The Spencer Family

John and his wife Alice had a son, Nicholas, who was the father of Thomas and William Despencer. The elder of the two, Thomas, produced Henry Spencer (the first time the name was used in the family without its Norman prefix of ‘De-’), of Badby, Northamptonshire, the county which, beyond all others, has been associated ever since with the Spencer name.

Henry married Isabel, with whom he had four boys. When he died, in 1476, Henry’s last will was sealed with the coat of arms that the family still bears today.

There have been those who have disputed Spencer claims to spring from the same blood as the mighty Despensers. Certainly, on the page, the case appears proven. I hope I can be forgiven for going through the family tree in such detail, but I feel it is a helpful exercise in order to explain Grandfather’s thesis, while being aware that, at times, the preceding paragraphs must have all the appeal of one of those interminable chapters in Genesis, where so and so begets someone or other, seemingly ad infinitum.

It would not have been necessary to write down all the various links if the Despenser claim were undisputed; but that is not the case. At the time that the Tudor Spencers claimed such links with their presumed forefathers, they were accepted without question; indeed, as late as 1724, a contemporary chronicler was able to confirm that Althorp was ‘the manor and seat of the noted Family of the Spencers descended from the ancient Barons Spencer of whom Hugh Spencer the Father and Son, favourites of King Edward II were’.

But in 1859, Evelyn Philip Shirley, in The Noble and Gentle Men of England, was a little more sniffy about the Despenser connection, although he failed to specify where the problem lay: ‘The Spencers claim a collateral descent from the ancient baronial house of Le Despencer,’ he wrote, ‘a claim which, without being irreconcilable perhaps with the early pedigrees of that family, admits of very grave doubts and considerable difficulties.’ Shirley concluded his judgement with a concession, though: ‘It seems to be admitted that they descend from Henry Spencer [of Badby].’

The highly knowledgeable historian William Camden was convinced by the Despenser link, accepting the above family tree in full, and yet contemporary commentators still hold the claim as being open to question. In the course of compiling this book, I have studied the family papers in some depth, and fail to see where the problem lies. Perhaps, by the end of the eighteenth century, it just looked unnecessarily greedy and self-serving for the Spencers to claim prominence and position so very far back in the annals of the history of England?

Writing 200 years ago, Sir Egerton Brydges, the editor of Collins’s Peerage, struck on a compromise position over this matter, which hints that my theory may hold some water: ‘The present family of Spencer are sufficiently great,’ wrote Brydges, ‘and have too long enjoyed vast wealth and high honours, to require the decoration of feathers in their caps which are not their own. Sir John Spencer, their undisputed ancestor, and the immediate founder of their fortune, lived in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII; and three hundred years of riches and rank may surely satisfy a regulated pride.’

I am happy to settle for that. I doubt whether Grandfather would be too pleased about it, though.

2. The Early Spencers

My family was never very imaginative with Christian names. Perhaps having a surname as solid as ‘Spencer’ led them to think that it had to be counterbalanced by something similarly uncompromising in its simplicity? At least this would explain the vast preponderance of ‘Johns’ in the family tree: my brother, who died soon after birth in 1960, was the thirteenth eldest son to be given the name in a little over 500 years.

As a result, prior to my family being created peers, and after they were established as rich landowners in the Midlands, we encounter a succession of Sir John Spencers. The first of these was the eldest great-grandson of Henry Spencer of Badby, who had first borne the modern Spencer name and coat of arms. By the time this Spencer — let us call him ‘Sir John’ — was a man, his branch of the Spencer family had begun to concentrate its land and talents in the heart of the English Midlands — specifically in Warwickshire, which was the centre of the burgeoning English wool trade.

By early Tudor times, at the end of the fifteenth century, sheep farming had become a significant industry. The weaving of wool, together with the manufacture of flax and hemp, was greatly improved by the arrival of cloth-dressers who had fled to England after persecution on mainland Europe.

