The Spencer Family

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020

This edition first published by Endeavour Press Ltd. in 2017

First published in 1999 by Viking

Copyright © Charles Spencer 1999

Cover image © Getty Images

Charles Spencer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008373214

Version: 2020-07-28

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Despenser Debate

Chapter 2. The Early Spencers

Chapter 3. A Poet in the Family

Chapter 4. A Worthy Founder

Chapter 5. The Washington Connection

Chapter 6. Death for the King

Chapter 7. Products of their Age

Chapter 8. The Spencer-Churchill Match

Chapter 9. The Manipulative Matriarch

Chapter 10. A Secret Marriage, a Public Love Affair

Chapter 11. Duchess of Devonshire, Empress of Style

Chapter 12. From Nelson to Caxton

Chapter 13. Honest Jack Althorp

Chapter 14. Fourth Son, Fourth Earl

Chapter 15. Father Ignatius

Chapter 16. The Red Earl and the Fairy Queen

Chapter 17. More than a Mere Dandy

Chapter 18. The Curator Earl

Chapter 19. From My Father to My Children

Selected Bibliography

About the Author

About the Publisher

Introduction

An obscure publication, with the less than exhilarating name of Midland Halting Places, turned its attention on Althorp in 1886, and gave the line on the occupying Spencer family — my family — which had, by then, become commonly accepted:

It is very seldom that when a great man is born into a family, that family continues to produce great men to represent it for generation to generation. Sooner or later a scapegrace is sure to come to the front and do his best to mar the renown won by his ancestors. As an exception to this rule the House of Spencer stands almost unrivalled. From the commencement of the Sixteenth Century one continuous line of rich, noble, and high-minded men have heaped up glory and honour around the illustrious name of Spencer …

It was a myth reinforced not only through the Victorian desire to find moral probity to respect and aspire to, but through comparison with other aristocratic families, whose black sheep were enthusiastically excoriated, just as the humble shepherding origins of the Spencers were admired — an unthreatening and vaguely respectable start for a family that had more than done its bit for its country, without often producing figures that would remain household names beyond their own lifetime.

This touchingly English celebration of modest do-gooders was perpetuated down the generations. It is the line I was brought up on, as a boy.

When my grandfather died, in 1975, cold and lonely in a nursing home, with him went a vast bank of knowledge about the Spencers. Some of his research I have managed to find in his handwriting — as thin and puny as he was spherical and formidable. He knew his ancestors intimately. I get the impression that he could hear their voices, and that he wanted more than anything to continue the dynasty as he saw it: a powerhouse of liberal Whig politicians, backed by their dutiful, beautiful, clever wives. He failed in all his aims except two: he married a truly exceptional woman, and he did magnificently in holding his inheritance together.

His chief failure was not in being denied the Knighthood of the Garter that so many of his predecessors had gained, although that hurt him deeply; nor in being the first Spencer for at least nine generations to make no political mark whatsoever in England’s history. No, his chief failure was closer to home. It was in not carrying his only son, Johnnie, with him, so that my father never drank deep into the history of his ancestors, and came to see Grandfather’s obsession with things Spencerian as something threatening; for they were matters about which he knew almost nothing, and that lack of knowledge led to his allowing his second wife, Raine Dartmouth, to sell much that was of a core importance to my family’s heritage. Even after taking possession of Althorp, my father had little desire to get to grips with the minutiae of our family’s story.

When I look back on my childhood, this sad truth is evident. I can remember how, in an effort to ‘spring’ me from boarding school for an extra afternoon each summer, my father resurrected the old custom of inviting the headmaster of Maidwell Hall to bring his twelve prefects round to Althorp, to see the house and its contents, and to enjoy a huge tea.

As we all strained to glimpse the gigantic cut-glass bowls of fresh raspberries and strawberries in the Great Dining Room, my father would end the tour — the highlights of which were the terrifyingly gloomy cellars, and the cabinet with the secret drawer that concealed a blackened farthing — with the following short speech:

The reason Althorp contains so many beautiful and wonderful things is because, throughout its 500-year history, my family has always had steady, sensible people in charge of it: unlike other families with similar houses, we have not suffered from having gamblers and alcoholics, ploughing through the contents in an effort to fund their addictions.

Again, a continuation of the myth that we were, as the Victorians termed it, ‘the Good Spencers’.

Much to my relief as an author, let alone as someone with, I hope, a realistic view of human nature, it is clear that this is not a line that stands up to too much investigation. Certainly, there are many principled and decent people who were Spencers, but there are many more whose human foibles and weaknesses are at least as interesting as the successes of those who steered a firm course through life’s temptations.

