Thomas Savage, 3rd Earl Rivers succeeded to a much encumbered estate. The family was based in Cheshire, but he also had substantial properties in Lancashire, Essex and Suffolk and, through his marriage to Elizabeth Scrope, in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
The 3rd earl’s grandmother, Elizabeth, Countess Rivers, also left extensive debts at her death in 1651, although one claimant against her estate, Sir Nicholas Crisp‡, claimed that she possessed lands worth £5,000, and had a personal estate of £20,000.
Rivers first attempted to deny his father’s right to resettle the estates, then mortgaged some of his Essex properties to the financier and nonconformist royalist, Sir John Langham‡. Estimates of the 3rd earl’s income suggest that it was probably in the region of £5,000 to £6,000 a year; his Essex income alone amounted to £1,200 a year in about 1663, although in the same year his Cheshire rents brought in only £519 a year.
Despite the 2nd earl’s abjuration of Catholicism, his second wife and her children remained Catholic. In the mid-1650s they had to pretend to be absent from Rivers House in order to avoid presentment as papists, and a Catholic priest was at Lady Rivers’ deathbed in 1657.
In the closing years of the Interregnum Rivers was implicated in plotting for a royalist restoration.
Rivers was present for the opening of the first (1661-2) session of the Cavalier Parliament on 8 May 1661 and was then present for 33 per cent of sitting days. On 31 May 1661 he took advantage of privilege of Parliament to protect himself from his creditors. His coach and six horses had been attached and there were ‘divers suits … and thirty-four declarations’ against him. On 27 June he was named to the committee for Sir Anthony Browne’s bill and on 19 July to that for the bill for preserving deer. On 22 Jan. 1662 he was named to the committee considering the bill for the registration of pawns and on 10 Mar. to that for the bill for Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden. He was not listed in the presence list on 15 May 1662 when his privilege of Parliament was again invoked, this time in favour of his chaplain, Edward Cherry.
During the short 1663 session he was present on just under half of sitting days and was named to the committees on the heralds and tithes bill. On 18 July he was nominated as one of the commissioners to assess the peers. Wharton expected him to vote in favour of the attempt of George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, but Wharton’s list is notoriously unreliable, and there is no independent evidence to confirm his prediction.
The 1664-5 session saw him present for 12 days, just under a quarter of possible attendances. His presence on the second day of the session ensured his nomination to the committees for privileges and petitions. He was also named to the committees for the bills for the relief of indigent loyal officers, prize goods, the restoration of Sir Charles Stanley in blood, arrests of judgment and to the committee to compose differences between Sir John Pakington‡ and the town of Aylesbury. During the session Lady Rivers was involved in lobbying members of the Commons against the renewal of a bill that had been presented during the previous session. Although the details are unclear it seems likely that the bill concerned was the Mersey and Weaver Navigation bill.
Rivers attended the short session of October 1665 on only three occasions. He was present on 29 per cent of sitting days during the next, 1666-7, session during which he was named (along with everyone else in the chamber) to the committee for the bill on rebuilding London. The long and contentious session that began in October 1667 saw Rivers present on some 42 per cent of sitting days. His position on the attempt to impeach Clarendon remains unknown, but the campaign in the Commons was led by, amongst others, his wife’s brother in law, Charles Powlett, then styled Lord St John, later 6th marquess of Winchester and duke of Bolton. It was through Powlett that he petitioned the king for the renewal of his office as steward of the manor of Halton in 1669.
Rivers attended on only nine of 36 sitting days in 1669. At a call of the House on 26 Oct. he was listed as on his way to London, but his failure to appear as ordered to do on 9 Nov. led to the House imposing a fine of £40 for his absence from the service of the king without ‘lawful excuse’. His arrival on 19 Nov. led to the fine being respited. On 12 Dec. he was named to the committee to consider the bill to prevent frauds in the exportation of wool.
During the 1670-1 session Rivers’ attendance rose to nearly 58 per cent, and his presence at the beginning of the session ensured his nomination to the committees for privileges, the Journal and petitions. During the course of the session he was named to 24 select committees including that on the divorce bill of John Manners, styled Lord Roos, the future duke of Rutland, and, somewhat ironically given his own financial situation, that for considering the relief of poor prisoners. On 23 Feb. he invoked privilege of Parliament in favour of his servant William Hyde. At a call of the House on 14 Nov. 1670 he was described as unwell.
His financial difficulties remained acute; in October 1671 in the course of a chancery suit it was alleged that a property he had mortgaged and which had fallen to the mortgagee through non payment could not be sold because, although Rivers was unable to redeem it, his countess successfully discouraged all purchasers.
