From ‘SAVARIC’ to ‘SAVORY’ – The Wiltshire Roots

The name SAVORY was not always spelt thus. Like most other surnames, it has changed over the years, as often as not because their owners, being for the most part illiterate, were in no position to correct what clerks and others recorded.

The name SAVORY derives from the early French name of SAVRIC. Thus:

SAVARIC
Savari    – Safari
Saureye – Sauery
Savarye – Sevarie – Saverie
Savary   – Savoury – Savery
SAVORY

The first Savaric to note is Savaric Fitz Chana of Ralph Savaric and his wife Chana, daughter of Gledwin, Lord of Saumur. Savaric Fitz Chana became Lord of Midhurst (Sussex) in c.1100. He married into the de Bohun family and through that connection the name spread into Essex (Savaric de Bohun). Savaric Fitz Chana’s younger son was Gledwin Fitz Savaric, who had an estate in Wiltshire c. 1172. His son was Savaric, Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury c.1200. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a Bishop he had two sons who also held land in Westbury. Another Savaric was Savaric of Littleton c.1230. Littleton is about three miles east of Staines where is located Savory’s Weir. The Weir was granted to a certain Ralph Savery in c.1283.

It will be seen, therefore, that by about 1230 the Savarics were established in Sussex, Wiltshire, Essex and the western outskirts of London. Today (1982) the main concentrations of Savorys are in Wiltshire/Gloucestershire, East Anglia, London and Devon. The Devon Saverys (the name spelt with an ‘e’ according to a history of the family by John Savery, almost entirely stemmed from the Savarics or Savorys of Wiltshire.

In addition to the descendants of the Savarics there are those Savorys of Huguenot descent who came to England between the Massacre of St Bartholomew (1572) and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). There were two such families, one settling in Wandsworth, SW London and the other in Greenwich.

And the Savorys with whom we are concerned? 

At one time it was considered we might be of the Huguenot descent. However, it seems far more certain that the family descends from the Wiltshire Savorys of far earlier times. These Savorys spread north west into Gloucestershire, in addition to the moving south-west to Bristol and Devon and eastwards to Oxford, following the line of the River Thames. Somewhere on the River Thames they met the Savorys coming up the river from London. Certainly the family was established in Cowley, Gloucestershire by 1748 and there is no evidence to suggest that the Huguenot Savorys, based in London, had by then travelled so far west.

Our branch changed from ‘Savery’ to ‘Savory’ in the late 1700s under John Savory who was born in 1751. 

The answer to the question “From where did we come?” is therefore “Wiltshire”. However, this does not imply that we are descendants of the Savarics. It is more likely that our forbears were of much humbler origin and adopted their patron’s name as a surname; just as others at that time (12th to 13th century) were adopting the name of the manor from which they came as their surname.