Savile Crossley, 1st Baron Somerleyton

Savile Brinton Crossley, 1st Baron Somerleyton GCVO PC (14 June 1857 – 25 February 1935), known as Sir Savile Crossley, Bt, from 1872 to 1916, was a British Liberal Unionist politician who served as Paymaster General from 1902 to 1905.

Background

Crossley was the only son of the businessman and Liberal politician Sir Francis Crossley, 1st Baronet, and his wife Martha Eliza, daughter of Henry Brinton.

Political career

Crossley was elected to parliament for Lowestoft in 1885, as a Liberal, a seat he held until 1892, and later sat for Halifax from 1900 to 1906. He was appointed High Sheriff of Suffolk for 1896-97.

In 1902 he was appointed Paymaster-General in the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour and was admitted to the Privy Council in December of the same year. He remained as Paymaster-General this post until the government fell in December 1905, and lost his seat in the 1906 general election that followed shortly after. Crossley was never to re-enter the House of Commons.

However, in 1916 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Somerleyton, of Somerleyton in the County of Suffolk. Two years later he was appointed a Lord-in-Waiting (government whip) in the coalition government of David Lloyd George. The coalition fell in 1922, but Somerleyton remained as a whip also in the Conservative administrations of Andrew Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin. However, after the first Baldwin government fell in 1924, he was never to hold ministerial office again.

Military and civic appointments

Crossley held the appointment of honorary Lieutenant colonel in the Army, and served in South Africa. In early May 1902 he was appointed a captain in The Prince of Wales's Own Norfolk Artillery, a Militia Battalion stationed at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. He was promoted to major and honorary lieutenant-colonel of the battalion later the same month, and later served as lieutenant-colonel commanding the Battalion.

Family

Lord Somerleyton married Phyllis de Bathe, daughter of General Sir Henry Percival de Bathe, in 1887. He died in February 1935, aged 77, and was succeeded in the baronetcy and barony by his eldest son, Francis Savile Crossley. His younger son, John, was the father of Belinda Douglas-Scott-Montagu, Baroness Montagu of Beaulieu. Lady Somerleyton died in 1948.