SAVAGE, John (1554-1615), of Clifton, Cheshire.

Savage’s father a new house at Clifton in 1567, which came to be known as Rock Savage. A number of the family’s manors lay between Clifton and Chester, where they also held property, with a secondary group between Middlewich and Nantwich on the river Dane. It was on this considerable landed estate, built up since the fourteenth century, that the family’s importance rested during Elizabeth’s reign. Savage first comes to notice in 1576 for refusing to make adequate arrangements for his mistress (one of his stepmother’s relatives, before his marriage to Mary Allington). After his marriage he lived in or near London, perhaps at court, but, finding the cost too great, in 1579 he accompanied Sir William Norris to Ireland. From Chester he wrote to his cousin the 3rd Earl of Rutland, asking him to provide him with a good horse, as the other gentlemen in the company were well mounted, and he ‘would be loath to be inferior’. He was back in England by 30 July 1585, when he was again writing to the Earl of Rutland, this time in an effort to prevent his father from disposing of certain entailed estates, an issue on which father and son had reached agreement within a year. Savage twice sat for the county before becoming head of the family in 1597. He did not gain possession of all the family estates, however, until after the death of his stepmother in 1612, and he appears to have been in financial difficulties, perhaps a result of his father’s debts, though the father was listed as of ‘great possessions’ in 1588. Even after coming into all the Savage lands, the heir complained of poverty, still, however, being among the first to purchase a baronetcy. He died at Rock Savage 7 July 1615, having made his will the previous 20 June. To his overseer, his worthy friend the bishop of Chester, he bequeathed a piece of plate worth £5, and to the city of Chester a pair of silver gilt flagons, valued at £20. His wife received his houses in Holborn and in Chester, and his coach and horses. He was buried at Macclesfield on 14 July 1615, leaving as heir his eldest son Thomas. The will was not proved until 1618.Ormerod, i. 711, 716; HMC Rutland, i. 107, 118, 177, 198; APC, xxviii. 578; Cheshire Inquisitions post mortem, 40-4; Lansd. 104, ff. 51 seq.; PCC 40 Montague; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 403; Stanley Pprs. ii (Chetham Soc. xxxi), 170-1.