Sir George Savile was the last male representative of an old and distinguished Yorkshire family, with a parliamentary ancestry dating back to the 16th century. With estates in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, as well as in Ireland, they were a power in both counties; but first and foremost regarded themselves as a Yorkshire family. In the 17th century they produced a statesman—the 1st Marquess of Halifax, the great ‘Trimmer’. Sir George Savile was hardly less worthy of note: upright, disinterested, independent, ‘a pattern of excellence in a British senator’.
In 1753 Savile, strongly backed by Rockingham, stood as a candidate for Yorkshire at the forthcoming general election. ‘I look on my behaviour on the present occasion as what must in great measure fix my character for life’, he wrote to Rockingham.
Savile spoke frequently, and soon became one of the most respected men in the Commons. In 1761, when he had not been two years in the House, Newcastle thought of him for Speaker.
Savile refused to take office in the Rockingham Administration,
You must be sensible [he wrote, addressing the colonists] what friends you have in the present ministry ... You should know that the great obstacle in their way has been ... the intemperate proceedings of various ranks of people on your side of the water ... If, therefore, you would make the proper return to your country ... hasten to express your filial duty and gratitude.
In a letter to Thomas Moffatt, a physician of Rhode Island, probably written after the Boston riots of 1768,
I do not know or think that ever I shall be benefitted twenty pounds by all the taxes that will ever be levied in North America, and from the local situation of the chief part of my landed estates there are but few persons in England that will be more immediately affected by the increase or decay of your trade. But do you think that because of that consideration that I shall be at any loss to choose my side if matters shall be insolently driven up to extremity by you? ...
It is ... very melancholy for me to write in this strain to you, but it had better be twice written than happen once, because it will then be as ridiculous as it is now foolish and evasive in you to talk to us of your right and your principles. Power shall then be the right. The trunk may be sorely wounded, but the branches can be destroyed and cut down, and you may then with grief and bitterness of spirit remember these precious moments which you have lost and abused, and may beware the imprudent, and to say no worse, the very impolitic use which America made of the kind and very indulgent advances of a certain year ...
I am determined that my conduct in Parliament shall show forth that I am for measures of moderation and lenity, founded in vigour, without a spark of passion or resentment.
But to Rockingham, on 31 July 1768:
I am afraid these same colonists are above our hands, and I am almost ready to think that George Grenville’s Act only brought on a crisis twenty or possibly fifty years sooner than was necessary. This indeed is, regarding colonies, almost all the ill that can be done, for in my opinion ... it is in the nature of things that some time or other colonies so situated must assume to themselves the rights of nature and resist those of law.
Savile saw with regret the Rockingham party go into opposition against the Chatham Administration.
I had a good deal of talk with Lord Rockingham [he wrote to Portland on 12 Jan. 1767] ... and he enters very much into the doctrine of moderation, but it may not be in his power to stick to it ... There are such numbers of people that can not even comprehend that there is any sense in anything but pulling down, coming in, etc., without considering what footing they must come in upon, or how long they would last, or whether they would have it in their power to do any one good thing.
Portland mss.
When Dowdeswell proposed to move the reduction of the land tax, Savile gave Rockingham a review of the arguments for and against the measure, and concluded it should not be moved merely as a point of opposition—‘never let us drive a wrong or a dubious point because we have numbers, and it will be a strong point, a devilish stroke, a fine topic of opposition, popular, etc.’
I am sure I sincerely wish the set I wish the best to, to do nothing. If injustice is attempted against the East India Co. oppose it, protest against it. If so good a bargain is not made as should be, show weak parts ... It is a reasonable thing for me to ask, and yet perhaps an unreasonable thing to expect to obtain from men in some of your situations that you will forget where propositions come from.
And in the last year of his life:
In the late 60’s two questions especially stirred his interest, and brought him to the front of the political stage: the nullum tempus bill and the Middlesex election. About his introduction of nullum tempus, Rockingham wrote to Newcastle on 7 Feb. 1768:
‘I hold a leasehold under my constituents’, Savile once told the House of Commons.
Savile believed in religious toleration, and was an enemy to authoritarian tendencies in the Church of England. In a notable speech on 6 Feb. 1772,
I distinguish between the Church of God and Christ and the Church of England, and whenever the Church of England differs from the Church of Christ I give the preference to the latter. The point in question is whether we shall lay aside subscription to the Articles and adopt the Scriptures in their room. The Scriptures are the only rule of the Church of Christ, and adhering to the Scriptures in opposition to human inventions and corruptions is the first principle of Protestantism.
On 14 Feb. 1778 he introduced a bill for the relief of Roman Catholics. ‘He thought Papists ought to have security in the enjoyment of their properties’, he said on 19 June 1780,
On East India affairs Savile held peculiar and unrealistic views, yet marked with a strong moral sense. When elected to Burgoyne’s committee, 16 Apr. 1772, he refused to serve, ‘being against the whole system of India affairs’.
He looked on their trade as destructive, either from bringing in too great an increase of money, which would overturn the liberty of this country, or from many of the importations, tea especially, being destructive of the healths of the people of England. He also protested against the territorial acquisitions as public robberies.
When East India affairs came up again in 1773, Burke wrote to Rockingham, 10 Jan.:
I could wish your Lordship would converse with Sir George Savile on these subjects. We know his motives for staying away ... but still to the majority his absence will seem a condemnation of our conduct, and of what weight that apparent tacit condemnation is everyone may discern who knows how much of the strength of our cause has arisen from its having his support.
