SAVILE, John (1555/6-1630)

Savile was a major figure in Yorkshire politics from the 1590s – his trouncing of Sir John Stanhope^* (later 1st Lord Stanhope) and Sir Thomas Hoby^‡ at the county election in 1597 made even the council in the North wary of his electoral influence. Unlike most local figures, his political base was not founded on his social connections or income (estimated at £2,200 p.a. at his death), assets which were surpassed by several of his gentry neighbours. Instead, the key to his local standing was the stewardship of the crown’s honour of Wakefield, heartland of the West Riding cloth industry, an office which he, his son and his father-in-law held between them for 70 years. As steward, he served the clothiers as a vociferous and effective champion for much of his life.39 WARD 5/49; HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 224-5.

Savile eventually met his political match in Thomas Wentworth^* (later 1st earl of Strafford), a younger and even more ambitious man who succeeded him as custos rotulorum of the West Riding in 1616 and defeated him at the hard-fought Yorkshire election of December 1620.40 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 467-70; vi. 228-9. The Savile-Wentworth rivalry had translated to the court by 1625, when (in a reversal of their previous roles) Wentworth posed as a champion of low taxation and constitutional rights, while Savile hitched his star to the authoritarian policies promoted by the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham. After the dissolution of the 1626 Parliament, Savile supplanted Wentworth as custos rotulorum of the West Riding, and was appointed to the revenue reform commission, which debated a range of projects to raise funds without recourse to Parliament. His ideas included a scheme to allow smaller landowners in the West Riding to convert their lands to socage tenure, thereby avoiding liability for wardship, and another to allow northern recusants to compound for their statutory fines.41 Ibid. vi. 230-2; Wentworth Pprs. ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xii), 255-6; Univ. London, Goldsmiths’ ms 195, i. ff. 2v-4, 14r-v, 26, 33-4, 38-9v, 44v-8; C66/2384/2 (dorse). At around the same time, Savile was tipped for a peerage and the presidency of the council in the North. Neither of these predictions came true immediately, but he was appointed a privy councillor and comptroller of the household, and handled many executive duties in Yorkshire, in place of the ineffectual lord president, Emanuel Scrope^*, earl of Sunderland.42 Fairfax Corresp. i. 27; Procs. 1626, iv. 289; T. Birch, Ct. and Times Chas. I, i. 116; APC, 1626, p. 353. These duties included the collection of the Forced Loan, which (despite opposition from Wentworth and his allies) ultimately raised 83 per cent of its original quota in Yorkshire, well above the national average of 72 per cent. Savile’s other major task was the defence of the east coast shipping from the depredations of Dunkirk privateers, which he funded by a combination of compositions imposed upon recusants, a levy on the Newcastle coal trade, and £5,400 borrowed on his own credit.43 S.M. Healy, ‘Oh, what a lovely war? Direct Taxation and Pols. in Eng. 1624-9’, Canadian Jnl. of Hist. xxxviii. 446-7, 463; E351/2595-7.

Savile’s active role in the ‘new courses’ of 1626-7 led him to oppose the summons of a fresh Parliament in January 1628, and he was one of the few privy councillors to support Buckingham’s provocative scheme to raise fresh privy seal loans during the elections.44 R. Cust, Forced Loan, 77, 85; Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxv), 375-6. In the contest for the Yorkshire county seats, Christopher Wandesford^‡, noting that recusancy composition had earned the godly Savile the support of Yorkshire’s Catholics, urged his friend Wentworth to make common cause with Henry Belasyse^‡, ‘a man gracious with the papists’. This alliance narrowly carried the day at the county court, an outcome which Savile challenged, but which was confirmed by the Commons on 17 April.45 Wentworth Pprs. 287; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 473; vi. 233; CD 1628, ii. 507-11. Thus while Wentworth played an indispensable role in securing the passage of the Petition of Right, Savile, without a seat in the Commons, was attacked for his promotion of a ‘commission of idolatry’ – the composition scheme which had proved so popular with northern Catholics.46 CJ, i. 904a; CD 1628, ii. 61, 65-6, 69, 73-5; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 43.

