THE SPENCERS.
fp HE SPENCERS, who have now a dukedom, an earldom,
and a barony, and who have possessed several peerages, are the descendants of one John Spencer, who was believed, by those who envied his family, to have been a great grazier in Warwickshire. He may have been a remote descendant of the great Norman House of Le Despencer, now represented through the female line by an heiress of the Stapletons, who married into the Boscawen family ; but he did not claim this descent, and generations afterwards, during a celebrated quarrel, his heir admitted that the founder had "kept sheep." Whoever he was, he had considerable commandof money, and was a great land buyer, beginning with the great lordship of Wormleighton, in south Warwickshire, which he bought on 3rd September, 1506, the 22nd year of Henry VII., from the Cope family. Here he began the structure of a "fair mansion" where he resided in some state, with a- household of sixty persons. Two years after his Wormleighton purchase, he bought from the Catesby family the manor of Althorp, in Northamptonshire, which became the principal seat of his successors, and in the 3rd year of Henry VIL he purchased the manor of Brington, in the im- mediate vicinity of Althorp, from Thomas Woodville, Marquis of Dorset. With this nobleman in the same year he exchanged some lands at Bosworth, in Leicestershire, for the manor of Wyke- dyve, in Northamptonshire, and purchased from him the manor of Wyke-hamon, in the same county, which the Spencers sold in 1716. He acquired other estates in the midland counties, re- built the churches of Wormleighton, Brington, and Stanton, in Northamptonshire, and his will contains many bequests to the religious houses. He was knighted and became guardian to the heirs of the Catesby family—the grandchildren of King Richard's favourite—and the younger Sir Richard, who succeeded ulti- mately to the Catesby estates at Legers Ashby and elsewhere, married Dorothy, youngest daughter of Sir John Spencer, and by him was the great-grandmother of Robert Catesby, the Gunpowder Plot conspirator. Sir John Spencer married Isabel, one of the daughters and co-heirs of William Graunt, Esq., of Smitterfeild, in Warwickshire, which place he obtained from this marriage, and is first designated as " of " it. He died April 14, 1522, and by his will, made two days preciously, he requires his executors to "recompense every one that can lawfully prove, or will make oath, that he has hurt him in anywise, so that they make their claim within two years, though he had none in his remembrance ; but he would rather charge their souls than his own should be in danger." He enjoined his executors to cause proclamation to be made hereof once a month daring the first year after his decease at Warwick, Southampton, Coventry, Banbury, Daventry, and Northampton. Sir John, the founder, clearly a man of the true English type, with a taste for piety and accumulation, was succeeded by his son William, who died in two years, and his grandson, John, who was Sheriff of Nottinghamshire under Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, but was undistinguished, save as a mighty grazier, who gave up even his parks to sheep and cattle. He left a great family—John, who succeeded him in his principal estates ; Thomas, of Claredon or Claverdon, in Warwickshire; William, Yarnton, Oxfordshire ; Richard, of Ofiley, Hertfordshire ; Edward, who died without issue, and six daughters, who married into county or lordly families. Sir John Spencer, who succeeded to .Althorp and Wormleighton, was knighted in 1588, and married the =daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Catelyn, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, by whom he left a son, Robert, who, at the acces- sion of King James, was believed to possess the largest amount of ready money of all persons in the kingdom, He was, therefore, created, without special services, Baron Spencer, but he seems to have been a most excellent person. Camden calls him a worthy encourager of virtue and learning, and Wilson, in his "Life of King James," says of him, "Spencer (like the old Roman, chosen dictator from his farm) made the country a virtuous court, where his fields and flocks brought him more calm and happy contentment than the various and unstable dispensations of a court can contribute, and when he was called to the senate was more vigilant to keep the people's liberties from being a prey to the encroaching power of monarchy than his harmless and tender lambs from foxes and ravenous creatures." His "ready money" had been made use of by King James at the commencement of his reign, he being sent, in 1603, to carry the insignia of the Garter to the Duke of Wurtemburg, one of the leading German Protestant princes. He was magnificently entertained by the Duke, and both the Duke and the ambassador were so richly attired, glittering with gold and jewels, that we are told they attracted the attention of all the spectators. Spencer held no post at Court, and in Parliament he appeared on the popular side, and once, in 1621, is said to have come into collision with the proud Earl of Arundel, the head of the Howarils. Happening to appeal to the actions of their ancestors as an incentive to the peers to take a free line of action, Arundel broke forth, "My Lord, when these things were doing your ancestors were keeping sheep." Spencer, too proud also to put forward any spurious descent from an older family, replied, "When my ancestors were keeping sheep (as you say) your ancestors were plotting treason." A violent scene ensued, and Arundel, as the aggressor, was sent to the Tower, but after acknowledging his fault and offering to make satisfactionwas discharged. Spencer, in the same year, with 32 other English peers, petitioned the King against being compelled to give rank of courtesy as to foreigners to Englishmen who had been raised to titles in Scotland and Ireland. The King was angry at this reflection on the lavish honours he was bestowing on his favourites, and rebuked Lord Spencer especially as the chief mover in the petition. Lord Spencer died October 25, 1627, surviving by thirty years his wife Margaret, daughter and co-heir of Sir Francis Willoughby, of Woollaton, in Nottinghamshire, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. He was succeeded by his second son, William (the eldest having died without issue), second Lord Spencer, who was created a Knight of the Bath along with Prince Charles in 1616, and represented the shire of Northampton in the Commons in three Parliaments of James I. and the two• first of Charles I. He followed the same popular course in Par- liament, and died in the 45th year of his age, December 19, 1636. He had married Lady Penelope Wriottesley, daughter of the Earl of Southampton, who survived him thirty-one years. 'H4 had by her six sons and seven daughters. The second son, Robert, was made Viscount Teviot, in Scotland, by James IL, in 1686, but left no children.
