[Tomb of Sir George Savile]

There is no actual title for this print and the currently assigned title is something of a misnomer. From a letter to Gillray dated November 18, 1799 in the British Museum (B.M. Add. MSS. 27337, fo. 53), we know that the print had been commissioned by Francis Hawksworth of Hickleton Hall, a Yorkshire man and amateur etcher, and completed some time before that date since the letter included five guineas in payment for Gillray's efforts.

At first glance the print appears to be a representation of the tomb of the Yorkshire Baronet, Sir George Saville. But there is no such tomb at Thornhill where he is buried, and the actual memorial in the York Minster features a free standing statue of Sir George and a completely different inscription.

Looking and reading more carefully, however, we realize that the print mourns the death, not of Saville, but of the ideas that he stood for.

By all accounts, Saville was the model of an independent member of parliament. Although associated with the Rockingham Whigs, he was guided by his conscience and his constituents. He was never a party man and never sought for office. He believed in religious toleration. And in the 1780's before his death in 1784, his major goals were to end the American war which had led to increased taxation of his Yorkshire supporters, increase parliamentary representation of independent counties, and promote moderate reform including "an inquiry into the pension list, the reduction of exorbitant salaries, and the abolition of sinecures."

In 1799 when this print was commissioned, Saville's positions would have seemed particularly timely. Britain was once again embroiled in a costly war and the taxation of goods and services must have seemed onerous. And the reforms of parliament which had been often promised by both Whigs and Tories were vanishing like a mirage as the threat of revolutionary activity within Britain increased.

So it is not surprising that Savile is invoked as the presiding genius to warn his countrymen "e're it be too late...[of] the Necessity of Peace, - the Improbability of \ the Present Ministers making it, - & the Benefit which would result, from a Temperate Reformation of those Abuses, "from which (to use his own memorable words) \ 'it was notorious, that all our Calamities Sprung'!!!"

The portrait of Saville that Gillray uses is clearly based upon the 1770 etching by James Basire of a painting by Benjamin Wilson created when Savile was in his prime.

But the quotation from Virgil under the bust of Saville ("Fuimus Troes, fuet [sic] Ilium et ingens Gloria Teucrorum" which can be roughly translated as "We were Trojans, but Troy is gone with all its might and glory") suggests that the battle for Savile's goals and those of the "Independent Gentlemen of Yorkshire" has been waged and lost.

The other quotations from Macbeth and Horace likewise presume a loss and a sorrow which can hardly be measured.

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on [Tomb of Sir George Savile]
• George Saville History of Parliament.
• Danielle Thom, Whigs without wigs: Constructing Character in Posthumous Portraiture, The Droll Hackabout

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