The Savills came to England shortly after the Norman Conquest. The name could mean one who is from Seville. The founder of the Savill family of Essex was Henry Saville (d. 1679). He married Elizabeth Swallow in 1652. Henry's descendents became surveyors and eventually founded three major businesses: a surveyor's firm, a brewery and the Shaw Savill and Albion Line of steamships. They became powerful in business and social circles and inter-married with the new nobility of the nineteenth century.