Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ESSAYS POLITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL GEORGE SAVILE, LORD HALIFAX George Savile, the first Lord Halifax, was sprung from an illustrious Yorkshire family. His ancestors had been settled in the valleys of the Aire and Calder from the days of the Plantagenets. Their large estates had been increased by judicious alliances. In the reign of the first Edward, John de Savile married one of the three co-heiresses of Rishworth; in the reign of the third Edward, " another Sir John purchased the hand of Isabell, only surviving representative of the Elands of Eland." " Thornhill, an estate between Halifax and Wakefield, for some time the principal seat of the family, was added by another marriage." There the tombs of the Saviles may still be seen in the beautiful Savile chantry attached to its parish church, while Rufford— old Rufford, or poor old Rufford, as Lord Halifax called it, the well-known seat of the Saviles in Nottinghamshire—was joined to the princely possessions of the race by another marriage in the reign of Elizabeth. If George Savile began life with many advantages from the extent of his property, he derived almost equal position from his connection with the ruling families.His grandmother, a Wentworth, was the sister of Straf- ford; his mother, a Coventry, the daughter of Lord Keeper Coventry. Her sister was married to the first Lord Shaftesbury; Achitophel, therefore, was the uncle of Jotham. The significance of these connections was emphasized by George Savile's own marriages. His first wife was the daughter of the Lord Sunderland who fell at Newbury, and the sister of the Sunderland who occupies so large arvd so unenviable a position in the history of the later Stuarts. Her mother, the Sacharissa of Waller, was the sister of Algernon Sidney.1 George Savile's second wife... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.