Somers and the earls of Portland and Oxford, but all the charges were dismissed by the Lords; and in 1703 a second attempt to impeach him was still more unsuccessful. He continued out of office during the reign of Queen Anne, but in 1706 he was named one of the commissioners to negotiate the union with Scotland; and after the passing of the Act of Settlement in favour of the house of Hanover, he was appointed ambassador to the elector’s court to convey the insignia of order of the garter to George I. On the death of Anne (1714) he was appointed one of the council of regency until the arrival of the king from Hanover; and after the coronation he received the office of first lord of the treasury in the new ministry, being at the same time created earl of Halifax and Viscount Sunbury. He died on the 19th of May 1715 and left no issue. He was buried in the vault of the Albemarle family in Westminster Abbey. His nephew George (d. 1739) succeeded to the barony, and was created Viscount Sunbury and earl of Halifax in 1715.
Montague’s association with Prior in the travesty of Dryden’s Hind and Panther has no doubt largely aided in preserving his literary reputation; but he is perhaps indebted for it chiefly to his subsequent influential position and to the fulsome flattery of the men of letters who enjoyed his friendship, and who, in return for his liberal donations and the splendid banqueting which they occasionally enjoyed at his villa on the Thames, “fed him,” as Pope says, “all day long with dedications.” Swift says he gave them nothing but “good words, and good dinners.” That, however, his beneficence to needy talent, if sometimes attributable to an itching ear for adulation, was at others prompted by a sincere appreciation of intellectual merit, is sufficiently attested by the manner in which he procured from Godolphin a commissionership for Addison, and also by his life-long intimacy with Newton, for whom he obtained the mastership of the mint. The small fragments of poetry which he left behind him, and which were almost solely the composition of his early years, display a certain facility and vigour of diction, but their thought and fancy are never more than commonplace, and not unfrequently in striving to be eloquent and impressive he is only grotesquely and extravagantly absurd. In administrative talent he was the superior of all his contemporaries, and his only rival in parliamentary eloquence was Somers; but the skill with which he managed measures was superior to his tact in dealing with men, and the effect of his brilliant financial successes on his reputation was gradually almost nullified by the affected arrogance of his manner and by the eccentricities of his sensitive vanity. So eager latterly was his thirst for fame and power that perhaps Marlborough did not exaggerate when he said that “he had no other principle but his ambition, so that he would put all in distraction rather than not gain his point.”
Among the numerous notices of Halifax by contemporaries may be mentioned the eulogistic reference which concludes Addison’s account of the “greatest of English poets”; the dedications by Steel to the second volume of the Spectator and to the fourth of the Tatler; Pope’s laudatory mention of him in the epilogue to his Satires and in the preface to the Iliad, and his portrait of him as “Full-blown Bufo” in the Epistle to Arbuthnot. Various allusions to him are to be found in Swift’s works and in Marlborough’s Letters. See also Burnet’s History of his Own Times; The Parliamentary History; Howell’s State Trials; Johnson’s Lives of the Poets; and Macaulay’s History of England. His Miscellaneous Works were published at London in 1704; his Life and Miscellaneous Works in 1715; and his Poetical Works, to which also his “Life” is attached, in 1716. His poems were reprinted in the 9th volume of Johnson’s English Poets.
HALIFAX, GEORGE MONTAGU DUNK, 2nd Earl of (1716–1771),
son of George Montagu, 1st earl of Halifax (of the second
creation), was born on the 5th or 6th of October 1716, becoming
earl of Halifax on his father’s death in 1739. Educated at Eton
and at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was married in 1741 to
Anne Richards (d. 1753), a lady who had inherited a great
fortune from Sir Thomas Dunk, whose name was taken by
Halifax. After having been an official in the household of
Frederick, prince of Wales, the earl was made master of the buckhounds,
and in 1748 he became president of the Board of Trade.
While filling this position he helped to found Halifax, the capital
of Nova Scotia, which was named after him, and in several
ways he rendered good service to trade, especially with North
America. About this time he sought to become a secretary of
state, but in vain, although he was allowed to enter the cabinet
in 1757. In March 1761 Halifax was appointed lord-lieutenant
of Ireland, and during part of the time which he held this office
he was also first lord of the admiralty. He became secretary
of state for the northern department under the earl of Bute in
October 1762, retaining this post under George Grenville and
being one of the three ministers to whom George III. entrusted
the direction of affairs. He signed the general warrant under
which Wilkes was arrested in 1763, for which action he was
mulcted in damages by the courts of law in 1769, and he was
mainly responsible for the exclusion of the name of the king’s
mother, Augusta, princess of Wales, from the Regency Bill of
1765. With his colleagues the earl left office in July 1765,
returning to the cabinet as lord privy seal under his nephew,
Lord North, in January 1770. He had just been transferred to
his former position of secretary of state when he died on the 8th
of June 1771. Halifax, who was lord-lieutenant of Northamptonshire
and a lieutenant-general in the army, showed some
disinterestedness in money matters, but was very extravagant.
He left no children, and his titles became extinct on his death.
Horace Walpole speaks slightingly of the earl, and says he and
his mistress, Mary Anne Faulkner, “had sold every employment
in his gift.”
See the Memoirs of his secretary, Richard Cumberland (1807).
HALIFAX, GEORGE SAVILE, 1st Marquess of (1633–1695),
English statesman and writer, great-grandson of Sir George
Savile of Lupset and Thornhill in Yorkshire (created baronet
in 1611), was the eldest son of Sir William Savile, 3rd baronet,
who distinguished himself in the civil war in the royalist cause
and who died in 1644, and of Anne, eldest daughter of Lord
Keeper Coventry. He was thus nephew of Sir William Coventry,
who is said to have influenced his political opinions, and of
Lord Shaftesbury, afterwards his most bitter opponent, and
great-nephew of the earl of Strafford; by his marriage with
the Lady Dorothy Spencer, he was brother-in-law to Lord
Sunderland. He entered public life with all the advantages of
lineage, political connexions, great wealth and estates, and
uncommon abilities. He was elected member of the Convention
parliament for Pontefract in 1660, and this was his only appearance
in the Lower House. A peerage was sought for him by the
duke of York in 1665, but was successfully opposed by Clarendon,
on the ground of his “ill-reputation amongst men of piety and
religion,” the real motives of the chancellor’s hostile attitude
being probably Savile’s connexion with Buckingham and
Coventry. The honours were, however, only deferred for a short
time and were obtained after the fall of Clarendon on the 31st
of December 1667,[1] when Savile was created Baron Savile of
Eland and Viscount Halifax.
He supported zealously the anti-French policy formulated in the Triple Alliance of January 1668. He was at this time in favour at court, was created a privy councillor in 1672, and, while ignorant of the disgraceful secret clauses in the treaty of Dover, was chosen envoy to negotiate terms of peace with Louis XIV. and the Dutch at Utrecht. His mission was still further deprived of importance by Arlington and Buckingham, who were in the king’s counsels, and who anticipated his arrival and took the negotiations out of his hands; and though he signed the compact, he had no share in the harsh terms imposed upon the Dutch, and henceforth became a bitter opponent of the policy of subservience to French interests and of the Roman Catholic claims.
He took an active part in passing through parliament the great Test Act of 1673[2] and forfeited in consequence his friendship with James. In 1674 he brought forward a motion for
