HALIFAX, GEORGE SAVILE, FIRST MARQUESS OF (1633-1695 ), English statesman and writer, was the eldest son of Sir William Savile, third baronet, and of Anne, eldest daughter of Lord Keeper Coventry. He sat in the Convention parliament for Pontefract in 166o, and in 1667 he was created Baron Savile of Halifax. A zealous supporter of the Triple Alliance (1668), Halifax was kept in ignorance of the secret terms of the Treaty of Dover (167o), and when he was sent to Holland in 1673 with the mission which visited first The Hague and then Louis XIV.'s head quarters he was unaware of the real state of affairs. From that time he steadily opposed Charles's policy of subservience to France and the relaxation of the laws against the Roman Catholics. He was dismissed from the council in Jan. 1676, but was reinstated in 1679 and received an earldom.
Halifax pursued a policy apparently devious, which won for him the name of the "Trimmer," but in reality logical. He tried to steer a middle course between the extreme Protestants on the one hand who would go to all lengths, even to the substitution of the duke of Monmouth as heir to the throne, to exclude James, duke of York, and on the other hand the high Tories and the Romanizing policy of James. Thus he opposed the Exclusion bill (1679), speaking 16 times during the debate and materially affect ing its issue, but alienated James by approving the Regency bill, and put up a strong opposition to the return of James from Scot land in 1681. In that year he held for a time the chief power, and consistently urged upon Charles a policy of moderation and con ciliation. James returned from Scotland in May 1682, and Halifax was advanced to a marquessate and lord privy seal.
After the accession of James he repeatedly opposed the king's policy and finally, on his firm refusal to support the repeal of the Test and Habeas Corpus Acts, he was dismissed, and his name was struck out of the list of the privy council (Oct. 1685). He corre sponded with the prince of Orange, but held aloof from plans which aimed at the prince's personal interference in English af fairs. In 1687 he published the famous Letter to a Dissenter, in which he warns the Nonconformists against being beguiled by the "indulgence" into joining the court party. The tract, of which 20,000 copies were circulated, actually and immediately altered the course of history. Halifax took the popular side at the trial of the bishops in June 1688; but the same month he refrained from signing the invitation to William, and publicly repudiated any share in the prince's plans. He refused any credence to the report that the prince born to James was supposititious. After the land ing of William he was present at the council called by James on Nov. 22, and urged the king to grant large concessions but in friendly terms. With Nottingham and Godolphin he treated with William at Hungerford, but James had from the first resolved on flight. Halifax presided over the council of Lords which con certed measures to maintain public order during the interregnum. On the return of James to London on Nov. 16 Halifax attached himself to William's cause. On Nov. 17, he carried with Lords Delamere and Shrewsbury a message from William to the king advising his departure from London, and, after the king's second flight, directed the executive. On Jan. 22, 1689, he was formally elected speaker of the House of Lords. He voted against the motion for a regency (Jan. 2o), which was only defeated by two votes. On Feb. 13 in the banqueting house at Whitehall, he tendered the crown to William and Mary.
At the opening of the new reign he was made lord privy seal. His views on religious toleration were as wide as those of the new king. He championed the claims of the Nonconformists as against the high or rigid Church party, and he was bitterly dis appointed at the miscarriage of the Comprehension bill. He thor oughly approved also at first of William's foreign policy; but, having excited the hostility of both Whig and Tory parties, he was now fiercely attacked. He entered bail for Lord Marlborough, accused wrongfully of complicity in a Jacobite plot in May 1692, and in June, during the absence of the king from England, his name was struck off the privy council. Early in 1695 he delivered a strong attack on the administration in the House of Lords; he died on April 5, and was buried in Henry VII.'s chapel in West minster Abbey.
Halifax's attitude of mind was curiously modern. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, he thinks, should be taught to all and at the expense of the state. His opinions again on the constitutional relations of the colonies to the mother-country were completely opposed to those of his own period. For that view of his character which, while allowing him the merit of a brilliant political theorist denies him the qualities of a man of action and of a practical politician, there is no solid basis. At various times of crisis he proved himself a great leader. He returned to public life to defeat the Exclusion bill. At the revolution it was Halifax who seized the reins of government, flung away by James, and maintained public security. His subsequent failure in collaborating with William was due to his failure to realise the development of party govern ment.
Halifax was by no means the "voluptuary" described by Ma caulay. He was on the contrary free from self-indulgence; his manner of life was decent and frugal, and his dress was proverb ially simple. Few were insensible to his personal charm and gaiety. He excelled especially in quick repartee. When quite a young man he is described by Evelyn as "a witty gentleman if not a little too prompt and daring." He was incapable of controlling his spirit of raillery, from jests on Siamese missionaries to sar casms at the expense of the heir to the throne and ridicule of hereditary monarchy, and his brilliant paradoxes, his pungent and often profane epigrams were received by graver persons as his real opinions and as evidences of atheism. This latter charge he repudiated, assuring Burnet that he was "a Christian in sub mission," but that he could not digest iron like an ostrich nor swallow all that the divines sought to impose upon the world.
The speeches of Halifax have not been preserved, and his politi cal writings on this account have the greater value. In The Char acter of a Trimmer (1684 or 1685), his authorship of which is now established, he discusses the political problems of the time and their solution on broad principles. When he treats such themes as liberty, or discusses the balance to be maintained between free dom and government in the constitution, he rises to the political idealism of Bolingbroke and Burke. His other political writings are : The Character of King Charles II. (printed 1750) ; Letter to a Dissenter (1687) ; The Lady's New Year's Gift, or Advice to a Daughter (1688) ; The Anatomy of an Equivalent (1688) ; Max ims of State (c. 1692) ; The Rough Draft of a New Model at Sea (c. 1694) ; Some Cautions to the electors of the parliament (1694) ; and Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts rind Reflections (n.d.). (For other writings attributed to Halifax, see Foxcroft, Life of Sir G. Savile, ii. 529, sqq. ) Halifax was twice married, in 1656 to Lady Dorothy Spencer —daughter of the first earl of Sunderland and of Dorothy Sidney, "Sacharissa"—who died in 1670, leaving a family; and secondly in 1672 to Gertrude Pierrepont, who survived him, and by whom he had one daughter, Elizabeth, Lady Chesterfield. On the death of his son William, second marquess of Halifax, in Aug. 170o with out male issue, the peerage became extinct and the baronetcy passed to the Saviles of Lupset, the whole male line of the Savile family ending in the person of Sir George Savile, eighth baronet, in 1784. Henry Savile, British envoy at Versailles, who died un married in 1687, was a younger brother of the first marquess. Halifax has been generally supposed to have been the father of the illegitimate Henry Carey, the poet, but this is doubtful.
See H. S. Foxcroft, Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, 1st Mar quis of Halifax (2 vols., 1898) .