The Spencer Family Read online

  He made the country a virtuous court, where his fields and flocks brought him more calm and happy contentment than the various and unstable dispensations a Court can contribute, and when he was called to the Senate he 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.

  The Spencer family is perhaps unique, of the old English aristocracy, in tracing the roots of its noble title back to the relatively prosaic world of agriculture. The more usual paths to the House of Lords were via military distinction, or through royal blood links — legitimate or illegitimate. The humble farming ancestry of the Spencers was highly unusual, but so was the wealth that inspired husbandry had amassed for the family.

  Robert, the fifth Spencer knight in succession, was able to cement his family’s rise from gentry to nobility by building on his forefathers’ endeavours. His personal involvement in the farming operation is shown by references to his attending markets in the West Country in 1597, accompanied by his bailiff, in a quest to improve the bloodline of his cattle, beasts of particular importance to the late sixteenth-century household: the Althorp domestic accounts of the time record that 200 lbs of butter were consumed every week the family was in residence.

  We also know that Robert insisted on overseeing the entire agricultural operation on his home farm, at Muscot, five miles from Althorp, where he grew not only rye and barley, but also hops. He was a familiar sight, atop his horse, a small cob palfrey, constantly looking for ideas on how to improve the way tasks were handled, and with a reputation for being unusually approachable to his workers.

  Writing in the 1860s, the vicar of Brington, the Reverend J. N. Simpkinson, working from the accounts and records in the Althorp Muniment Room, recreated the scene that would have been witnessed, if one could have been transported back to Robert’s tenure of the Estate:

  Lord Spencer never allowed himself to drop behind the agricultural improvements of the day: and the system he had adopted gave employment to many of the women of the villages around as well as to their husbands and fathers. He had introduced the cultivation of hops, both at Muscot farm and in Althorp park; and troops of women were wanted in the hop-grounds, in the spring and early summer, for weeding and tying. Then the meadows had to be ‘clotted’: and, in the parts of the park which were laid for hay, care must be taken to gather the sticks, and rake up the ‘orts’ — the litter, that is, that lay on the ground where the cattle had been foddered in the winter. And in the early part of June, the women were busy in weeding the young quickset hedges; fresh portions of which Lord Spencer added, year by year, to the enclosures on his estate ... Lord Spencer treated his labourers liberally. Besides the regular pay (sixpence a day for men, and three-pence for women) he would kill two or three sheep to regale them on such occasions; besides supplying them amply with beer, and plenty of bread to eat with it — excellent bread, such as was not often to be had by labourers in those days, half of barley and half of rye; and at the conclusion would hire a ‘minstrel’, to make merry for them: often coming himself with a party from Althorp, to take part in the final rejoicings.

  This enjoyment of a simple, rural life was maintained, despite his increasing importance as a man of influence in the country at large.

  When Elizabeth I died, the new King James I was eager to cement his position, so he made it his business to identify the key men in the kingdom, to secure their loyalty. Robert Spencer, reputedly with more ready money than any other man in the kingdom, was clearly somebody whose support was desirable. This explains the honour that was paid to him and to his family when James’s queen, Anne of Denmark, and his heir, Henry, Prince of Wales, stayed at Althorp during their progress to their new palaces in June 1603. It was repaid in full by Robert, who commissioned Ben Jonson to write a masque to be performed as a welcome for the royal guests, in the Park at Althorp. Queen Anne was intrigued by this novel art form — a marked improvement on the Danish court’s idea of entertainment, which centred around the men present drinking enormous quantities of alcohol until they could consume no more — and it was thanks to this performance at Althorp that masques became a part of fashionable royal entertainment in the early seventeenth century.

  Partly because of his wealth, partly because of the appreciation of the royal party for their gracious reception at Althorp, and partly because new men of note were needed to buoy up the Stuart hold on the throne of England, Robert was made Baron Spencer of Wormleighton later in 1603. His first task was to act as ambassador for the King, and to invest England’s ally, Frederic, Duke of Wurttemberg, with the highest order of chivalry, a knighthood of the Garter. The baron and the duke vied with each other in the fabulousness of their retinues, and in their gifts to each other, dazzling those who witnessed their meeting with their displays of wealth and munificence.

  Robert did not involve himself in court life back in England; it was of no interest to him. However, he took his duties as a member of the Upper House of Parliament seriously, trying to remain loyal to his monarch, while becoming increasingly perturbed by the royal inclination to be overbearing in its attitude to the people’s representatives. James’s belief in the Divine Right of Kings to rule — and raise money — as they saw fit, flew in the face of Spencer’s belief in the need for respect for the people’s elected representatives.