Over the following pages you will find Spencers who are, by turn, ambitious, capricious, devious and pious. Simply because they are relatives, they will not receive any special treatment from me. First, because I, like my grandfather, want to hear their voices, pure and true but also because, on balance, I find the more flawed characters the more interesting.

We live in an age when merit, in theory, is seen to be the key to success. It is therefore amazing to many that in previous generations — right up to the end of the nineteenth century — simply being born an aristocrat guaranteed power and influence by right, almost regardless of character or ability. You could be a drunk or a gambler, have venereal disease and no obvious talents, but if your provenance was sufficiently exalted, you were going to be prominent. It must have put enormous pressure not only on family loyalty, but also on the individual, knowing what was expected of him, and how far he was from being able to fulfil the expectations. This was as true for members of my family as it was for their peers.

There is a strong Spencer tradition, one of which I am proud, of women more than holding their own; of being remarkable people in their own right, with strength of character, the power of beauty and wit, and a strong sense of their own significance, all underpinning the ways in which they blazed ahead, independent and deeply confident. Georgiana Devonshire was a Spencer; so, through Georgiana’s sister, was Byron’s mistress, Lady Caroline Lamb; and, before them, Sarah, the extraordinarily powerful and contrary Duchess of Marlborough. Yet there were many more, from Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland, who was immortalized by Waller as his muse, ‘Sacharissa’; through Georgiana Poyntz, First Countess Spencer, close friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick and a salon of the most able men of her day; to her daughter-in-law, Lavinia, confidante of Lord Nelson; and Charlotte, wife of the Fifth Earl Spencer, one of the most beautiful and glamorous figures of the Victorian age. There have been others, nearer to our own time.

I am conscious that it must look as if I have suffered from a raging case of wilful snobbery, writing about my own family in this way — especially as my only other book has been on my family’s principal home, Althorp. However, I am not a disciple of ancestor worship. This is a book I have wanted to write for many years. I spent my adolescence and early adulthood surrounded by portraits of every leading character in the ensuing chapters, and I would have had to be singularly uninquisitive not to have wanted to explore further, to learn what these people thought and believed in, what they contributed to the world and to the Spencer name.

One concept that all my ancestors understood was the relationship between privilege and responsibility. Some of them may have shirked their duties, but they knew what they were shirking. Similarly, I understand what an enormous privilege it is to know so much about the people whose genes I carry; I can go back at least 500 years, through correspondence, official papers and diaries. That is no boast. It is merely a way of underlining the responsibility I feel, for I realize this is my one chance to do justice to the myriad characters who have carried my name before me, and it is quite sobering to think that, as I turn the spotlight on them one by one, I know that they will have their chance for all eternity to correct and chide me, should I do them wrong, for I will one day join them in the family vault, in the village next to Althorp, where I will be the twentieth generation of the Spencer family to be laid to rest.

1. The Despenser Debate

Though this is a book that purports to deal in definites, it needs to begin with a ‘maybe’.

There has been much debate about where the history of my family can be seen to have begun. The version I was told, by Grandfather, was categorical: ‘The word “Spencer”,’ he told me when I was a boy, ‘derives from the Norman word for Steward, or Head of Household: “Despenser”. Our common ancestor was Steward to the household of William, Duke of Normandy, joining his master at the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, and subsequently settling in England, when the Duke became King of England.’

Grandfather’s forte was the Spencer family’s history, and it was unwise for anybody to challenge him when he expounded on his specialist subject with confidence. The result was ill-disguised contempt and the risk of permanent banishment from Althorp. The fact is, he was nearly always right; and, in the rare instances when his interpretation of events was open to question, it was best not to pursue the matter too closely.

If we look at supporting evidence for Grandfather’s Despenser claim, it is beyond doubt that one Robert Despenser was William’s steward, and that he did accompany his master on his successful invasion of England. We also know that Robert, although head of William’s household, was not a mere member of the domestic staff, but a powerful lord in his own right, holding his court position to augment his influence with his master. In England he was one of the most significant of the new class of magnate that the Crown was forced to rely on, in the late eleventh century, to ensure the ultimate success of the Norman conquest.

Thus we see Robert’s name alongside those of other barons who assembled in Council with William I, in London, in 1082. The following year, when the same members of the Council ‘set their Hands and Seals to the Charter of the King, for removing the secular Canons out of the Church of Durham, and placing Monks in their Stead’, Robert’s signature was on the document. The first recorded Despenser was also viewed as a powerful enough figure to act as witness to the King’s Act, which granted the city of Bath, with its coinage and toll, to John, Bishop of Bath, for the better support of his see. As for the monks of Worcester, they termed Robert Despenser ‘a very powerful man’. They should have known, since it was Robert who had seized the Lordship of Elmleigh from them, which they never regained.