A high tribute to Savile, which Burke repeated in his published works. Yet he never understood or sympathized with Savile’s independent outlook. In Wyvill’s Political Papers (iii. 282) there is a letter from a group of M.P.s in Nov. 1783 requesting Savile not to retire from Parliament; to it has been added a footnote (presumably by Wyvill himself): ‘Mr. Burke refused to sign it.’
Savile in the last years of his life suffered severely from asthma, and in the summer of 1774 decided to retire from Parliament at the coming general election. Rockingham, in the utmost consternation, wrote to him on 9 Sept.:
I have an absolute horror of the approach of York races lest anything should tempt you either to make any declaration or indeed to let such an idea generally transpire. I earnestly wish that you would let us all meet again in London before you take any step of such general importance ... I am indeed doubly interested in this, for assuredly if you give up the county, and I must add the public, I have nothing further to do but fairly to retire and relinquish all late ideas relative to Yorkshire, or of being of any service to the public.
Lady Rockingham added her entreaties, and Savile was persuaded to stay.
I am very much in the same persuasion I was before ... but ... I am obliged to own that being the cause of a contest and all its disagreeable consequences in the county of York is a mischief I could not easily forgive myself having contributed to ... I have laid in my claim however with my friends that they may not too much depend on my standing the whole seven years work.
When the American problem came to the crisis of 1774, Savile’s views had changed. He no longer saw the colonies as naughty children, and the British Government as an indulgent parent. He was reserved towards North’s punitive measures; said ‘he had trembled at every step that had been taken on the affair of Boston’, and ‘protested against the violence of condemning the Americans without hearing them’.
He spent a good deal of time during the war with the militia (he had been colonel of the 1st Regiment of West Riding Militia since 1762). ‘Sir George Savile is not come to attend his seat in Parliament’, wrote Theophilus Lindsey, the Unitarian, to William Tayleur, on 3 Dec. 1778,
He encouraged Wyvill to develop the Association, and supported the extension of its demands to include parliamentary reform. At the York meeting of 28 Mar. 1780 he said:
To the increase of county Members he did not particularly object, it might be a good measure. As to triennial Parliaments, they were the people’s right, and if he knew ... that the majority of his constituents were for them, by that he should think himself obliged to promote triennial Parliaments; as to himself ... he had not formed an opinion about them.
He voted for Sawbridge’s motion of 8 May 1780 for shortening the duration of Parliament; but to Wyvill laid more stress on a ‘meliorated representation’.
After ‘much serious consideration’ Savile decided to stand again in 1780. ‘I must not omit making you aware’, he wrote in his election address,
I venture to submit it thus publicly to you without the opportunity of communicating it to those whose principles, judgment, and line of conduct in the public walk I have been habituated to look up to with high respect and esteem.
While willing to make a motion for parliamentary reform, Savile recognized that it was ‘not yet either universally or warmly and decisively supported’.
During the last two years of Rockingham’s life relations between him and Savile became less close. Rockingham was alarmed at the way the Association had taken the lead in Yorkshire politics, disliked Savile’s encouragement of its activities, and disagreed with him on parliamentary reform. On the formation of the Rockingham ministry there is said to have been ‘some coolness’ between them because of Rockingham’s failure to provide for Hartley, whom he disliked.
When Savile had attacked North’s Administration for corruption and tyranny he really believed it, and was morally outraged when Rockingham’s followers joined with North in the Coalition. He wrote to Hartley on 15 Mar. 1783:
Although I grant that nothing in this world is to be done by solitary efforts, and that therefore if a man will not be content with being a well-meaning non-effective, he must not be sentimentally nice about his accomplices, yet there is reason and measure in this as in all other things of the world ... to unite as allies generally with men one ought to impeach, to act with a man who has done more mischief in a given time than one would have thought could have been well contrived ... can be justified one way (if it can at all) viz. the lesser of two evils—Lord Shelburne is worse ... You must know I took great offence at Charles Fox’s expression of ‘Amicitiae sempiternae, inimicitiae breves—you know I always opposed him (Lord North) on the American war; that is over, so I bear no malice.’
The reference is to Fox’s speech on Shelburne’s peace preliminaries, 17 Feb. 1783. ... Charles Fox’s own natural moral sense would have made him not hazard such an expression I am sure, but that all (even pretence of) public feeling is laid aside, and it is so habitually understood and felt that all save private feeling are a sham.
He remained in Parliament only to attend Pitt’s motion for parliamentary reform, 7 May 1783:
He was proceeding to speak in favour of the motion, when, finding himself too weak to speak with that animation that he wished to express, he sat down to the great mortification of the House, who were distressed to see so good a man in so weak a state of health.
It was his last speech in the House.
In November 1783 Savile announced his intention to retire. Fitzwilliam wrote to him
to persuade him, if possible to remain as he is, and to be satisfied that his constituents had rather have him, though he never puts his foot over the threshold of St. Stephen’s Chapel, than any other man of the greatest activity and assiduity.
Fitzwilliam to Portland, 25 Nov. 1783, Portland mss.
Though Fitzwilliam had private reasons for wishing Savile to remain, he was also expressing the general sense of the county. But Savile knew that the game was nearly over. He died, shortly after leaving Parliament, on 10 Jan. 1784.