[Halifax, 1st Marquess of] George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax.

The Lady’s New-year’s Gift : Or, Advice to a Daughter. Under these following Heads, Viz. Religion, Husband, House and Family. Servants, Behaviour and Conversation, Friendships, Censure, Vanity and Affectation, Pride, Diversions, Dancing.

The Second Edition Corrected by the Original. London, Printed for Matthew Gillyflower in Westminster-Hall and James Partridge at Charing-Cross, 1688. Duodecimo (7 cm wide x 12.5 cm high). [II], 164 pages (collation complete). Hardcover / 18th century full leather with gilt lettering and ornament on spine and boards. Very few pages with minor wormhole-damage only and some pages with some minor tears and fraying. The binding firm and with minor damage only. Some very few entries with ink by the pre-owner. Overall a very good condition with only minor signs of wear of this extremely rare and early edition of one of the rarest publications of advice on prudence and virtue, written by the Marquess of Halifax and published as an address to his daughter Elizabeth Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield (1677 – 1708). Later editions are more common but this 17th century publication is the nicest version of this book we have ever handled.

Elizabeth Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield (c. 1677 – c. 1708) was an English noblewoman who was the wife of Philip Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Chesterfield and the daughter of George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax. Her mother was probably Gertrude Pierrepont, Halifax’s second wife. It was to Elizabeth that her father addressed a work entitled The Lady’s New Year’s Gift: or Advice to a Daughter. She married Philip Stanhope in 1692. They had one son, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield.

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George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, PC, DL, FRS (11 November 1633 – 5 April 1695), was an English statesman, writer, and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1660, and in the House of Lords after he was raised to the peerage in 1668.

Savile was born in Thornhill, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the eldest son of Sir William Savile, 3rd Baronet, and his wife Anne Coventry, eldest daughter of Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry. His father distinguished himself in the civil war in the royalist cause and died in 1644. Savile was also the 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. He was the great-grandson of Sir George Savile of Lupset and Thornhill (created baronet in 1611). He was educated at Shrewsbury School in 1643 while his mother was staying with a sister in Shropshire. He later travelled in France, where he attended a Huguenot academy in Paris, stayed in Angers and Orléans, in Italy and in the Netherlands, and was also believed to have been educated in Geneva. He returned to England by 1652.

In 1660, Savile was elected Member of Parliament for Pontefract in the Convention Parliament, and this was his only appearance in the Lower House. In the same year he was made Deputy Lieutenant for the county of Yorkshire and Colonel of a foot regiment in the Yorkshire Militia. The Duke of York sought a peerage for him in 1665, but was successfully opposed by Clarendon, on the ground of his “ill-reputation amongst men of piety and religion.” The chancellor’s real motives may have been Savile’s connection with Buckingham and Coventry. The honours were, however, only deferred for a short time and were obtained after the fall of Clarendon on 31 December 1667, when Savile was created Baron Savile of Elland and Viscount Halifax.

In 1667 he commanded a Troop of the North Riding Militia Horse during the Dutch raids, and was commissioned Captain to raise a troop in Yorkshire for Prince Rupert’s Regiment of Horse.

Halifax’s speeches have not been preserved, and his political writings on this account have all the greater value. The Character of a Trimmer (1684 or 1685) was his most ambitious production, written seemingly as advice to the king and as a manifesto of his own opinions. In it he discusses the political problems of the time and their solution on broad principles. He supports the Test Act and, while opposing the Indulgence, is not hostile to the repeal of the penal laws against the Roman Catholics by parliament. Turning to foreign affairs he contemplates with consternation the growing power of France and the humiliation of England, exclaiming indignantly at the sight of the “Roses blasted and discoloured while lilies triumph and grow insolent upon the comparison.” The whole is a masterly and comprehensive summary of the actual political situation and its exigencies; while, when he treats such themes as liberty, or discusses the balance to be maintained between freedom and government in the constitution, he rises to the political idealism of Bolingbroke and Burke. The Character of King Charles II, to be compared with his earlier sketch of the king in the Character of a Trimmer, is perhaps from the literary point of view the most admirable of his writings. The famous Letter to a Dissenter (1687) was thought by Sir James Mackintosh to be unrivalled as a political pamphlet. The Lady’s New Year’s Gift: or Advice to a Daughter, refers to his daughter Elizabeth, afterwards mother of the celebrated 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1688). In The Anatomy of an Equivalent (1688) he treats with keen wit and power of analysis the proposal to grant a “perpetual edict” in favour of the Established Church in return for the repeal of the test and penal laws. Maxims of State appeared about 1692. The Rough Draft of a New Model at Sea (c. 1694), though apparently only a fragment, is one of the most interesting and characteristic of his writings. He discusses the naval establishment, not from the naval point of view alone, but from the general aspect of the constitution of which it is a detail, and is thus led to consider the nature of the constitution itself, and to show that it is not an artificial structure but a growth and product of the natural character. Multiple editions of his works have been released since his death, including H. C. Foxcroft’s “Life and Letters.” The most recent edition, by Mark N. Brown, is titled The Works of George Savile Marquis of Halifax, 3 vols., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989. A paperback collection was edited by J. P. Kenyon for the “Pelican Classics” series in 1969. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: 17th Century – Rare · Baroque · Catalogue Two – Children’s Books · Children’s Books Rare · English History · English History – Rare · English History in the 17th century
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 31859AB

EUR 1.480,--