Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers

Blue Board 9 Old Queen Street Westminster, London SW1H 9HP

Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers (around 1654 ; August 18, 1712 in London ) was an Anglo - British peer and military leader.

Richard was the second son of Thomas Savage, 3rd Earl Rivers , and first wife Elizabeth Scrope. Since his older brother Thomas Savage, Viscount Colchester, died around 1680, Richard used the courtesy title of Viscount Colchester as his father's apparent marriage .

He was elected in 1681 as MP for Wigan in the House of Commons and in 1686 he acquired the military rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the 4th Troop of the Horse Guards under Patrick Sarsfield . In 1687 he became Deputy Lieutenant of Cheshire (1695 Lord Lieutenant there ). As the first nobleman and one of the first people, he joined the Prince of Orange on his landing in England in 1688 and accompanied him to London. From 1688 to 1692 he was Colonel and Commander of the 3rd Regiment of the Dragoon Guards and from 1692 to 1703 of the 3rd Troop of the Horse Guards . 1688/89 he sat again in the House of Commons, this time as MP for Liverpool .

In 1690 he served the new king in Ireland and then in the Netherlands. In 1698 he rose to major-general and in 1702 to lieutenant-general . In 1694 he followed his father as 4th Earl Rivers and thereby became a member of the House of Lords . As part of the War of the Spanish Succession , he served under Marlborough in the Netherlands in 1702, who believed in his military skills and recommended him for a command for an invasion of France in 1706. After giving up the project, he took part in the fighting in Portugal and Spain as the commander of the cavalry under Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, 1st Earl of Galway . In 1708 he became a member of the Privy Council . Even so, he was getting closer to the Tories when the Whigs star began to decline. His appointment as Constable of the Tower in 1710 on the recommendation of Robert Harley . Rivers received a delicate diplomatic mission to the Elector of Hanover in 1710, which was followed by the appointment of Master-General of the Ordnance ( Feldzeugmeister ) in 1711, in place of Marlborough. In June 1712, Rivers was promoted to general and became Commander-in-Chief of England; he died a few weeks later.

In 1679 he married Penelope Downes, heir to Roger Downes, lord of Wardley in Lancashire, with whom he had a daughter, Lady Elizabeth Savage († 1714), who married in 1706 James Barry, 4th Earl of Barrymore . After the death of his first wife around 1688 he married Margaret Tryon (around 1662-1692), widow of Thomas Tryon, landlord of Bullwick in Northamptonshire, and heir to Sir Richard Stydolph, 1st Baronet. He also had at least two illegitimate children with Anne Gerard, Countess of Macclesfield . In the absence of legitimate male descendants, his titles of nobility went to his cousin John Savage, a Catholic priest, on his death, with whose death in 1737 all titles of the family lapsed.

literature

• James E. Doyle: The official baronage of England, showing the succession, dignities, and offices of every peer from 1066 to 1885 . tape 3 . Longmans, Green & Co, London 1886, pp. 147–148 ( archive.org [accessed June 25, 2020]).

Web links

• Rivers, Earl (E, 1626-1737) at Cracroft's Peerage

Single receipts

1. ^ Savage, Richard, fourth Earl Rivers (c. 1654–1712), army officer and politician | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved January 12, 2020 . 
2. ^ Brett [née Mason], Anne [other married name Anne Gerard, countess of Macclesfield] (1667 / 8–1753), courtier mistress of George I | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved January 12, 2020 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Thomas Savage	Earl Rivers 1694-1712	John Savage