Background
Savile was born on November 11, 1633 in Thornhill, West Yorkshire, the eldest son of Sir William Savile, 3rd Baronet and his wife Anne Coventry, eldest daughter of Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry.
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Excerpt from The Complete Works of George Savile: First Marquess of Halifax IT would have given no displeasure to Sir George Savile, First Marquess Of Halifax, to think that by later generations of his countrymen he should be almost forgotten. States men are easily forgotten. A prosperous lie made Titus Oates immortal; but the man who was the practical genius of the English Revolution, and the acutest critical genius among English politicians, is now little more than a name. What is most commonly remembered about him is that he was called the Trimmer The nickname was put upon him angrily by his contemporaries, and was worn proudly by himself. The imputation it conveyed was, no doubt, that he trimmed his sails to the varying breezes of Opinion but in his famous pamphlet, the noise of which still echoes distantly in the public ear, he changed the metaphor. A boat, he said, goes ill, and is in danger of capsizing, if the people in it weigh it down all on one side, or all on the other. But there is a kind Of men who conceive that it would do as well if the boat went even, without endangering the passengers And it is hard to imagine, he adds, how it should come to be a fault, or a heresy, to attempt to trim the boat. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Savile was born on November 11, 1633 in Thornhill, West Yorkshire, the eldest son of Sir William Savile, 3rd Baronet and his wife Anne Coventry, eldest daughter of Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry.
Savile sat in the Convention Parliament that restored King Charles II to the throne in 1660, and in 1668 he became Viscount Halifax. Admitted to the Privy Council in 1672, he opposed Charles’s covert pro-French and pro-Roman Catholic policies. Nevertheless, he balanced this opposition by fighting the anti-Catholic Test Act of 1673. In 1676 Halifax was dismissed from the Council for repeatedly showing hostility to the King’s chief minister, Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby; he regained his seat, however, in 1679 and in the same year was created marquess of Halifax. Adhering to his principles of moderation, he successfully led the fight in the House of Lords (November 15, 1680) against a bill that would have excluded Charles’s Roman Catholic brother James, duke of York, from succession to the throne. In October 1682 he became lord privy seal. But upon the accession of the Duke of York as James II in February 1685, Halifax was demoted to lord president of the council, from which office he was summarily dismissed on October 21. He spent the next three years writing political pamphlets. His Character of King Charles the Second was written during this period, and The Character of a Trimmer, a statement of his political creed, was published in 1688.
When James’s enemy William of Orange invaded England in November 1688, Halifax tried, at the behest of James, to arrange a compromise between the two men. After he failed, he sided with William. It was largely a result of his efforts that the Convention Parliament of 1689 accepted William and Mary as joint sovereigns of England. In the new regime, Halifax was lord privy seal and chief minister of the crown until his enemies in both the Whig and Tory parties forced him to resign in February 1690.
Although his conciliatory approach frequently made him a detached critic rather than a dynamic politician, the principles he espoused have appealed to many 20th-century political thinkers.
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Quotations:
"Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen. "
"Being wise doth either make men our friends or discourage them from being our enemies. "
"The lower sort of men must be indulged the consolation of finding fault with those above them; without that, they would be so melancholy that it would be dangerous, considering their numbers. "
"To the question, What shall we do to be saved in this World? there is no other answer but this, Look to your Moat. "
In 1660, Savile was elected Member of Parliament for Pontefract in the Convention Parliament, and this was his only appearance in the Lower House.
Halifax was twice married. He married firstly in 1656 the Lady Dorothy Spencer. Dorothy died in 1670 and he married again in 1672, Gertrude Pierrepont, daughter of William Pierrepont of Thoresby. They had one daughter, Elizabeth, later Countess of Chesterfield.
Sir, baronet, viscount
