Of his numerous publications the following are of special importance:—Assyrian Grammar for Comparative Purposes (1872); Principles of Comparative Philology (1874); Babylonian Literature (1877); Introduction to the Science of Language (1879); Monuments of the Hittites (1881); Herodotus i.-iii. (1883); Ancient Empires of the East (1884); Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (1885); Assyria (1885); Hibbert Lectures on Babylonian Religion (1887); The Hittites (1889); Races of the Old Testament (1891); Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments (1894); Patriarchal Palestine (1895); The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotus (1895); Early History of the Hebrews (1897); Israel and the Surrounding Nations (1898); Babylonians and Assyrians (1900); Egyptian and Babylonian Religion (1903); Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscr. (1907). He also contributed important articles to the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and edited a number of Oriental works.
SAYE AND SELE, WILLIAM FIENNES, 1st Viscount (1582–1662), was the only son of Richard Fiennes, 7th Baron Saye and Sele, and was descended from James Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, who was lord Chamberlain and lord treasurer under Henry VI. and was beheaded by the rebels under Tack Cade on the 4th of July 1450. Born on the 28th of May 1582 Fiennes, like many of his family, was educated at New College, Oxford; he succeeded to his father’s barony in 1613, and in parliament opposed the policy of James I., undergoing a brief imprisonment for objecting to a benevolence in 1662; and he showed great animus towards Lord Bacon. In 1624, owing probably to his temporary friendship
with the duke of Buckingham, he was advanced to the rank
of a viscount, but notwithstanding this he remained during the early parliaments of Charles I. champion of the popular cause, and was in Clarendon’s words “the oracle of those who were called Puritans in the worst sense, and steered all their counsels and designs.” Afterwards his energies found a new outlet in helping to colonize Providence Island, and in interesting himself
in other and similar enterprises in America. Although Saye resisted the levy of ship-money, he accompanied Charles on his march against the Scots in 1639; but, with only one other peer, he refused to take the oath binding him to fight for the king to “the utmost of my power and hazard of my life.” Then Charles I.
sought to win his favour by making him a privy councillor and
master of the court of wards. When the Civil War broke out,
however, Saye was on the committee of safety, was made lord lieutenant
of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Cheshire, and
raising a regiment occupied Oxford. He was a member of the
committee of both kingdoms; was mainly responsible for passing
the self-denying ordinance through the House of Lords; and in
1647 stood up for the army in its struggle with the parliament.
In 1648, both at the treaty of Newport and elsewhere, Saye was
anxious that Charles should come to terms, and he retired into
private life after the execution of the king, becoming a privy
councillor again upon the restoration of Charles II. He died at
his residence, Broughton Castle near Banbury, on the 14th of
April 1662. On several occasions Saye outwitted the advisers
of Charles I. by his strict compliance with legal forms. He was
a thorough aristocrat, and his ideas for the government of colonies
in America included the establishment of an hereditary aristocracy.
His eldest son James (c. 1603–1674) succeeded him as
2nd Viscount; other sons were the parliamentarians Nathaniel
Fiennes (q.v.) and John Fiennes. The viscount of Saye and
Sele became extinct in 1781, and the barony is now held by the
descendants of John Twisleton (d. 1682) and his wife Elizabeth
(d. 1674), a daughter of the 2nd viscount. Saybrook (q.v.) in
Connecticut is named after Viscount Saye and Lord Brooke.
SAYER (or Sayers), JAMES (1748–1823), English caricaturist, was a native of Yarmouth, and son of a merchant captain. He began as clerk in an attorney’s office, and was for a time a member of the borough council. In 1780 the death of his father put him in possession of a small fortune, and he came to London. As a political caricaturist he was a supporter of
William Pitt. His plate of “Carlo Khan’s triumphal entry into Leadenhall Street” was allowed by C. J. Fox, against whom it was directed, to have damaged him severely in public opinion. Indeed Sayer was always at his best when attacking Fox, whose strongly marked features he rendered with remarkable power, and always so as to make them convey expressions of defiant impudence or of anger. Pitt, who showed no wish to help
literature or art in any other case, provided Sayer with a place as marshal of the Exchequer court. He died in Curzon Street, Mayfair, on the 20th of April 1823.
