SAVAGE, Sir Arnold II (c.1382-1420), of Bobbing, Kent.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Nov. 1414

Family and Education

b.c.1382, s. and h. of Sir Arnold Savage I*. m. c. Apr. 1399, Katherine (d. 6 Nov. 1436), da. of Roger, 4th Lord Scales (d.1386), by Joan, da. of John Northwood of Northwood, Kent, s.p. Kntd. bef. Oct. 1414.

Offices Held

Biography

Savage was the fifth and last member of his family to be elected to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Kent, and with him the family became extinct in the male line. His own career was a mere shadow of that of his distinguished father; he lived as a country gentleman and, so far as is known, never held any royal office, not even a temporary commission.

On St. George’s day 1399 Savage’s father obtained a royal licence to entail his manor of ‘Tracies’ in Newington, near Sittingbourne, together with the reversion of that of Shorne, as a settlement on Arnold and his bride-to-be, Katherine Scales, who was distantly related to the Savages through her mother’s family, the Northwoods. Arnold was probably still a minor when, in November 1402, he appeared at the Exchequer to stand surety for his father’s custody of a Kentish manor,1 but he was said to be aged 28 and more at inquests held after his father’s death towards the end of 1410, and in July following he obtained livery of Bobbing and Shorne. The landed holdings thus inherited produced for him an annual income of £70, according to the assessors of the tax levied in 1412; and in the next spring, after his mother’s death, he took possession as well of those estates she had held as jointure and dower, which were worth at least £60 a year. He had been named as overseer of his mother’s will.2

Through his wife’s relations Savage became acquainted with some of the leading figures among the gentry of Norfolk, certain of whom were highly influential at the court of Henry V. The trustees of his estates, as nominated in September 1413, included not only his wife’s stepfather, Sir Edmund Thorpe*, but also Sir Simon Felbrigg KG (once standard-bearer to Richard II) and Sir Thomas Erpingham KG, the steward of the present King’s household. He was knighted before his only known election to Parliament in the autumn of 1414, and in the following year he joined the King’s first military expedition to France as a member of the retinue of his wife’s stepfather, recently appointed lieutenant to Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset. It may be conjectured that Thorpe’s contingent remained at Harfleur as part of Beaufort’s garrison after the town fell to the English in September 1415, but if Savage did stay there it can only have been for a few months, for he was back home in Kent in time to attest the electoral indentures for the Parliament of March 1416. When Thorpe made his will in June 1417, before departing for France again, he empowered Savage to present to the next vacant benefice of which he was patron. There is no record that Savage participated in the King’s second invasion of Normandy; certainly he was not this time, mustered with Sir Edmund’s forces.3

Savage did not survive his famous father by as long as ten years. He died, probably aged under 40, the day after making his will on 7 Sept. 1420. In it he instructed his executors to give priority to the completion of his father’s testamentary depositions: that is, to have religious services said for three years in Bobbing church and in St. Nicholas’s chapel at Chesley, and to perform all the bequests to the late Speaker’s servants. He himself made further provision for commemorative masses over a period of seven years more, authorizing the chaplain to spend half of each year at Bobbing and the rest of his time at Chesley. To Bobbing church, where he was to be buried near his parents’ as yet unfinished tomb, Sir Arnold left a chalice, a missal and other ecclesiastical and service books, provided 30 candles for lighting the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Saturday, and gave 28 cows (each worth 10s.) to pay for the illumination of various altars in perpetuity.4 The heir to the Savage estates was his sister Elizabeth, widow of Sir Reynold Cobham of Randall and by then wife of William Clifford, although a substantial portion was to remain in the possession of his widow, Katherine, who survived for another 16 years. Katherine had to seek judgement in the King’s bench before her late husband’s trustees would part with her widow’s entitlement. Apparently she did not remarry and, in her will dated 28 Oct. 1436, she requested burial next to Sir Arnold.5

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. CPR, 1396-9, p. 571; CP, xi. 502-4; Arch. Cant. ii. 36-37; CFR, xii. 180.
  • 2. C137/84/42; CFR, xiii. 210-11; CCR, 1409-13, p. 165; Feudal Aids, vi. 474; Arch. Cant. xxix. 167.
  • 3. C139/86/39; DKR, xliv. 565; Reg. Chichele, ii. 146; E101/51/2.
  • 4. Reg. Chichele, ii 205-6; W.D. Belcher, Kentish Brasses, ii. 18.
  • 5. CP25(1)114/294/14; Reg. Chichele, ii. 547-8; C139/86/39 (where Katherine’s heir, Thomas, Lord Scales, is erroneously described as her brother; he was, in fact, her nephew).