As the son of Sir Thomas Wentworth’s* arch-enemy, Sir Thomas Savile was never short of detractors: in the 1630s George Garrard* entertained the lord deputy with tales of Savile’s legal difficulties, and thirty years later the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde†), a keen Straffordian, dismissed Savile as ‘a man of an ambitious and restless nature, of parts and wit enough, but in his disposition and inclination so false that he could never be believed or depended upon’.
Sir John Savile’s troubles in 1614-16, culminating with his resignation as custos rotulorum of the West Riding, may explain why his son did not marry until 1618. The bride was a widow who had a claim to a dowry of £6,500 and the lands of Malling Abbey in Kent, which had been seized by the Crown in 1603 on the attainder of her uncle, the 11th Lord Cobham (Henry Brooke alias Cobham†). After several years of lobbying, Savile received a reversionary grant of Irish lands worth £400 a year as compensation for his wife’s claims.
Savile received his political baptism of fire at the general election of December 1620, when he and his father challenged Wentworth and secretary of state Sir George Calvert* for the Yorkshire county seats. Throughout the campaign Wentworth and his supporters assumed that Sir John Savile intended to run alone, as he had done in 1604 and 1614, and they accordingly went to great lengths to ensure that he would contest the senior seat with Wentworth, leaving Calvert to be returned unopposed. However, as in 1597, Savile announced the pairing on this occasion, with his son on the day of the election, forcing a contest between a local man and an absentee courtier.
Wentworth, who had been dogged by ill-health, did not stand for the county in 1624, although he briefly considered running on the eve of the election ‘upon a sudden noise in the country of an intention in some to have elected persons suspected in religion’. He abandoned his plans when he discovered that the Saviles were running unopposed, admitting that their ‘soundness in religion’ was ‘well approved’.
The only other politically significant measure with which Savile was involved was the petition to the king for removal of local officeholders suspected of recusancy. He was named to attend the conferences with the Lords which approved a draft of the petition on 3 and 6 Apr., and as a knight of the shire, he made the presentments for Yorkshire and county Durham on 27 April. Those he named included notorious Catholics such as the earls of Worcester and Rutland, William, 4th Baron Eure†, Sir Marmaduke Wyvell and Sir Ralph Conyers, as well as Archbishop Matthew, whose son Tobie Matthew* had converted. Most controversially of all, he cited lord president Scrope (who was notoriously reticent about his religious sympathies) for non-attendance at communion, a deliberately provocative move which was probably intended to repay Scrope for the support he had given Wentworth and Calvert at the Yorkshire election of December 1620.
Most of Savile’s other activities in the Commons can be related to local issues. With his father having long been the champion of the Yorkshire clothing interest, it is hardly surprising that he was named to committees for bills prohibiting the export of wool and fullers’ earth (6 Mar.), modifying the 1606 Cloth Act (8 Mar.) and restoring the privileges of the Merchants of the Staple (24 March). Other economic legislation of more general interest with which he can be connected included the usury bill (8 Mar.), the monopolies’ bill (conference 8 Apr.), the bill to prevent moor-burning during the breeding season (13 Apr.) and the drafting of a petition asking the king to honour his promise to revoke a patent for ‘survey of coals’ at Newcastle (25 May). Apparently keen to defend the rights of poorer freeholders, he was one of the committee appointed to scrutinise the bill to prohibit the removal of minor suits to the central courts (9 Mar.), and two weeks later he dismissed Sir Christopher Hildyard’s* claim that the Council in the North restricted its writs of summons to those within 12 miles of York.
Savile and his father stood for Yorkshire once again at the general election of 1625, when they were opposed by Sir Thomas Fairfax I* and William Mallory*, whom they accused of Catholic sympathies. This only compounded their troubles, as Mallory resigned his interest to Wentworth, whose supporters carried the day at the county court, with the assistance of the sheriff, Sir Richard Cholmley*.
The settlement of the 1626 election failed to resolve the tensions between the rival camps. On 20 Mar. Savile took out a pardon for wounding Wortley, a timely precaution, as he was sued for assault in King’s Bench in Easter term; the court took a dim view of a crime perpetrated on the doorstep of Westminster Hall, and Wortley secured damages of £3,000. The two men were reported to have duelled over the summer, and in September the Privy Council attempted to effect a reconciliation.
Savile may have paired with his father at the Yorkshire election of 1628, but if so, his efforts were to no avail, as Wentworth and Henry Belasyse* emerged triumphant.
Presumably as a sop to his feelings, Savile received an Irish viscountcy in June 1628, six weeks before his father was awarded an English barony. The titles were but small consolation in the face of the preferments heaped upon Wentworth, who accepted Court favour in the summer of 1628 and succeeded Scrope as lord president in January 1629. The power of the Saviles was thus eclipsed even before Sir John’s death at the end of August 1630. Savile inherited Howley and extensive estates in the Leeds area, although he became embroiled in a protracted lawsuit with his sister over the title to the manors of Barwick-in-Elmet, Scoles and Stapleton, which his father had bought from the London corporation in 1628.