Sayer’s “Carlo Khan” has been frequently reproduced. But he can only be judged with confidence after examining the collection in the British Museum, or other public libraries. His drawings, made originally with pencil on oil paper, were etched for him by the Brethertons. They were then sold in collections of the size of a large octavo copybook, under such titles as Illustrious Heads (1794) or Outlines of the Opposition (1795). Sayer left a complete gallery of small full-length pictures of the public men of his time, slightly caricatured. In his great plates he is inferior to Gillray, and he never has the grace of Rowlandson, but he is less exaggerated than either, and nearer the truth.
SAYERS, TOM (1826–1865), English pugilist, was born at Brighton on the 25th of May 1826. By trade a bricklayer, he began his career as a prize fighter in 1849 and won battle after battle, his single defeat being at the hands of Nat Langham in October 1853. In 1857 he gained the championship. His fight with the American, John C. Heenan, the Benicia Boy, a much
heavier man than himself, is perhaps the most famous in the history of the English prize ring. It took place at Farnborough on the 17th of April 1860 and lasted two hours and six minutes, thirty-seven rounds being fought. After Sayers’s right arm had been injured the crowd pressed into the ring and the fight was declared a draw. £3000 was raised by public subscription for Sayers, who withdrew from the ring and died on the 8th of November 1865. The champion was 5 ft. 812 in. in height and
his fighting weight was under 11 stone. An account of the fight between Sayers and Heenan is given by Frederick Locker-Lampson in My Confidences (1896).
SAYRE, a borough of Bradford county, Pennsylvania, U. S. A.,
on the North Branch of the Susquehanna river, about 95 m.
(by rail) N.N.W. of Wilkes-Barré, and just S. of the New York
state boundary. Pop. (1900) 5243 (357 foreign-born); (1910)
6426. Sayre is served by the main line and by a branch of the
Lehigh Valley railway, and is connected by electric railway
with Waverly, New York, and with the adjacent borough of
Athens, Pennsylvania (pop. in 1916, 3796), which manufactures
furniture, carriages and wagons. Sayre, Athens, South Waverly
and Waverly form virtually one industrial community. The
borough of Sayre is the seat of the Robert Packer Hospital
(1885) and has two parks. It is the trade centre of an agricultural
and dairying region, and has metal works and other factories;
but its industrial importance is due primarily to the locomotive
and car shops of the Lehigh Valley railway. It was named in
honour of Robert Heysham Sayre (1824–1907), long chief engineer
of this railway. Sayre was settled in 1880 and was
incorporated as a borough in 1891.
SAYYID AHMAD KHAN, SIR (1817–1898), Mahommedan
educationist and reformer, was born at Delhi, India, in, 1817. He belonged to a family which had come to India with the Mahommedan conquest, and had held important office sunder the Mogul emperors. Although his imperfect acquaintance with English prevented his attainment of higher office than that of a judge of a small cause court, he earned the title of the recognized leader of the Mahommedan community. To the British he rendered loyal service, and when the mutiny reached Bijnor in Rohilkand in May 1857 the British residents owed their lives to his courage and tact. His faithfulness to his religion was pronounced, and in 1876 he defended the cause of Islam in A Series of Essays on Mahommed, written in London. He used these advantages to act as interpreter between the Mahommedans and their rulers, and to rouse his co-religionists to a sense of the benefits of modern education. The task was no light one; for during the first half of the 19th century the Mahommedans had kept themselves aloof 'from English education, and therefore from taking their proper part in the British administration, being content to study Persian and Arabic in their own mosques. Sayyid Ahmad set himself to alter their resolution. He established a translation society, which became the Scientific Society of Aligarh. He wrote letters from England to draw the hearts of the East to the West. In 1873 he founded