Henry, the eldest son, third Lord Spencer, was born in November, 1620, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. When he was only nineteen his guardians (his mother and the Earl of Southampton) married him to Lady Dorothy Sidney, daughter of Robert, Earl of Leicester, and sister of Algernon Sidney, the Saccharissa of Waller's poems, and he went after his wedding along with his father-in-law on his embassy to France, and returned to England in October, 1641, in the very crisis of the Parlia- mentary struggle, and took his seat immediately in the House of Lords. Young Spencer took his side with the party of Pym, and adhered to them actively until the complete breach with the King, and really in his heart to the end of his days. But he had an overstrained idea of the guilt of appearing in arms against the King, and as he himself says, he feared not to fight on one side or the other lest he should be accused of cowardice ; so he took arms with the King, though confining himself to attendance on his person and fighting as a volunteer in the Royal Guard. He found nothing congenial in the Royal camp. He writes to his wife from Shrewsbury, September 21, 1642 :— " How much I am unsatisfied with the proceedings here I have at
large expressed in several letters. Neither is. there wanting hand - some occasion to retire, were it not for gaining honour. If there could be an expedient found to solve the punctilio of honour I would not continue here an hour. The discontent that I and many other honest men receive daily is beyond expression." On the 8th June,
1643, the King rewarded the romantic devotion of the young nobleman by raising him to the title of Earl of Sunderland. He was at the siege of Gloucester, which he predicts to his wife to be a great mistake in tactics, as they ought to have marched on London. Here he associated with FalkLand and Chillingworth, and heard their dispute on the merits of Socinianism. When the siege was raised there, he obtained leave to go for a day or two to Oxford, where the Earl of Leicester was staying, delayed by th hth,fr_r„.... King's commands from going to his Lord-Lieutenancy in Ire at and doing nothing but await the King's pleasure. From Oxford Sunderland addressed his wife again, only four days before the first battle of Newbury. "Since I came here I have seen no creature but your father and my uncle [Southampton], so . that I am altogether
ignorant of the intrigues of this place. I take the best care I can about my economical affairs. I am afraid I shall not be able to get you a better house, everybody thinking me mad for speaking about it. Pray bless Poppet [his little daughter] for me, and tell her that I would have writ to her, but that upon mature deliberation I found it uncivil to return an answer to a lady in another character than her own, which I am not yet learned enough to do. In four days from the date of this letter (Sept. 20, 1643) Sunderland fell in a cavalry charge at Newbury. His body was carried to Brington and there buried. The Earl of Leicester wrote to his widowed daughter to condole with her on the event. "I know," he says, "you lived happily, and so as nobody but yourself could measure the content- ment of it- I rejoiced at it, and did thank God for making me one of the means to procure it for you." He left a son, Robert, and a daughter, Dorothy,—the "Poppet" of his letter,—on whom he settled 10,000/. as her marriage portion, and who became the wife of Sir George Savile, afterwards Marquis of Halifax. Lady Sunderland lived for some years in retirement, giving shelter at her house, it is said, to the distressed Anglican clergy during the civil contest. In 1652 she married, secondly, Robert Smythe, son and heir of Sir John Smythe, a Kentish knight, first cousin of the first Viscount Strangford. Lady Sunderland survived her second husband also, and died in 1684. Her great-grandson from this second marriage, Sir Sidney Smythe, became Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
Hitherto the character of the Spencers has exhibited high moral qualities and abilities of a very respectable but not the highest grade. They were now to lose in moral character what they gained in intellectual calibre. Robert Spencer, second Earl of Sunderland, the only son of the high-spirited youth who fell at Newbury, passed the early part of his life in foreign travel, according to the customary practice at that period, and attracted, after his return to England, the notice of those high in power by the precocity of his talents and his keen appreciation of men and manners. In 1671 he was selected by the King to go as ambassador extraordinary to Spain, and in the succeeding year he was sent to Paris in the same capacity, and as one of the commissioners who proceeded to Cologne with the view of negotiating a general European peace. In 1678, when Ralph Montagu was recalled from the French Embassy, Sunderland took his place, and only left this post to enter the English Cabinet, after the fall of Denby, as Secretary of State. Here he was at first associated with Capel, Earl of Essex, his brother-in-law, Saville, then Viscount Halifax, and Sir William Temple. After the resignation of Essex