Author: Savage, Mary
Biography:
SAVAGE, Mary, formerly BELT (1718-88: Orlando)
She was baptised on 24 Feb. 1718 at All Hallows the Great, City of London, the only surviving child of Leonard Belt, a wax chandler, and Mary Ham(m)ond, who had married in 1714 at St. Stephen and St. Benet Sherehog, London. Two sons died in infancy, leaving her the only child and beneficiary. Leonard and Mary Belt made a marriage settlement of almost £20,000 when she married William Savage, musician and composer, on 6 Aug. 1748 at St. Paul’s Cathedral. He had already been appointed Almoner, Vicar Choral, and Master of the Choristers of St Paul’s. His student Richard John Samuel Stevens later described her as “a very amiable and accomplished woman”; he also mentions her beauty, her fortune, her poems, and her children. She seems to have had seven children, all baptised at St Gregory by St. Paul. A son, George Savage (1750-1816), was educated at Eton and King’s, Cambridge, and entered the church. A daughter, Jane Savage (later Rolleston, 1754-1824), became a harpsichordist and composer. She set some of her mother’s work to music and may have edited the poetry. The family left London in 1777-8 for Tenterden, Kent, where William Savage had purchased an estate. They returned to London around 1780-1 and lived at Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, before moving to East Street, Red Lion Square, Holborn, where they both died. William Savage died on 27 July 1789. His will, made on 4 Sept. 1784, refers to “my dear wife Mary” but by the time it was proved, on 8 Aug. 1789, she was no longer a surviving executrix. Stevens records that she died in Mar. 1788. They were probably both buried at Lamb’s Conduit Fields, the burial grounds of St. George the Martyr, but the registers are not extant. (Orlando; ancestry.co.uk 19 Oct. 2022; ECWP, 345-51, 532; GM Aug. 1789, 765; Hull History Centre, U DDPR/5/16 [Marriage Settlement];Richard John Samuel Stevens, The Life of William Savage [1829], Glasgow University Library, Euing R.d.23.; Henry George Farmer, “A Forgotten Composer of Anthems: William Savage [1720-1789],” Music & Letters, 17 [1936], 188-99) AA
Other Names:
- Mrs. Savage