John Savage

Life John Savage, born in 1673, was a native of Hertfordshire, and was elected a King's Scholar of Westminster School in 1687. Thence he was admitted on 13 February 1691 to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a pensioner, and he graduated B.A. in 1694 and M.A. in 1698. On 24 June 1707 he proceeded B.D. and D.D. from Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving Cambridge he travelled for eight years with James Cecil, 5th Earl of Salisbury, visiting nearly every country in Europe. Salisbury afterwards made him his chaplain, and on 31 January 1701 presented him to the living of Bigrave, Hertfordshire. This he resigned in 1708 for the more valuable benefice of Clothall in the same county, which he held till his death. On 31 March 1732 he also became lecturer at St. George's, Hanover Square.

Cole says that Savage was "a stately man, rather corpulent"; and Bishop Newton calls him "a lively, pleasant, facetious old man". He belonged to a celebrated social club founded at Royston soon after the Restoration, a former member of which, Sir John Hynde Cotton, writing to Gough in 1786, describes Savage as "a very jolly convivial priest". Savage was much devoted to his old school, Westminster. A white marble tablet, with Latin inscription, erected in 1750 in the east cloisters by the King's Scholars at their expense, attested his popularity there. The Earl of Salisbury also commemorated Savage's name by an inscription on the first foundation-stone of Peckwater Quadrangle, Christ Church, Oxford, laid by him on 26 January 1705.