Elizabeth MANNERS

Born: ABT 1531

Died: 8 Aug 1570, Frodsham, Cheshire, England

Buried: 15 Aug 1570, Savage Chapel, St. Michael's Church, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England

Father: Thomas MANNERS (1° E. Rutland)

Mother: Eleanor PASTON (C. Rutland)

Married: John SAVAGE of Rocksavage (Sir)

Children:

2. Margaret SAVAGE

Daughter of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland, and Eleanor Paston. Sister of Gertrude, Henry, Anne, Sir John, Frances, Roger, Sir Thomas, Oliver, Catherine, and Isabel. Elizabeth was thus a great-granddaughter of Anne of York, the elder sister of Edward IV and Richard III.

Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland, in his last will, dated 16 Aug 1543 (printed in "Testamenta Vetusta" ii. 719), left his three daughters, Elizabeth, Frances and Catherine, £ 60 a year each , for their exhibition and finding till such time as they shall be married, and toward their marriage 1000 £ each. It follows that the daughters were unmarried on the date of his death. The older sisters, Gertrude and Anne, were respectively Countess of Shrewsbury and Westmoreland. Their lavish weddings were notable social events in the 1530s.

Once a widow, Eleanor Paston, Countess of Rutland, did not stop taking care of the affairs of her home, particularly with regard to the situation of her children. When it came to crucial issues, like finding husbands for her daughters and negotiating terms for her partners, she got personally involved. At the time of her older daughters' marriages, a letter to her father, written from Holywell, reported the apparent failure of their negotiations for a marriage between one of her daughters and an anonymous gentleman. “Howsoever it goeth” she wrote, "I trust by your good help, and with the help of my lord, to provide her of another as good as he".

The prominence of Eleanor Paston at the court of Queen Mary, may account for the appointment of Roger Manners as an Esquire of the Body and serving both Mary and Elizabeth. The same prominence should be influenced, before 1554, to achieve the marriage of her daughter, Lady Frances, with Henry Neville, fourth Baron Abergavenny, the son of George Neville, 3rd Baron Abergavenny and Lady Mary Stafford.

Catherine, the younger sister, married Sir Henry Capell of Raines Hall, whose uncle, also Henry Capell, had married Catherine's aunt, Anne Manners. Henry Capell and Anne Manners had several children who died during their lives, so their property passed into the hands of their brother Edward, Catherine's father-in-law. So it can be assumed that while Catherine did not obtain a place in the peerage of England, she at least was the wife of a wealthy man.

Then there is Elizabeth. If we consider the order in which they were named in her father's will, she must have been the oldest of the three. She married Sir John Savage of Rocksavage, son of Sir John Savage of Clifton and Elizabeth Somerset, dau. of Charles Somerset, first earl of Worcester.

The Savage family is an English noble family founded by Thomas Le Sauvage, who came to England as part of William the Conqueror's Norman army in 1066 and settled in Derbyshire after the conquest, taking residence in Scarcliffe. In the 14th century a branch of the family was established in Cheshire, and this was the place where they became most prominent, with several members ascending to the peerage and positions of power such as Archbishop of York. The Cheshire branch of the family built the primary family seat Rocksavage, just yards away from their existing home at Clifton. The house was one of the great Elizabethan houses of the county and a leading example of the Elizabethan prodigy house. The Savages were related to prominent families as the Stanleys and the Vernons.

The birth of their first child in 1548 establishes a possible date for her marriage several years earlier than those of Frances and Catherine.

Sir John was the holder of high office in Chester and Cheshire and several times an MP. Sir John and Elizabeth had at least 5 sons and 5 daughters.

Margaret Savage (b. 1549 - d. 7 Apr 1597) married William Brereton of Leighlin; Mary Savage married first Thomas Hitchcock and secondly Sir Richard Milles of Hampshire; Eleanor Savage married Sir Henry Bagenal in 1577; Elizabeth Savage married Sir Thomas Langton of Walton-le-Dale; and Frances Savage married Thomas Wikes of Surrey.

The surviving eldest son, John, and the youngest Edward, both had offspring.

Elizabeth died in 1570, at the age of 40, one of Rutland's longest-lived daughters after her sister Frances, who passed away at 46.

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