Family and Education

b. by 1524, 1st s. of Christopher Savage of Elmley by Anne, da. of Sir Richard Lygon of Worcs. m. lic. 26 Nov. 1546, Anne, da. of William Sheldon of Weston, Warws. and Beoley, Worcs., 4s. 2da. suc. fa. 23 Nov. 1545.1

Offices Held

J.P. Worcs. 1554-d.; receiver, crown lands in Herefs., Leics., Northants., Rutland, Salop, Staffs., Warws. and Worcs. 28 Mar. 1555-d.2

Biography

A younger branch of the Savage family of Cheshire was established by Francis Savage’s grandfather at Elmley, where in 1544 his father, an esquire of the body, bought the castle and manor jointly with (Sir) William Herbert I, who in the same year relinquished his claim. With this property Francis Savage inherited Chipping Campden and five other Gloucestershire manors which descended from his grandfather as kinsman of Thomas Savage, archbishop of York; to these he was to add ex-monastic land in the same county, which he and George Wall acquired from Herbert in 1548, and the manor of Tysoe in Warwickshire, bought some five years later from Edward Aglionby II.3

Savage’s election, while he was still young and untried, looks like the work of his father-in-law William Sheldon, himself knight of the shire in the previous Parliament, with perhaps the aid of Herbert, by then Earl of Pembroke and president of the council in the marches, and even of the Duke of Northumberland, whose son the Earl of Warwick counted Aglionby, also a Member of this Parliament, among his servants. Although Savage was to sue out a pardon at Mary’s accession, neither he nor Sheldon can have been seriously compromised by the events which preceded it, for in 1554 he joined Sheldon on the Worcestershire bench. In the following year he bought his father-in-law’s office of receiver in the augmentations for eight midland counties, including Warwickshire and Worcestershire.4

Savage was ‘sick in body’ when he made his will on 17 Aug. 1557 and he died two days later. In fulfilment of his father’s will he left annuities to his five brothers, including one who was a London apprentice. To his two infant sons he bequeathed 100 marks each and to his two daughters 200 marks. He left his lease of the manor of Hardwick, Worcestershire, to his mother for life, with remainder to his brother Thomas, and his wife Anne was similarly to enjoy the house at Elmley and one-third of the manor of Aston Subedge, Gloucestershire. He included in the will a list of all his tenants with the value of their holdings. He named his wife and his father-in-law executors and directed them to pay £300 for the dissolved chantry in Elmley for his son William. The will was proved on 4 July 1558.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., C142/72/101. Vis. Worcs. (Harl. Soc. xxvii), 125; Fac. Off. Reg. 1534-49, ed. Chambers, 285; PCC 32 Noodes.
• 2. CPR, 1553-4, p. 26; 1554-5, p. 77; 1557-8, p. 205.
• 3. Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. xviii), 203-4; VCH Worcs. iii. 340-2; C142/33/132, 72/101; LP Hen. VIII, xiv, xix, xxi; CPR, 1547-8, pp. 276, 358; 1553, p. 113.
• 4. CPR, 1553-4, p. 422; 1554-5, p. 77.
• 5. PCC 32 Noodes; C142/112/168; CPR, 1557-8, p. 69.