Rivers was present for only one day of the first session of 1673; he was again listed as unwell when the House was called on 13 Feb. 1673. He did not attend the 1673 or 1674 sessions at all. By the time Parliament reconvened for the first session of 1675 Rivers’ health seems to have recovered somewhat, and he was present on nearly 27 per cent of sitting days. In addition to the committee for privileges he was named to one committee. On 29 Apr. he was included in a list of peers who had failed to take the (non-compulsory) oath of allegiance. The improvement in his attendance was not sustained; during the second session of 1675 he failed to attend, even though at a call of the House on 10 Nov. it was reported that he was on his way.
Rivers’ political and religious sympathies were so obscure that when Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, compiled his famous list in 1677 he was unable to categorize Rivers as either worthy or vile. It soon became apparent, however, that Rivers’ political allegiances lay with Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds. Whether this was out of conviction or economic necessity is a matter for conjecture. Coincidentally or not Rivers’ financial position was improving. In May 1678 he had been obliged to enter a debt trust, but by August 1678 he was able to redeem a mortgage that had gone unpaid for so long that the property had been seized by the mortgagors.
During the 1677-8 session his attendance rose to nearly 66 per cent, and his presence at the opening of the session ensured that he was named to the committees for privileges and petitions. In the course of the session he was named to 27 committees including at least one in which he probably had a personal interest, that to establish the respective rights of his kinsman, Derby, and his manorial tenants in West Derby and Wavertree. On 3 Apr. 1677 he was also named as one of the referees to mediate in the quarrel between Thomas Leigh, 2nd Baron Leigh, and his wife. On 16 Apr. he entered a dissent to the decision to abandon an amendment to the supply bill, presumably convinced that the House did indeed have the right to amend money bills. On 4 Apr. 1678, in the trial of Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, for murder, he voted him not guilty.
Rivers’ attendance dropped back slightly during the first 1678 session to just under half of sitting days. He was named to the committees for the Journal and petitions and to nine other committees. During the second session of 1678 he was present on nearly 68 per cent of sitting days. On 29 Nov. 1678 he was named as one of the managers to prepare reasons for the conference to discuss the Lords’ refusal to concur with the Commons address to the crown for the removal of the queen from Whitehall. During the debates on the Test he voted against putting the declaration against substantiation under the same penalty as the oaths. On 2 Dec. he took the new oaths; his previously suspect status as a possible Catholic was presumably responsible for John Verney‡, the future Viscount Fermanagh [I] drawing attention to this.
Rivers was presumably eager to attend the first Exclusion Parliament as he was present on five of the six days of the abandoned first session of 6-13 Mar. 1679. He then attended 85 per cent of sitting days in the second, substantive 61-day session. He was named to the three sessional committees and his signature as one of the examiners of the Journal on 14 Apr. 1679 demonstrates that he became an active member of the Journals committee. On 22 Mar. he was named to the committee to prepare a bill to disqualify Danby from all offices. During the session he was named to a further three committees and voted against appointing a joint committee of both Houses to consider method of proceeding against impeached lords. On 27 May he probably voted for the right of the bishops to stay in the House during capital cases.
Rivers’ attendance during the second Exclusion Parliament was even higher, 81 per cent. He voted against rejecting the Exclusion bill at its first reading and then entered a dissent against its rejection. At the end of December he found William Stafford, Viscount Stafford, guilty of treason. On 7 Jan. 1681 he entered dissents against the House’s failure to address the king to suspend chief justice, Scroggs, and to put the question of his impeachment. Danby expected Rivers to support him in his attempts to secure bail, but Rivers confounded those expectations when, like so many other supposed friends of Danby, he failed to attend the Oxford Parliament.
In June 1681 Rivers was one of many peers who attended the trial of Fitzharris.
Rivers’ son and heir Richard Savage, then styled Lord Colchester, later 4th Earl Rivers, who had also been associated with Monmouth certainly changed his tune at, or about, the same time and after the death of Charles II in 1685 was eager to be seen as an ally of the new regime.
All but one of the various surviving lists detailing attitudes to James II’s catholicizing policies describe Rivers as opposed; the exception, drawn up about November 1687 merely has him undeclared. Perhaps he was keeping his options open, for in November 1688 he refused to subscribe the petition for a free Parliament. At the revolution his son, Colchester, was one of the first to join William of Orange. Rivers himself joined the meetings of the provisional government on 21 Dec. 1688 in response to the summons issued by William of Orange and was one of the signatories to the address for a convention.
