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.
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.
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’.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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’.
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.