Halifax and the general crisis of seventeenth century

Abstract

The most salient characteristic of Sir George Savile, the first Marquis of Halifax's career has been the enduring hostility which the Marquis has generated. This observation may appear banal and even trivial but it is nonetheless the case that, in both his own lifetime and subsequently, Halifax earned the scorn and disapproval of many distinguished writers. Even in the twentieth century, disinterested academic historians such as Sir George Clark, J.R. Jones, J.L. Miller and Christopher Hill have produced scathing accounts of the Marquis, a politician who, as Clark puts it, 'never chose his side before it was necessary to choose and never did himself permanent harm by his choice' . Moreover, the nature of the hostility exhibited towards Halifax has remained remarkably similar down the centuries, for both contemporaries and posterity have uniformly based their dislike of the Marquis on his supposed cynicism and self-interest; in essence, Halifax was disliked in the seventeenth century and subsequently because of the perceived discrepancy between his social actions and professed beliefs. Far from being trivial and banal, the Marquis's evil reputation is the core of the 'Halifax problem'.