Saye and Sele, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount

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Saye and Sele, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount (1582–1662). Saye and Sele was a leading member of the radical, win-the-war faction in the House of Lords during the 1640s. As early as the 1620s he was a critic of arbitrary government and illegal taxation. During the 1630s he gave himself to puritan colonization schemes in the New World. Saye refused to pay ship money, and declined the military oath imposed by Charles on the nobility at the outbreak of the Bishops' wars with Scotland. In the Long Parliament he continued to work with the radical opponents of the regime despite being appointed to the Privy Council. He backed both the self-denying ordinance of 1645, which excluded the aristocracy from the leadership of the parliamentary armies, and the creation of the New Model Army. In 1647, as the leading political Independent in the House of Peers, he worked closely with Ireton and the council of the army in drafting the Heads of the Proposals. This projected settlement was the most generous ever offered the king during the course of the civil wars. Politically inactive after 1649, Saye devoted himself to religion. In 1654 he published Vindiciae veritatis, arguing for a minimal role for the magistrate in regulating men's beliefs. Upon Charles II's return in 1660 he was again appointed to the Privy Council.

Ian Gentles

The Oxford Companion to British History JOHN CANNON