  Diligent though Robert was, his agricultural provenance was not forgotten by some of his fellow peers. Once, while he was speaking in the House of Lords on the bravery displayed by former generations in guarding the liberties of England, the Earl of Arundel — conscious of four centuries of aristocratic blood in his own veins — interrupted contemptuously, ‘My Lord, when these things were doing, your ancestors were keeping sheep!’ Robert, apparently without missing a beat, retorted: ‘When my ancestors were keeping sheep, as you say, your ancestors were plotting treason.’ Arundel exploded with rage, to such an extent that he was sent to the Tower of London for his unseemly conduct, until he had calmed down and was ready to apologize to Robert for the rudeness of his insult.

  Despite his misgivings about James’s conduct as king, it is clear that James himself had only the greatest respect for Robert. Indeed, when it came to finding a suitable Midland home for his second son, Prince Charles, James was persuaded to choose Holdenby, across the valley from Althorp, in the hope that some of Robert’s virtues would rub off on his boy. As the Reverend Simpkinson neatly phrased it, Robert was ‘a nobleman who had attained a very great reputation and influence, not only in the midland counties, but also in the House of Lords, and in whom the king rightly believed that he should secure a most valuable neighbour and counsellor for his son’. The bond between the King and the baron was strengthened, when both lost their eldest sons in 1612 — the Spencer heir at Blois, in France, and Henry, Prince of Wales, after catching a chill playing tennis.

  It was not Robert’s first taste of family tragedy. His wife, Margaret Willoughby, was a lady of interesting pedigree. Her father was Sir Francis Willoughby, himself the son of Henry Willoughby and Anne, daughter of the Second Marquess of Dorset. Dorset was a landowner in the vicinity of Althorp, who had conveyed the manor of Newbottle (now Nobottle) to the first John Spencer in 1511. Dorset’s son, the Third Marquess, has gone down in history as the man who pushed forward his daughter, Lady Jane Grey, on the death of Edward VII In 1553. The hapless Jane was queen for all of nine days, before being deposed by Mary Tudor. She was subsequently beheaded.

  The first Baroness Spencer was, therefore, the first cousin once removed of Lady Jane Grey. This may explain why the only known portrait painted of Lady Jane during her brief life is at Althorp. She is shown as a devoted Christian, reading her Psalter, very much an innocent. There is nothing threatening about her, nothing ambitious or devious; just a naïve young girl, overtaken by other people’s scheming, and unfairly paying for their manipulations with her life.

  This link to royalty — albeit re
latively obscure, and certainly extremely short-lived — did not spare Robert’s wife from one of the common scourges of women at this time: death in childbirth; although the child, Margaret, survived. As the heartbroken widower recorded in his own hand in the first pages of his Account Book, after the details of the seven children that he had successfully fathered:

  Anno Domi: 1597. At Allthrop. The xvii of August it plesed the Allmighty God to take to his mercy Margarite my most loving wife having borne to me all these children afore named they all now living and being married ix yeare and a halfe ... her vertues surpassed all.

  By coincidence, in 1906 my great-grandfather, another Robert Spencer, lost his wife, also a Margaret, in childbirth. Both children of the ill-fated births were daughters, and both were named after their deceased mothers. Although both Roberts lived for a considerable time after bereavement, neither remarried.

  Robert, First Baron Spencer, died in 1627, choosing to have his bowels buried at Wormleighton — from where his baronial title gained its name — and his body at Brington, beside the beloved Margaret, who had died thirty years beforehand. In the sermon preached at his funeral, the congregation was reminded that it had been Robert’s custom to feed fifteen poor persons every Monday, as well as giving alms at all other times, and relieving the distress of all who came to the gates of his mansions; that he had been a lenient landlord and a kind master, providing amply for his servants in their old age; that he had been held in such high estimation by his friends, that many of them entrusted their whole estates — and the education of their children — to his care; that his ‘singular skill in antiquities, arms, and alliances’ was not less noted than his constant integrity and uprightness of life and conversation; and also that, in the management of his great estates, he had made a ‘careful frugality the fuel of his continual hospitality’.

  5. The Washington Connection

  William, Second Baron Spencer, was reputed to have inherited the qualities of his father just as suredly as he had inherited his estates. A monument to his memory was to record that he was a tender husband, loving father, faithful friend, a sincere worshipper of God, devoted to his king, and a patriot of his country. During his lifetime, with the tensions between Crown and Parliament increasing all the time, balancing the latter two demands became an ever more difficult task.

  In the general celebrations at Charles Stuart’s becoming Prince of Wales in 1616, William had been created a Knight of the Bath. Keenly involved in the political life of the nation, he was elected one of the Knights of the Shire for Northamptonshire in three different parliaments in James I’s reign, and in two of Charles I’s.

  William’s wife would have a marked effect on his political stance. She was Lady Penelope Wriothesley, daughter of the Earl of Southampton — the patron of William Shakespeare, and a figure known for his antipathy to the court faction.