and the withdrawal of Temple, Sunder- land and Halifax continued, though hating each other, and anxious for an opportunity of escaping from their companionship. The Exclusion Bill was at first opposed by Sunderland ; but when the debates came on he deserted the King and spoke and voted in its favour. The struggle which ensued is well known. When it had terminated in the discomfiture of the Whigs, Sunderland was dismissed by the King, as the punishment of his apostasy. His political character is described in a few words by Macaulay, by saying that he was quick-sighted but not far-sighted. He had been brought up in the dangerous school of diplomacy, and while he had a shrewd and keen perception of men and events imme- diately before his eyes, he looked at every passing event simply with reference to these, and forgot that there was a world without which might be regulated by very different impulses from such nice personal considerations. His powers of personal fascination were nearly unrivalled, and in private society he captivated or influenced nearly every one he encountered. But in Parliament he was a silent member, and he never appre- ciated the nature or importance of popular feeling. His principles, religious and moral, were of the lowest kind. He had held in his youth, and for some time ostentatiously paraded, the doctrines of republicanism. But he kept them quite apart from the world of men, with whom he was willing to deal on whatever basis beat suited his own personal interests. Macaulay pronounces that his leading impulses were the greed of power and wealth and the fear of personal danger, and asserts that by the operation of these two impulses all his vagaries may be explained. His religious princi- ples were as vague as his political. He defended atheism to the French envoy, while he adopted in turn either Protestantism or Catholicism as each seemed most advantageous to his interests. He had great administrative power in all the details and subordinate arrangements of government, and much tact and adroitness in the management of individuals, and special and ascer- tained situations. But he was continually discomfited by the greater events of the age, and with difficulty escaped from utter ruin by the exercise of a remarkable ingenuity when the crisis be- came apparent. He was neither addicted to women nor wine, but he was an inveterate gambler, and even if his natural disp sition had not led in that direction, the encumbrances on his estates which ensued from this habit would have driven him to acqUiring money in any possible way, without shame or scruple. He had no views of any kind to stand in his way, as was the case with Denby, and his only drawback to action was an almost morbid fear of personal consequences to hiragelf. His great patron at this time was the Duchess of Portsmouth, and with her assistance, and the necessity for his versatile talents which was daily felt, the co-operation of Lawrence Hyde, better known as "Rochester," the younger son of the Chancellor Clarendon, who was now rising into power, Sunderland was re-called to his office in January, 1682, and held it for the remainder of the reign Qf Charles. Nor was he dismissed at the accession of James. He managed to ingratiate himself with the new King, though he had voted for his exclusion from the throne, and in the same year succeeded Halifax as President of the Council, retaining his Secretaryship of State. From this time Sunderland tried in every possible way to secure his continuance in power by lending himself to all the King's wishes. He willingly joined in all his illegal measures, sat on the High Commission Court, attended the King publicly at mass in the Palace, and at last professed an inclination to consider the doctrines of the Church of Rome, professed himself in a state of suspense and afterwards almost a convert to those views, joining him- self to the party of the Jesuits, and collecting the Roman clique at his table every week to consult on the measures to be adopted in their interest. The same test, when applied to Rochester,. it is said at Sunderland's treacherous suggestion, proved less. successful. Soon after his fall, Sunderland himself found the- ground beginning to shake under him, for he not only disapproved of the proceedings in the case of Magdalen College, Oxford, his father's old college, but opposed the appointment of Tyrconnel to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, in place of Rochester's brother, Clarendon. Tyrconnel being pledged and devoted to the destruc- tion of the English in Ireland. Tyrconnel blustered and cajoled, and finally Sunderland, fearing the disclosure of some- expressions of his respecting the King, gave way on condition of receiving an annuity of 5,0001. from Ireland, redeemable on the pay- ment of 50,000/. down. He already enjoyed a pension of 5,500/. from the French King for promoting his interests, and he was making a gigantic fortune by the profits and peculations of office. To- secure himself in the King's favour he made a public avowal of Roman Catholicism, and was admitted into that Church. But soon after this apostacy he became suddenly aware of the real state of feeling in the