Rivers attended nearly 56 per cent of sitting days of the first session of the Convention Parliament. His early presence ensured his nomination to the sessional committees, privileges, the Journal and petitions. On 31 Jan. 1689 he voted in favour of declaring William and Mary king and queen and entered a dissent to the passage of the resolution not to agree with the Commons that the throne was vacant. On 4 Feb. he was content to agree with the Commons that James II had abdicated rather than deserted and entered a dissent to resolution not to agree to this. He continued to favour agreement with the Commons when the question went to another division on 6 February. On 8 Feb. he was named as one of the managers of the conference on declaring the Prince and Princess of Orange king and queen and the oaths; then on 12 Feb. for the conference concerning the proclamation. On 7 Mar. he brought an appeal against the dismission of his case in chancery against his brother-in-law, William Stanley, 9th earl Derby, and William Wentworth, earl of Strafford. The case concerned lands in Essex that had been put into trust to ensure a portion of £10,000 for Lady Charlotte Savage, the daughter of Rivers’ eldest son, Thomas Savage, styled Lord Colchester. Colchester died in 1679; his daughter died under age in 1686. Rivers considered that the properties in question had therefore reverted to him; the court of chancery had agreed with the dowager Lady Colchester and her Stanley relatives who had taken possession arguing that Lady Charlotte had been free to dispose of the lands and had done so. On 8 Apr. he was again named as the manager of a conference, this time on uniting his majesty’s protestant subjects; he was also named to a committee to draw up reasons to be presented at a conference on the bill for removing papists from London and Westminster for which he subsequently acted as one of the managers. On 29 Apr. his appeal in the case against Derby and Strafford was dismissed. He was then absent from the House (bar a single attendance on 10 May) for just over three weeks, being listed at a call of the House on 22 May as unwell. His commitment to the reality of the popish plot was demonstrated repeatedly during July: on 10 July he entered a dissent to all the resolutions concerning the reversal of judgments against Titus Oates; on 22 July he was a teller for the vote on whether to proceed on the report of the conference on the same subject and on 30 July he voted against adhering to the Lords’ amendments and entered a dissent to their passage. During the course of the session he was named to ten committees.
On 4 Oct. 1689, shortly before the opening of the second (1689-90) session of the Convention, Rivers responded to a circular asking the peers to assess their personal estates for taxation purposes. He declared that ‘my personal estate is very small and much less then what I really owe.’ He also referred to his ‘want of health’ but insisted that this would not prevent him from attending Parliament.
The short first session of the 1690 Parliament saw Rivers in attendance nearly every day (92.5 per cent). He was named to the three sessional committees and to 12 others. On 15 Apr. he acted as a teller in the division on whether counsel be heard in the case of Macclesfield v. Starkey. Rivers’ attendance remained comparatively high during the next (1690-1) session at 65 per cent, and he was again named to the three sessional committees and 17 other committees. On 6 Oct. he voted against the discharge of James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, and Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower. On 30 Oct. he entered a protest against the passage of the bill to clarify the powers of admiralty commissioners. In May 1691 he underlined his Anglican credentials by his presence at the consecration of John Tillotson, as archbishop of Canterbury.
During the 1691-2 session Rivers’ attendance dropped back to 47 per cent. His attendance at the opening of the session ensured his nomination to the usual three sessional committees and his signature as one of the examiners, given on 25 May 1692 shows that he was again an active member of the Journals committee. He was also named to a further 12 committees. On 16 Dec. 1691 Derby introduced a bill to restore his estates. Despite the continuing disputes over Katherine Stanley’s marriage settlement, Derby included Rivers in a list of those he thought would support the bill, which probably means that Rivers had been sympathetic to Derby’s cause at a previous attempt, most likely that which was lost as a consequence of the disruption caused by Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685. The prediction was almost certainly wrong; Derby’s bill was so unpopular that it failed at its second reading on 25 Jan. 1692. The following month, on 16 Feb. in company with a mixed group of Whigs and Tories, he entered a protest in defence of the privileges of members of the House and against the decision not to allow proxies during proceedings on the divorce bill brought by Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk.
During the 1692-3 session Rivers’ attendance dropped to 42 per cent. He voted in favour of the place bill and entered a dissent when it failed at the second reading on 3 Jan. 1693. On 4 Feb. he voted Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, not guilty of murder. During the course of the session he was named to five committees.
It would seem that by July 1693 this once relatively impoverished peer had at last managed to put his finances on a secure footing as Lady Rivers was said to be lending £4,000 to Vere Fane, 4th earl of Westmorland.