Understandably, the Despensers jealously kept their senior court position in the family. Robert’s son, William Despenser, became steward to Henry I; as did William’s own son, Thurston, after him. On Thurston’s death, his son Walter, Lord of Stanley and Usher of the Chamber of Henry II, maintained the Despenser tradition of being mighty courtiers. Walter’s younger brother, Americus, settled in the tiny Midland county of Rutland, where he was sheriff in the 1180s, before following the family practice by becoming steward to Richard the Lionheart.

The close association between the Despensers and the monarchs of medieval England continued into the next generation, with Americus’s son, another Thurston, a baron in King John’s time, extending his influence into the reign of Henry III, when he was Sheriff of Gloucester, until his death in 1229.

It was at this stage, during Henry III’s fifty-six-year reign, that the Despensers were transformed from being important figures in the royal court, to numbering themselves among the most powerful handful of men in the land. Hugh Despenser, Thurston’s heir, was one of the twelve barons nominated by Henry III to amend and reform the laws of England. However, there were growing tensions between Henry and his barons, which were brought to a head when the monarch attempted to buy the kingdom of Sicily for his son, for a sum that the barons thought grossly inflated, and therefore contrary to the nation’s — and their — interests. In the ensuing civil war, Hugh Despenser was chosen by his peers to be Justiciar of England. This meant that he was entrusted with supreme control of the jurisdiction of the Law Courts of England.

Hugh fought against Henry III at the battles of Northampton and Lewes, at both of which he was noted for outstanding personal bravery. The military strength of the barons, under Simon de Montfort, resulted in Henry being taken prisoner at Lewes, giving the barons their greatest hold on power to date. To underline his humiliating loss of control, in 1265 King Henry was forced to send writs to all the cities, burghs and towns on the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk, stipulating that he was no longer their effective master; instead, Hugh Despenser was to be obeyed in everything he instructed them to do.

Hugh and his allies had little time to enjoy their new-found power for, in that same year, 1265, they were vanquished at the battle of Evesham in the most crushing defeat on English soil since Hastings two centuries earlier. Despenser met his death on the battlefield, after again fighting valiantly.

The Despenser mantle was next taken up by Hugh’s son and grandson, who shared the dead man’s lust for power, as well as his first name. Given the plethora of Hugh Despensers at this stage, these two Hughs are often referred to as Hugh Despenser Senior, and Junior. They were two of the most able and ambitious men of their age. As their destinies would show, however, this was not an age noted for its compassion.

Hugh Despenser Senior was a successful soldier and diplomat under Edward I, serving him militarily in the four spheres of operations that dominated English foreign policy at the time: France, Flanders, Wales and Scotland. While Hugh Senior was summoned to Parliament as a baron, his son, also noted as a loyal servant to the Crown, received a knighthood. It was under Edward II, however, that both Despensers were to reach the peak of their power and influence.

I have always felt sorry for Edward II: his record as king is one of the more pitiful in British history. Sandwiched between the military triumphs of his father, Edward I, known to posterity as ‘the Hammer of the Scots’, and the equally rugged and successful Edward III, the effete Edward II is only really remembered for two things: having his army trounced by Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314, and being put to death by his homophobic enemies through the insertion of a red-hot poker into his rectum. From such mishaps it is hard to salvage a dignified reputation for posterity.

It was Edward’s close attachment to his royal favourites that was to be the chief focus of aggravation and destabilization throughout his adult life. Although those who would openly oppose Edward were to justify their rebellion as a just attack on ‘the evil counsellors’ who were perverting the King’s mind, to the detriment of his subjects, the real issue was one of power, and who should exercise it.

By the time that Edward II came to the throne in 1307, the barons of England were once again attempting to chip away at the might of the monarchy. They resented the power that still lay with members of the royal household, and the King’s prerogative that such a system of patronage reinforced. The barons believed that their might in the provinces should be recognized by the transfer of more executive authority into their hands. The result was friction, and revolt.

Edward II’s blatant reliance on his deeply unpopular Gascon lover, Piers Gaveston, gave the opposition barons a focus for their self-serving discontent. However, it was the Despensers who, for the latter years of the reign, were to galvanize the King’s enemies into open conflict with the Crown.

It has to be admitted that both Despensers were appallingly ill-advised choices as royal favourites. Early fourteenth-century Britain was not short of controversial figures, but they all had their apologists, who would write justifying the actions of the key personalities of the time. All, that is, except my supposed ancestors, the Despensers, who attracted not one page of defence from their contemporary chroniclers.

