156 ARMORIALS OP THE SAVAGE FAMILY. 



There was a family, named Savage, residing in Dorset- 

 shire long before Richard Savage appears on the scene. About 

 the year 1400 Alianora Govys brought in marriage to John 

 Savage the Manor and Advowson of Long Critchell, and, what 

 is more to the purpose, she also brought him an estate at 

 Knoll (Knowle) near Corfe Castle and about ten miles from 

 Bloxworth. The date is a century before the supposed migration 

 of Richard Savage from Cheshire to Dorsetshire, and the locality 

 is eminently suggestive of the source whence Savage, of Blox- 

 worth, was descended ; and I understand that a tradition has come 

 down to present times through the Trenchard and Pickard Families, 

 that the Savages built, or, rather, reconstructed, the roof of Blox- 

 worth Manor house, mainly out of timber from the ruins of Corfe 

 Castle, which also seems to add strength to this account of their local 

 origin. It was the custom of Henry VIII. after the dissolution to 

 bestow alienated Church property upon neighbouring gentry, and it 

 was from him that Richard and George Savage received Bloxworth, 

 which had belonged to the Abbey of Cerne. 



Moreover, Richard Savage, the 6th son of Sir John Savage, of 

 Rock-Savage, was made a Freeman of the City of Chester in 1487, 

 sixty years before Richard Savage, of Piddle Hinton, was seized of 

 Bloxworth, a difference of date which makes the identity of the 

 two almost impossible ; and further, as the son of Richard Savage, 

 of Bloxworth, died in 1610 the father must have been a young man 

 when he received Bloxworth, and could not have been made a 

 Freeman of Chester in 1487. 



Though it appears thus evident that the Savage family of Dorset- 

 shire did not come from Cheshire in the person of Richard Savage, 

 who heads the Bloxworth pedigree, still they may possibly have 

 been derived from that source in a more remote generation, and a 

 tradition to that effect may have remained in the family. However 

 that may be, they were certainly of antiquity and of gentle blood, 

 as shown by estate and alliances. The history of the family, 

 therefore, and the Armorials which they adopted, though probably 

 under some error, are matters of real and considerable interest. 