country ; he opposed the attack on the Bishops, and. when he found that he was powerless in arresting the King's course,. he entered into secret communications with William of Orange. The agency he chose was as disreputable as his course itself. His wife, a daughter of George Digby, second Earl of Bristol, the Lord Digby of the Civil Wars—and a woman with many of the peculiarities of her father—at once a devoted attendant on. Protestant popular preachers, and a busy intriguer both in love and politics, had formed a love intrigue with her husband's relative Henry Sidney, and through her letters to him Sunder- land conveyed his sentiments to William. They were favourably received, and Sunderland, in the interval between August and October, 1688, during which the correspondence went on, contrived to do essential service to the cause of William by preventing, through his influence in the French Embassy, a French. armyfrom invading Holland and a French fleet from covering the- shores of England. One of Lady Sunderland's letters, however,. fell into the hands of James, and Sunderland never recovered this shock to the King's confidence in him. He carried matters with a brazen front, and for the moment persuaded the King of his inno- cence; but fresh rumours of his treachery undermined his position,. and in October he was dismissed from his office while petitioning Mary of Modena to take his part. In the confusion of the ensuing revolution he disappeared. He fled to Rotterdam, where he was arrested and thrown into prison by the magistrates, until released by an order of William's. Thence he repaired to Amsterdam, where he recanted his Roman Catholicism, and published adefence of his conduct, professing to have been always in favour of constitutional principles. He also studiously attended the Dutch Protestant Churchs. He was excluded by name from the Act of Oblivion, but after the dissolution of ,the Convention Parliament in 1690 ventured over to England, and had an interview with King William. He then retired for the time to his couutry house; but in the spring of 1691 re-appeared in London at the drawing-room, to the astonishment of every one, and was most graciously received by the King. Rb seems to have succeeded in fascinating William completely, and the King for the rest of his political life had constant reference to him for advice. This is a great tribute to his abilities, though it produced great scandal at the time, and was one of the charges brought against King William's character. Sunderland managed to skulk down to the House of Lords on the occasion of a formal prorogation, and took the oaths and his seat ; but he did not appear again as a regular attendant in Parliament till 1692. In 1693 he took a house at Whitehall, was habitually consulted by the King, and by his advice William in that year called the Whigs to his counsels. His eldest surviving son, Charles, Lord Spencer, was now taking a position in political life in the ranks of that party, and Sunderland had made up his mind to act with them as the less hostile of the two parties to himself personally. Still the Whig leaders distrusted him, and the Whig rank and file hated him as a Romanist apostate. In 1695 he was the main instrument in bringing about a reconciliation between the King and the Princess Anne, who, since the death of the Queen, had been more disposed to reconciliation as the way was paved to her own succession. In the same year William paid Sunderland a visit at Althorp, on occa- sion of a Royal progress which he was making. "All Northamp- tonshire," siys Macaulay, "crowded to kiss the Royal hand in that fine gallery, which had been embellished by the pencil of Vandyke and made classical by the muse of Waller; and the Earl tried to conciliate his neighbours by feasting them at eight tables, all blazing with plate." Sunderland had, durina.° this period of re- stored favour, been, on the whole, faithful to William, though he had made one or two faint overtures to St. Germain's, very ungra- ciously received. His assistance to the Government had also been very considerable, as even his enemies admit that affairs went on much more successfully after he attained this position. But he had the folly, in 1697, to accept the office of Lord Chamberlain, instead of contenting himself with ruling the country without an office. Immedia.telyall his enemies attacked him, Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites, in one unanimous cry of reprobation. His Whig col- leagues did not pretend to support him, and one of them described him as a fireship, more dangerous to his friends than his foes. Nothing could appease the hatred and distrust of politicians, and the whole nation echoed the cry. The King stood firmly by him, and his friends tried to persuade him to stand firm ; but a threatened address of the Commons to the King to remove him from the Royal counsel's for ever frightened him so much that he insisted on resigning, and retired in the most hurried way into private life, from which he never again emerged, dying at Althorp, September 28, 1702, leaving behind him the reputation of an evil Ahitophel.
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