At the prorogation of Parliament in June 1628, Savile’s position at court was insecure but hardly desperate; Buckingham was seeking to build bridges with his critics, including Wentworth, but this did not mean that the duke’s allies were forgotten. Savile was raised to the peerage on 21 July 1628, a day before Wentworth secured his barony, and in Yorkshire it was tartly remarked that ‘there is a Thomas [Wentworth] as well as a John [Savile] for the king’.47 C66/2494/15; Wentworth Pprs. 301. Buckingham’s assassination a month later threw court politics back into the melting pot: during the autumn it was reported that Sir William Herbert^† (later 1st Lord Powis) was recommending Savile to William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, who hoped to continue the war against Spain; while Wentworth was courted by the pro-Spanish peace party, led by the lord treasurer, Lord Weston (Richard Weston^*, later 1st earl of Portland) and Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel.48 Wentworth Pprs. 308; T.D. Whitaker, Radcliffe Corresp. 168-74. It was later claimed that Savile was stripped of office and sent down to the country in disgrace; in November Wentworth certainly attempted to discredit Savile with the Privy Council by accusing his rival of accepting bribes from recusants seeking to lower their composition fines.49 Clarendon, Hist. Rebellion, i. 341; Birch, i. 421.

The contest for the council in the North was settled in December, when Wentworth succeeded Sunderland as president and was elevated to a viscountcy.50 C. Russell PEP, 393-4; L.J. Reeve, Chas.I and the Road to Personal Rule, 80-1. However, the quarrel between the rivals continued unabated: on 16 Feb. 1629 a petition was presented to the Commons about Savile’s acceptance of bribes from northern Catholics, which may well have been encouraged by Wentworth; and while nothing more was heard of this petition before the dissolution on 10 Mar., Savile relinquished control of the northern recusancy compositions to Wentworth 15 days later.51 CJ, i. 930b; E351/2597. Savile suffered another reverse shortly after the dissolution, when a Star Chamber bill he had filed against Wentworth and his allies over the conduct of the Yorkshire election of 1625 was dismissed as vexatious; a fine of £100 was imposed (albeit later discharged), and he was ordered to pay the defendants damages of £450.52 J. Rushworth, Historical Collections, iii. (app.) 21; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 596. The only crumb of comfort for Savile was that in February 1629 Wentworth’s candidate was defeated at the by-election to replace the new lord president as knight of the shire. The victor was Sir Henry Savile, a disaffected Wentworth ally who insisted that he was in no way beholden to Lord Savile, his distant relative; but as Sir Henry acknowledged his chief supporters to be the Leeds clothiers who were so beholden to ‘the old cavalier’, it is hard to take this protest seriously.53 Wentworth Pprs. 252, 312-14. Savile himself stayed away from the Lords in 1629, appearing only on the day of the dissolution; Wentworth claimed he was grief-stricken at the preferment of his rival; but several courtiers took rumours of Savile’s ill health seriously enough to begin lobbying for the comptrollership.54 Ibid. 316-17; CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 507-8.

In December 1629 Savile was said to have quarrelled with Pembroke, but fresh rumours of his impending removal from the comptrollership proved premature: he was eventually replaced in May 1630.55 HMC Buccleuch, iii. 347; APC, 1629-30, pp. 326-7, 371. Savile died at his Yorkshire house on 30/31 Aug. 1630. His title and main estates went to his eldest surviving son, Sir Thomas Savile^†, later 1st earl of Sussex, but in his will, drafted eight months earlier, he appointed his daughter, Anne Leigh, as executrix; the siblings later fell out over the title to three Yorkshire manors which Savile had bought from the corporation of London in 1628.56 Borthwick, Reg. Test. 41, ff. 314-16; C142/476/141; C2/Chas.I/L8/67; 2/Chas.I/S52/10; 2/Chas.I/S63/33; 2/Chas.I/S64/63; 2/Chas.I/S65/66.