George
Savile
born Nov. 11, 1633, Thornhill, Yorkshire,
Eng.
died April 5, 1695, London
English statesman and political writer known
as “The Trimmer” because of his moderating
position in the fierce party struggles of his
day. 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.
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 (Nov. 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.
