Lumley-Savile family, Barons Savile

The Saviles were an established Yorkshire knightly family by 1300. In the late middle ages Thornhill and extensive estates in the West Riding of Yorkshire, concentrated near Dewsbury, were acquired by marriage. Early in the 17th century the Rufford Abbey estate, near Mansfield (Nottinghamshire), was acquired through the marriage of Sir George Savile, first Bt, to Mary, daughter of the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury.

Sir George Savile, fourth Bt (1633-95), was created successively Viscount (1668), Earl (1679) and Marquess (1682) of Halifax by King Charles II. The peerage became extinct on the death in 1700 of the 2nd Marquess. An estate at Barrowby (Lincolnshire), inherited from the Vernon family in the mid-16th century, appears to have passed to a co-heir of the 2nd Marquess and thence to the Boyle and later the Cavendish families (see Cavendish, Dukes of Devonshire). The baronetcy and other estates, however, devolved on the 2nd Marquess's cousin Sir John Savile of Lupset (Yorkshire, West Riding), the baronetcy eventually expiring on the death, unmarried, of his descendant Sir George Savile, the 8th baronet (1726-84). Savile left his Thornhill and Rufford estates to his nephew Richard Lumley-Saunderson, brother of the 5th Earl of Scarbrough and one of seven sons of his sister Barbara Savile, wife of the fourth Earl (see Lumley, Earls of Scarbrough). Savile stipulated that, should the nephew in possession of the Savile estates succeed to the earldom of Scarbrough, he should relinquish the Savile property to his next eldest brother. This occurred on the deaths of the fifth and sixth Earls in 1807 and 1832, but the seventh Earl of Scarbrough succeeded in uniting the Savile and Lumley inheritances and passed them to his son, who became eighth Earl in 1835 and held them until he died unmarried in 1856. The Lumley and Saunderson estates then descended to the ninth Earl of Scarbrough, whilst the Savile estates devolved upon Henry Savile Lumley (d. 1881) and afterwards upon John Savile-Lumley (1818-96), Baron Savile of Rufford, both natural sons of the eighth Earl. Rufford Abbey was sold in 1938.

Estates in 1883: Notts 17,820 acres, Yorks WR 16,000 acres, total 33,820 acres worth £52,213 a year.