In 1626, Sir Thomas Savage, Bart, was created Baron and Viscount Savage of Clifton, or Rock-Savage, in the county of Chester, by King Charles I. He married Elizabeth, eldest daughter and heiress of the said Thomas Lord D'Arcy, Viscount Colchester and Earl Rivers. By her he had a son, John, his heir and successor.
Which John Lord Savage, as heir to his mother, succeeded also as Viscount Colchester and Earl Rivers, in 1640; it being so entailed and settled in the patent of Lord D'Arcy.
John Lord Savage was twice married; 1st, to Catherine, daughter of William, Lord Morley and Mounteagle; 2dly, to Mary, daughter of Thomas Ogle, Esq. of Tissington, in Northumberland.
It was on the first of these ladies that this encomiastic poem must have been composed. For, alluding to her children, the poet says,
Copyes of her owne character,
Left beauty's perfect stamp in all,
Yet wasted not th 'originall.
Now it appears that the first Countess Rivershad five or six children, whereas the second had only one.—(See Dugd. Bar. vol. ii. and Bolton's Ext. Peer.)
Richard Savage, second son of the Countess Rivers, celebrated in this poem, who succeeded his elder brother in the title, was father, by the Countess of Macclesfield, of the unfortunate Richard Savage; whose life, traced by the pen of Johnson, has furnished one of the most striking pieces of biography in the English, or any other language.
There was a close connexion between the families of Savage, Thimelby, and Aston. Lady Elizabeth Savage, sister of Earl Rivers, was the wife of Sir John Thimelby of Irnham, eldest brother of Edward Thimelby the poet, of Henry Thimelby, husband of Gertrude Aston, whose poems form the second part of this miscellany; and of Catherine Thimelby, often mentioned in the last part these poems, the wife of Herbert Aston, second son of the first Lord Aston. Moreover, Earl Rivers's second brother was married to the widow of Sir Edward