To some, the trend of turning ploughed land over to grazing was deeply unsettling. Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, written at the start of the sixteenth century, decried ‘the increase of pasture, by which sheep may be now said to devour men and unpeople not only villages but towns’. Apart from the social upheaval implicit in this change of land usage, there was also resentment, again vocalized by More, that the sheep ‘are in so few hands, and these are so rich …’, allowing unscrupulous and greedy men to raise ‘the price as high as possible’.

Sir Thomas may well have had John Spencer in mind when launching this attack, as his herds were famous throughout England for their size and strength. However, there is no record of Sir John I having been either unscrupulous or heartless. A shrewd marriage to Isabell Graunt had secured for the Spencers the addition of an excellent inheritance at Snitterfield, also in Warwickshire; but, otherwise, it was through skilful husbandry that he managed to build up his landholdings so consistently. Five centuries on, the two key estates — Wormleighton and Althorp — remain in my family’s hands, both still demonstrating the fertility and quality that attracted Sir John’s interest all those generations ago.

The family’s association with Wormleighton dates back 530 years. It is a village close to the Three-Shire Stone which marks the junction of Warwickshire with Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. On a clear day the Malvern Hills can be seen to the west, while from the roof of the tower in the village, Coplow in Leicestershire and the city of Coventry are both visible in the distance. My father told me that this beautiful hamlet marks the furthest point from the sea in all of England.

The earliest deed relating to Wormleighton in my family documents dates from the reign of King John, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and is a record of a grant of services from seven acres of land by Cecilia, widow of Simon Dispensator. By coincidence, ‘Dispensator’ is the Latin word for ‘Despenser’, or steward.

It was not until John Spencer, father of Sir John I, that my family had direct dealings with the village of Wormleighton, and it was only with the agricultural expansion of Sir John I that the Spencers bought the land that was to become the centre of their sheep-farming empire. He paid William Cope, a financial officer of the royal household, £1,900 for the estate in 1508. In November of that year, all evidences, charters and other documentation relating to the estate were delivered to John Spencer. They remained at Althorp until they were sold in the 1980s.

The success of Sir John I can be gauged by his soon receiving a copy of a statute from London, condemning ‘divers covetous persons, [who], espying the great profit of sheep, have gotten into their hands great portions of the ground of this realm, converting the pasture from tillage and keep some 12,000, some 20,000, some 24,000 sheep, whereby churches and towns be pulled down, rents of land enhanced, and prices of cattle and victuals greatly raised’. For Sir John, the figure was reputedly just under 20,000 sheep. Family legend has it that he was never able actually to reach the 20,000 mark because, every time his flocks approached that total, they were blighted by disease or accident.

Having failed to cut back on his sheep farming after receiving the statute, Sir John now received a direct order from the court, to grub up his fences and plough up the land. Unwilling to cut himself off from such a profitable form of farming without a fight, Sir John appealed to Henry VIII himself, to be allowed to continue his business, underlining several points that he insisted should be taken into consideration before a final decision about him and his sheep was made. First, that there had been no timber within fourteen miles of the manor of Wormleighton, whereas he had ‘set all manner of wood and sowed acorns both in the hedgerows and also betwixt the hedges adjoining the old hedges’; secondly, that he had personally been responsible for ‘building and maintaining of the Church and bought all ornaments as crosses, books, copes, vestments, chalices and censers … And where they never had but one priest, I have had and intend to have 2 or 3’; and, thirdly, that despite the danger and difficulty of the transport operation, he sold his fat cattle annually in London and in other towns and cities that required entrepreneurs like his good self to supply their urban needs.

Sir John’s submissions were accepted. He continued with his accumulation of wealth undisturbed by central authority, and built Wormleighton Manor for himself and sixty relatives. It was a huge structure — old ground plans suggest it was perhaps three or four times larger than Althorp — and as such it remained the chief seat of the Spencers till the 1640s, when much of it was destroyed by the Royalists in the English Civil War.

What is left today shows that it was a classic piece of architecture of the time following the period of continued civil unrest that Sir Walter Scott romantically termed ‘the Wars of the Roses’. It was a defensible structure, with castellations and narrow windows, and yet it had no moat, indicating an increased expectation of peace. The whole building was based around three courtyards, accessed by an imposing gatehouse.

