696.
  • 21 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 206-8; HMC Portland, iii. 574; Add. 36913, f. 266; Add. 28941, f. 16.
  • 22 Chatsworth, Letter Series 1, 92.0, Weymouth to Halifax, 29 Feb. 1696; Add. 75368, Weymouth to Halifax, 26 Mar. 1696; HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 212-13.
  • 23 Add. 19253, ff. 177v-178v; Add. 75370, Chesterfield to Halifax, 21, 30 Nov. 1696.
  • 24 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 372.
  • 25 Add. 75368, Weymouth to Halifax, 26 Mar. 1697.
  • 26 Ibid. Weymouth to Halifax, 24 Oct., 9 Nov., 4 Dec. 1697; Nottingham to Halifax, 22, 29 Nov., 13, 25 Dec. 1697.
  • 27 Ibid. Weymouth to Halifax, 11, 31 Dec. 1697.
  • 28 Ibid. Weymouth to Halifax, 21 Apr. 1698.
  • 29 Ibid. Nottingham to Halifax, 31 Mar. 1698.
  • 30 Ibid. Nottingham to Halifax, 15 Apr., 21 May, 4 June 1698; Leics. RO, DG 7, Box 4950, bdle. 22, Halifax to Nottingham, 26 May 1698.
  • 31 Bodl. Ballard 39, f. 136.
  • 32 HMC Lords, n.s. iii. 230.
  • 33 Leics. RO, DG 7, Box 4950, bdle. 22, Halifax to Nottingham, 26 May 1698.
  • 34 Add. 75370, G. Eyre to Halifax, 9, 19, 26 Mar. 1698.
  • 35 Add. 75368, Nottingham to Halifax, 25 Apr., 4 June, 1, 13, 27 Aug. 1698; Add. 75370, F. Gwyn to Halifax, 9 July, 10 Aug. 1698.
  • 36 Add. 75368, Nottingham to Halifax, 27 Aug. 1698.
  • 37 Ibid. Nottingham to Halifax, 27 Aug., 12, 19 Sept., 1, 15 Oct. 1698.
  • 38 Add. 75370, J. Granville to Halifax, 15 Oct. 1698; Add. 75368, Nottingham to Halifax, 12, 19 Nov. 1698.
  • 39 Add. 75370, Lonsdale to Halifax, 1 Feb. 1699.
  • 40 Add. 75369, R. Crawford to Halifax, 13, 18, 25, 30 May 1699, Sir G. Rooke to Halifax, 13, 18, 23 May, 2 June 1699.
  • 41 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 404.
  • 42 Ibid. iii. 4.
  • 43 HMC Portland, iii. 626; Add. 72539, f. 71.
  • 44 Burnet, i. 493.
  • 45 HMC Lords, n.s. vi. 380-1.
  • 46 Ibid. x. 70.