Savage Fortune: An Aristocratic Family in the Early Seventeenth Century (review)

This collection of documents relates to the life and estate of Thomas, Viscount Savage (d. 1635); his wife, Elizabeth (née Darcy), countess of Rivers from 1641; and their close kin. A long introduction traces the ancestry and careers of this couple. The Savages were a Catholic family, originally from Cheshire, where they continued to own lands and maintain a seat at Rocksavage, but by the seventeenth century they had acquired a considerable estate in Essex and Suffolk as well as Melford Hall, their main country house in Suffolk after 1605. The countess came from a prominent Suffolk Catholic family with court connections; shortly after the marriage, her husband embarked on his own career as a courtier. Prince Henry served as godfather to the first of the couple’s nineteen children in 1604; the next year, Savage became a gentleman of the king’s Privy Chamber.

By 1617 Savage had become a client of George Villiers, earl of Buckingham, with whom he must have established a close relationship since he later served as an executor of his patron’s will. He also seems to have been friendly with Spain’s famous ambassador, Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, count de Gondomar. In 1622 he was admitted to Prince Charles’s council without taking the oath of allegiance, perhaps as a result of the ambassador’s intercession. A series of further appointments—as a counselor for Charles’s revenues, a commissioner for the sale of crown lands, a commissioner for trade, and the head of a commission charged with investigating Buckingham’s rights as lord admiral to shares of prizes seized at sea—suggest his capacity for hard work and financial competence. In August 1626 the newsletter writer John Pory reported that Savage had been appointed chancellor to Queen Henrietta Maria and his wife a member of her bedchamber. Although the editors could not find any records of these appointments, other circumstantial evidence suggests that both Savages were connected to the queen’s household from the late 1620s. In November 1626 Savage was created a viscount.

The countess seems to have encountered financial difficulties after her husband’s death and attempted to use her court connections to gain profitable concessions like the right to collect fines from London freemen working in trades to which they had not been apprenticed. Real disaster struck in 1641 when Melford Hall was ransacked, inflicting damages assessed at £50,000. The countess left the country during the Civil War but returned by January 1645 and was imprisoned for debt in 1650.

The 134 pages of printed documents consist mainly of correspondence, wills, legal agreements, and assorted commissions and orders relating to court service. They also include probate inventories of Rocksavage, Melford Hall, and the couple’s town house on Tower Hill, taken shortly after Savage’s death and illustrative of the rich material culture of an aristocratic court family of the period. The editors have reconstructed the layout of rooms on a plan of Melford Hall to facilitate interpretation of the inventory. Beautifully produced color plates, including contemporary aerial views of Melford Hall and the Tower Hill property, add to the volume’s aesthetic appeal. Although these documents do not contain any major surprises that will significantly alter our understanding of the period, they do provide a useful trove of information documenting the affairs of a recusant court family associated with Villiers and Henrietta Maria.