The two biggest rooms that remain in the sole surviving wing are large — thirty-one foot long by twenty-two foot wide. The brewhouse lies on the ground floor, with bay windows, and, above, you can still see the Star Chamber, an early Tudor courtroom, its oak lintels and panels originally painted with stars (it was the fashion in Tudor times to paint oak). The dimensions of the rooms justify the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner’s conclusion that ‘The Manor house of the Spencers must once have been a grand affair, perhaps as grand as Compton Wynyates.’

Like Compton Wynyates, one of the great treasures of early English architecture, Wormleighton was to have its Northamptonshire counterpart. Whereas the Comptons had Castle Ashby, the Spencers acquired Althorp.

*

When Sir John Spencer I looked for further land to satisfy his desire for agricultural expansion, his eye fell on the land of his cousins, the Catesbys. Like the Spencers, they were an ancient family, with roots in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. John de Catesby had been sheriff of the latter county in 1425, and by this stage he had bought Althorp from the Lumley family; in a deed of 1421, he styled himself ‘lord of Olthorp’. But it was an estate that was to remain in the Catesby family for only two generations, for John’s grandson allowed Sir John Spencer to lease Althorp for the grazing of his sheep, from 1486. Twenty-two years later, convinced of the supreme quality of the land, Spencer bought it from Catesby for £800.

The rest of the Catesby family history at this stage was even less happy than this unfortunate sale might indicate. The John Catesby who last owned Althorp had a brother, Sir William, Sheriff of Northampton during Edward IV’s time, and subsequently Chancellor of the Exchequer to Richard III. Sir William, with Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Viscount Lovell, effectively formed a triumvirate that governed King Richard’s lands for him, giving rise to the following ditty:

The Rat, the Cat, and Lovell our dog,

Rule all England under the hog.

The hog being the hunchbacked Richard III, retribution for the neat but deeply libellous couplet was harsh: its author, Collingbourn, was ‘hanged, headed, and quartered’ on London’s Tower Hill.

Richard III was subsequently slain in 1485, at the climax of the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Bosworth, and the loyal Catesby was captured there, too. In the three days between the battle and his own execution, Sir William had time to sort out his affairs; and, in his will, he directed ‘that John Spencer have his L.xli [£41] with the old money that I owe’.

Thanks to their active Catholicism, there was to be no peaceful retiring into the ranks of the growing gentry class for the Catesbys. We hear of another Sir William Catesby who, in 1581, was brought before the Court of the Star Chamber, a judicial innovation of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, for harbouring Jesuits, and for being present at the celebration of mass. Thanks to statutes recently brought in by Queen Elizabeth, both were serious offences, and Sir William was punished accordingly.

It was doubtless partly out of a feeling that his father had been harshly treated that Sir William’s only surviving son embarked on a life of rebellion. Certainly, Robert Catesby was a man destined to make his mark somewhere, and it appears to have been a waste of his great potential that his religious convictions forced him into a life of sedition. As the historian Baker wrote: ‘He was a man of considerable talents, insinuating manners, and inflexible resolution; daring and fertile in expedients, but subtle and circumspect in the development of his purposes; and ready to sacrifice his life, his fortune, and every feeling of humanity, in defence of the Roman Catholic cause.’

Contemporaries commented on his great height — ‘above two yards high’ — and his exceptional good looks, being ‘one of the chief gallants of the time’, as well as on his character, ‘so liberal and apt to help of all sorts, as it got him much love’.

Robert had supported the Earl of Essex in his doomed rebellion, his subsequent pardon costing £3,000. In 1605, he garnered everlasting infamy through his involvement in the equally unsuccessful Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up King James I and his Parliament which failed when Guy Fawkes was arrested before he could ignite his explosives.

Hearing that the plot had been compromised Catesby, with Rockwood, Percy and other fellow conspirators, fled from London, covering the first eighty miles in seven hours, heading for Holbeach, a house in Staffordshire owned by a sympathizer. From here there proved to be no escape: a sheriff and his posse kept them holed up in the house for two days, before it was accidentally torched. Catesby and Percy had to choose between burning to death and making a hopeless bolt for freedom. Percy was shot, and died two days later of his wounds; Robert Catesby was shot dead. He left behind a widow, Catherine, herself the daughter of a Spencer girl.

