fluence of William Fiennes, lord Say (or Say and Sele) (d. 1471), King Edward's companion in exile, Say soon transferred his allegiance from the Lancastrian court party to the house of York. He was speaker of the parliament sitting from April 1463 to 1465, which strongly upheld Edward's government, and on 3 May 1465 was, with many others, dubbed a knight of the Bath in honour of the king's marriage. He was a third time speaker in the parliament which sat from June 1467 to June 1468, in which year he acquired, on the death of another John Say without issue, the manor of ‘Saysbury’ or Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire (Chauncey, u.s.), part of the possessions of Geoffrey de Say [q. v.] His name appears in a commission of 1476 for the conservation of the banks of the river Lea. He died in 1478, and was buried in Broxbourne church, where his tomb, with recumbent effigies of him and his first wife, Elizabeth, stands between the chancel and the south chapel. He married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Lawrence Cheyney of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire, who died in 1473, and by whom he had a son, William, who succeeded him, and perhaps two other sons, Leonard, and Thomas who married Joan, daughter of John Cheyney of Liston, Essex; and, secondly, Agnes, daughter of John Danvers of Cothorpe, Oxfordshire, and widow, it is said, of John, lord Wenlock (d. 1471) (Cussans), and of Sir John Fray (d. 1461), chief baron of the exchequer. His eldest son, Sir William Say (d. 1529), married, first, Genevese, daughter of John Hill, and, secondly, Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Sir John Fray, his stepmother's husband, and widow of Sir Thomas Waldegrave, by whom he had two daughters, Elizabeth, who married William Blount, fourth lord Mountjoy [q. v.]; and Mary, who married Henry Bourchier, second earl of Essex [q. v.] Sir William and his two wives are buried in Broxbourne church.
[Manning's Lives of the Speakers, pp. 95–9; Will. Worcester's Annals, pp. 465, 471, 475, 502, 508, ed. Hearne; Three Fifteenth-Cent. Chron. p. 101 (Camden Soc.); Paston Letters, ii. 131, 134, ed. Gairdner; Returns of Members of Parl.; Rolls of Parl. v. 141, 497, 572; Hists. of Hertfordshire by Chauncy, Cussans, and Clutterbuck, passim; Nichols's Collect. Topogr. and Geneal. iv. 44, 310; Ramsay's Lanc. and York, ii. 128, 138.]
SAY, SAMUEL (1676–1743), dissenting minister, second son of Gyles Say, by his second wife, was born in All Saints' parish, Southampton, on 23 March 1676. Gyles Say (1632–1692), who was of Huguenot ancestry by the mother's side, was educated at Southampton grammar school, was presented to the vicarage of Catherington, Hampshire, on 24 March 1656, and to the vicarage of St. Michael, Southampton, on 23 Nov. 1657; was ordained by presbyters on 8 May 1660, refused conformity in 1662, and preached as a nonconformist at Southampton and Wellow, Hampshire (1672–80), London (1680–7), and Guestwick, Norfolk (1687–92). Samuel was educated at schools in Southwick, Hampshire (to 1689), and Norwich (1691–2), whence he proceeded (1692) to the London academy of Thomas Rowe [q. v.] Isaac Watts was his fellow-student and intimate friend.
After acting as chaplain for three years to Thomas Scott of Lyminge, Kent, he ministered for a short time at Andover, Hampshire, then at Great Yarmouth (from 6 July 1704), and in 1707 settled at Lowestoft, Suffolk, where he ministered for eighteen years, but was not ordained pastor. He declined in 1712 a call to the independent congregation at Norwich. In 1725 he became co-pastor with Samuel Baxter at Ipswich. In 1734, after much hesitation, he accepted the care of the congregation at Long Ditch (now Princes Street), Westminster, which had been without a pastor since the death of Edmund Calamy in 1732. His ministry was successful. He died on 12 April 1743, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. He married (1719) Sarah Hamby (d. February 1744, aged 70). Her uncle, Nathaniel Carter (1635–1722) of Great Yarmouth, married a granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, and founded an important dissenting trust. Say's only child, Sarah, married Isaac Toms (1709–1801), dissenting minister at Hadleigh, Suffolk.
Two years after Say's death appeared his ‘Poems … and two Critical Essays,’ &c., 1745, 4to, edited by William Duncombe [q. v.]; the poems are youthful rubbish, with a version of the opening of ‘Paradise Lost’ in Latin hexameters; the essays are respectively on rhythm in general, and on the rhythm of ‘Paradise Lost.’ In ‘Letters by several Eminent Persons’ (1772, vol. ii.), edited by John Duncombe [q. v.], are two letters by Say, and a reprint of his ‘Character’ of Mrs. Bendish, which first appeared in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (1760, p. 423). The ‘Say Papers,’ edited in the ‘Monthly Repository,’ 1809–10, by Robert Aspland, from manuscripts then in the possession of Say's grandson, Samuel Say Toms, contain many curious documents, among them a petition from ‘Sophia Selchrig,’ widow of Alexander Selkirk [q. v.] His portrait was engraved by C. Hall after a drawing by Jonathan Richardson.