The universal contempt for the Despensers stemmed from their transparently rampant personal ambition, particularly after 1322, when they amassed an unseemly quantity of possessions and privileges for themselves, weakly handed to them by an increasingly dependent Edward. The two Hughs became, respectively, Earls of Winchester and of Gloucester, as well as owners of huge landed estates: at one stage, the Earl of Gloucester was calculated to own fifty-nine lordships in various English counties. There he kept his massive number of livestock, which amounted to 28,000 sheep, 1,000 oxen, 1,200 calving cattle, 40 mares with colts, 160 drawing horses, 2,000 hogs and 3,000 bullocks. In his various homes, there was estimated to be 40 tons of wine, 600 bacons, 80 carcasses of Martinmass beef, 600 muttons, 10 tons of cider; armour, plate, jewels and ready money, worth more than £10,000, as well as 36 sacks of wool and a great library of books.

This bountiful abuse of an ineffectual monarch was to spell the Despensers’ doom: breaking point came when the younger Hugh prevailed on Edward to give him a barony, which it was contentiously claimed had reverted to the Crown. There followed an insurrection in the kingdom, in 1326, whipped up by the discontented lords, but soon spreading throughout the land. As the Abbé Millot recorded in his History of England: ‘London revolted from Edward; the provinces followed the example of the capital; and the king, disappointed with regard to the loyalty of his subjects, took to flight.’

The beleaguered Edward II and the Despensers refused to break ranks with one another. Hugh Senior was cornered in Bristol, where he was handed over to the barons by his own men. The old man, being in his ninetieth year, might have expected a modicum of mercy; but it was not to be. Indeed, he failed even to be granted a trial, and was condemned to death, unheard. It was ordered that his execution should be that of a common criminal, and so he was hanged. The King and the younger Hugh were forced to watch his grisly end on the scaffold before them.

Despenser Junior had avoided the same fate by agreeing to surrender voluntarily, while holed up in the castle of Caerphilly. In return, his captors had solemnly guaranteed the safety of his life and limbs, hopeful that, after witnessing the demise of his father, Hugh would finally desert his king. However, this he would not do; so he was turned loose. He had overlooked the need, in such ruthless times, of extending his period of invulnerability, though, and he was almost immediately recaptured. This time the only guarantee he had was that he would be treated without mercy, and in that he was not to be disappointed: on 28 November 1326, he shared his father’s fate; the only consolation, for a descendant, lies in the fact that it was very much preferable to sharing that of his monarch.

Unsurprisingly, given the brutal deaths of the three preceding heads of the family, the Despensers chose to adopt a lower profile over the following generations. There was a royal marriage of sorts, when Hugh Junior’s grandson Thomas, Earl of Gloucester, wed Edward III ‘s granddaughter, Constance. The only son, Richard, died when just fourteen, and with him was extinguished the senior line of the Despenser family.

*

Grandfather’s contention was that our family sprang from a junior branch of the same family: from Geoffrey Despenser, in fact, the brother of the first of the three Hughs, the courageous figure slain at the battle of Evesham. We know little about Geoffrey, except that he was the first founder of Marlow Abbey in Buckinghamshire, and was a witness to Henry II’s Confirmation of Lands to Bungey Abbey in Suffolk. Later in Henry II’s reign, there is record of the donation by Geoffrey Despenser of the Church of Boynton to Bridlington Priory.

When he died, in 1251, Geoffrey left a son and heir, John, who was a minor. When he came of age, four years later, he was knighted by Henry III. This John was influential enough to obtain, in 1256, the Bull from Pope Alexander, which directed the Bishop of Salisbury to agree that ‘John Despenser be allowed to build a chapel, and have a chaplain in his manor of Swalefield, which John is prepared to endow, since the manor lies in a forest, making it unsafe for him and his family to go to the main church near-by, because of the amount of criminals lurking in the said forest.’

John was a man of war rather than a man of God. He joined the barons against Henry III, and was taken prisoner at the Battle of Northampton. His manors of Castle Carton and Cavenby, in Lincolnshire, were confiscated. But the barons prevailed and Sir John was released in 1264.

His son and heir, William, has left behind almost no trace of his existence. All we know about him is that he styled himself ‘William le Despencer of Belton’; and he lived at Defford, where he died during the reign of Edward III. His son, John, was a more remarkable figure, serving in the retinue of John, King of Castile, in his voyage to Spain, as a result of which he received the King’s Letters of Protection for one year, dated 6 March 1386. On his return to England, he became a Squire of the Body to King Henry V, as well as Keeper of his Great Wardrobe. John accompanied his monarch, one of the most heroic English personalities of the Middle Ages, on his expeditions to fight in France.