The pious first Sir John Spencer would have been appalled to think that a descendant of his — albeit remote — would try to murder God’s anointed servant on earth. His loyalty and riches were the reason his monarch, Henry VIII, had honoured him with a knighthood, and everything about his recorded conduct justified his receiving such recognition. Not only Wormleighton, but also two Northamptonshire churches — those of Brington and of Stanton — were greatly improved by him, and supplied with vestments and chalices, and he made many bequests to other religious institutions.

So God-fearing was he that he stipulated in his will, read after his death in April 1522,

That he requires his Executors to recompense every one that can lawfully prove, or will make Oath, that he has hurt him in any wise, so that they make their Claim within two Years, tho’ (as is recited) he has none in his Remembrance, but he had rather charge their Souls than his own should be in Danger: And requires his Executors to cause Proclamation thereof to be made, once a Month, during the first Year after his Decease, at Warwick, Southampton, Coventry, Banbury, Daventry, and Northampton.

Sir John I had, surprisingly, chosen to be buried in Brington, near to Althorp, rather than at Wormleighton. He had had a family vault built on the north side of the chancel of Brington church, designed by the priest he appointed to that parish in 1513, Thomas Heritage, a chaplain to Henry VIII, and Surveyor of the King’s Works at Westminster. The first Sir John Spencer therefore established not only the wealth whereby his family was to prosper, but also the place where they would rest, once such worldly considerations were no longer relevant.

*

For ten years my family had at its head Sir John I’s son, Sir William Spencer, who had been knighted by Henry VIII at York Place (now Whitehall) in 1529. Sheriff of Northamptonshire from 1531 to 1532, Sir William is chiefly remembered by my family for having had to endure particularly troublesome dealings with his in-laws.

Sir William had married into the Knightley family, from Fawsley, Northamptonshire, a village half-way between Althorp and Wormleighton. With Susan, his wife, he did not have a problem; but as for Sir Richard Knightley, his father-in-law, and Edmund Knight-ley, Sir Richard’s brother — well, the records of the Court of the Star Chamber attest to strained, indeed violent, relations, while failing to tell us the original cause of such deep animosity.

The documents to be found in the Star Chamber’s annals centre around Edmund Knightley’s complaint to the King, concerning ‘certain criminal offences committed and done in the county of Northampton … by one Sir William Spenser [sic] knight contrary to the laws of almighty God’. It was Sir William’s contention that these offences had been reported by the Knightleys to the Bishop of Lincoln. This was totally unacceptable to Sir William, who had never liked Edmund, so he resolved to take a direct approach.

Coming out of a tavern one winter’s day, Edmund and Sir Richard Knightley were confronted by the menacing form of a highly agitated Sir William, who told Edmund he had something to talk to him about, but it could wait till they were alone together. Edmund acknowledged the implied threat, and moved on. However, he was mistaken if he thought this was to be a temporary end to the matter.

Not far from the tavern, the Knightley party

came to a place called the Stokkes, beneath Chepe, [where] the said Sir William Spenser, in riotous manner, with six or seven persons with him, having their swords and bucklers in their hands ready to fight, overtook your said beseecher and his said brother, the said Sir William laying his hand upon his dagger, and saying these words: ‘Edmund Knightley, what communication hast thou had with the Bishop of Lincoln concerning my vicious living?’ To the which your said orator answered, ‘My lord of Lincoln can report the truth; let him be the judge.’ And therewith the said Sir William said to your said suppliant these words: ‘Thou art a knave, a precious knave and a wretch!’ And your said orator answered, and said: ‘I am a gentleman and no knave’. And therewith the said Sir William said, ‘Doest thou me nay? Then thou shalt have a blow!’; and therewith cast off his gown and his servants were drawing their swords. And one of the said servants, called Cartwright, being behind your said orator, violently and furiously with his sword drawn struck at your said orator. And if he had not been shoved back by the servant of your said orator’s brother, in striking the said stroke he had utterly slain your said beseecher …

