Savile Crossley, 1st Baron Somerleyton

Savile Brinton Crossley, 1st Baron Somerleyton, GCVO, PC (June 14, 1857 – February 25, 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.

Somerleyton was the only son of the businessman and Liberal politician Sir Francis Crossley, 1st Baronet, of Halifax, and his wife Martha Eliza Brinton, daughter of Henry Brinton. He was elected to parliament for Lowestoft in 1885, a seat he held until 1892, and later sat for Halifax from 1900 to 1906. In 1902 Somerleyton was admitted to the Privy Council and appointed Paymaster-General in the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour. He remained in this post until the government fell in December 1905, and lost his seat in the 1906 general election that followed shortly after. Somerleyton 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 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.

Lord Somerleyton married Phyllis de Bathe, daughter of General Sir Henry Percival de Bathe, 4th Baronet, in 1887. He died in February 1935, aged 77, and was succeeded in the baronetcy and barony by his eldest son, Francis Savile Crossley.

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*Rayment