Place Name
George Savile (November 11, 1633 – April 5, 1695), 1st Marquess of Halifax, was a 17thCentury statesman, writer, and politician who lived in Berrymead or Berrymede, the former Acton mansion of Sir John Trevor MP. Savile was a protestant royalist and a prominent debater in the so-called Exclusion Crisis which ran from 1679 through 1681 in the reign of Charles II. The bills sought to exclude the King’s brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Roman Catholic. Although none of them became law, the debates, are largely credited with the creation of the nascent political parties: the Tories, who were opposed to this exclusion, while the Country Party, later to be called the Whigs, supported it. The debate effectively ended Savile’s friendship with the future James II. While the matter of James’s exclusion was not decided upon in Parliament during Charles’s reign, it would come to a head three years after he took the throne, when he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Savile helped negotiate the transition following the Prince of Orange’s arrival into England and later took charge of the country from the House of Lords in the ensuing crisis. He was known as The Trimmer because of his moderating position in the fierce party struggles of his day. The road’s spelling is a corruption of his name,