The outcome of this affray was a tactical retreat from the scene by both parties. But William had still to work off his anger. Soon afterwards, setting off from Wormleighton with a retinue of servants, he rode over to the Knightley home, and killed a buck in Fawsley Park. When a gamekeeper tried to apprehend the intruders, Sir William cut the man’s bowstring with his sword, and would probably have run the gamekeeper through, had his own men not forcibly held him back. Riding away cursing angrily, Sir William told the gamekeeper that he would kill another twenty of the Knightleys’ deer within a month, whenever and however he wished. At a time when the poaching of a single deer was a capital offence, this was provocation at its most extreme.

Sir William Spencer died in 1532, aged only thirty-four. He, too, bequeathed his body to be buried at Brington, and also ordered that his father’s will should be complied with in every article, but his chief concern was that his young son, John, be well taken care of by the executors of his own will. Sir William was right to worry, for Edmund Knightley was not letting his feud die along with his adversary.

By the time of Sir William’s death, Edmund had become a powerful man: a knight, a sergeant-at-law, and one of the commissioners for inspecting the religious houses, prior to their planned dissolution. However, he was to deprive himself of the opportunity to fulfil that last set of obligations, and it was his attempted undermining of Sir William’s clear and simple will that was to lead to his ultimate disgrace. He made the mistake of trying to limit the monarch’s claim to a share of the inheritance — something the Crown was entitled to because the heir to the estate was a minor.

As Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry VIII’s chief advisers, reported to the King in September 1532, Knightley had ‘done his utmost to set the executors at variance and defect the King’s title to the heir, to effect which he has presumptuously caused proclamations to be made in various towns in Co. Warwick, Leicester, Northants, in contempt of the King and his laws. My Lord Keeper has therefore committed him to the Fleet until the King’s pleasure be known.’

In the end, it was Knightley, not Spencer, who was the victim of royal retribution, although the battle was not resolved until after Sir William’s death. His premature demise meant he could be the victor only from beyond the grave.

*

The little boy Sir William had been so desperate to protect became the second Sir John Spencer. In an act of political juggling of considerable skill, he straddled the reigns of the Protestant Edward VI, the devoutly Roman Catholic Mary and the Protestant Elizabeth I, holding office as Sheriff of Northampton at some stage during each of the three monarchs’ times. Sir John II was also MP for Northamptonshire in 1553-4 and 1557-8.

An ardent Protestant himself, Sir John II was considered sufficiently sound to be appointed a commissioner by Elizabeth I, ‘to enquire about such persons as acted contrary to “An Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer, Service in the Church, and Administration of the Sacraments”.’

He fitted into the ideal of the age, being a man of substance noted for his care over his general expenditure, while never stinting on entertaining in the grand manner, as is shown by his last will and testament, of 4 January 1585. In this he ordered hospitality to be kept to the same high standard at Althorp and Wormleighton by his heir, as it had always been his own custom to do.

He was always busy: contemporaries commented on how active he was, even after he could have adopted a more leisurely lifestyle as owner of a great estate. His chief recreation was as a breeder of cattle. However, professionally, he was an earnest fosterer of the family’s sheep-based wealth.

After his death in 1586, the instructions contained in his will were obeyed: he was buried ‘in a decent manner’, in Brington church, ‘without pomp after the worldly fashion’, next to his wife, Dame Katherine. Sixty pounds was given to the poor, and money was provided for the tomb that is still visible today, between the South and North Chancels, under an arch of exquisite workmanship, embellished with roses and lozenges of various hues, a knight in armour next to his lady, facing up to heaven, cut in marble.

3. A Poet in the Family

The second Sir John and Dame Katherine produced eleven children: five sons — of whom the youngest died soon after his baptism — and six daughters. Of the sons, four headed their own dynasties — their father’s great business acumen resulting in three lesser landed estates, Claverdon, Yarnton and Offley, which were given to the younger sons. The Althorp and Wormleighton patrimony went to their eldest son, inevitably called John.