  By the second decade of his reign, James I was resorting to highly dubious means to raise money without suffering the intrusions and counter-demands of Parliament. The King was seen to be undermining the House of Lords, by selling peerages to fill his coffers. A letter of June 1618 from a Thomas Lorkin to an unnamed friend gives an indication of where Penelope stood on such questionable use of royal power, since her politics were known to have reflected those of her father and brother closely:

  Ere long you are likely to hear of a new creation of my Lord Rich, my Lord Compton, Lord Peter, and Candish or Chandos, I remember not whether, are to be made Earles and to pay ten thousand pounds a piece, which is allotted for the expense of the progresse; my Lord Spencer likewise was nominated, but diverted as they say by my Lord of Southampton (whose daughter his eldest sonne marryed) from accepting it.

  Penelope was a considerable force for good at Althorp. Her father-in-law, lonely after his Margaret’s death, invited her and William to live in the mansion with him, handing over day-to-day administration of the housekeeping to Penelope, while increasing the privacy that the young couple could enjoy through the provision of a drawing room for the new lady of the house and a closet for William. If the old First Baron had hoped the young couple would bring a bit of life to proceedings at Althorp, they did not disappoint, producing thirteen children, the old iron cradle, looked after by Nurse Detheridge, frequently coming out of storage, with its ‘canopy and a covering of silver velvet, laced with open spangle lace of gold and silver, and curtains of the same stuff suitable, fringed with crimson silk and silver’.

  Running Althorp efficiently was a task Penelope took to with aplomb. Before her involvement, the accounts for the household had been kept by the bailiff, and by the steward of the household. These books showed the various items of expenditure pertaining to the kitchen, the stables, the park and the farms. Lord Spencer and William would inspect such accounts weekly. However, they were not precise enough for Penelope’s liking. She introduced a more comprehensive and accessible system, whereby the rate, as well as the extent, of all household expenditure could be exactly monitored. Through a cursory glance, Penelope could discover what was in store, and what needed to be ordered. As Simpkinson admiringly wrote,

  The estimated value of every bullock and sheep that was killed, and of every other article of farm produce which was brought into the house, appeared to her as important to know and to record, as the money which had gone to defray the purchases of the cater: while the last column of the book informed her practised eye every Saturday which of the stores was running low, and how soon it would need replenishing.

  The Spencers were not short of money; far from it. Yet this skilful control of the accounts allowed the family to entertain in style, without worrying about wastefulness. The number and the calibre of domestic staff increased — there were soon over fifty, some from France, and others gentlemen in their own right — and they were sumptuously clothed. Penelope’s readiness to pay for quality is demonstrated in the rate of pay of senior household figures — £6 per year, three times the conventional rate of the time.

  Penelope wanted Althorp to be a byword for great hospitality and, despite the fact that it is almost as far from the coast as it is possible to be in England, she employed staff whose sole job it was to furnish the dining table with half a dozen barrels of oysters fresh from the east coast, on a weekly basis. Other fish came direct from London, brought by the wonderfully named carriers, Legg and Short-legs, who also supplied groceries from the backs of their pack-horses. The journey took two to three days, Legg and Shortlegs ‘freshening’ their perishable goods on the way by hosing them with water.

  Penelope’s influence was to be seen in a more lasting manner through improvements to the gardens, and to Althorp itself. She had read Lord Bacon’s Essays, and these persuaded her to redesign some of the avenues in the gardens, and to build a folly on a mound towards the rear of the main house. A new fruit and vegetable garden was initiated; and a pheasantry, too.

  Inside the mansion, Penelope introduced forks, to be used with table knives, at meal times. Another practical change was the installation of a bell pulley in Penelope’s bedroom, so she could summon her waiting-woman when she was required, without frequent breaches of her privacy.

  Structurally, she helped William plan the enlargement of Althorp. A best drawing room was added in time for a royal visit by Charles I and his queen, Henrietta-Maria, in 1636, the windows constructed in the modish ‘balconia’ fashion.

  The Spencers did not limit themselves to royalty and aristocracy when inviting house guests to Althorp. William’s friends were an interesting mix: from his horse-racing and hunting friends (William, although he kept only a single racehorse himself, had an entire racecourse established in the park at Althorp), and those who attended the hawking parties, to learned and famous physicians of the day, especially one Dr Cotta, a Cambridge graduate practising in Northampton, and Doctors Ashworth and Clayton, from Oxford. Most noblemen of the time chose to socialize with people from their own background.

  One group conspicuously absent from the gu
est list at Althorp, to judge from Penelope’s household accounts, is that of the Puritans; William had no time for them. Indeed, one of his own friends was Charles I’s controversial High Church Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. So, when it was time to appoint a new preacher for the parish of Brington, the man who William presented for the post had the full four surplices — something no Low Churchman would have contemplated.

  William was so rigid in his Anglican beliefs that he rarely allowed his brother, Sir Edward Spencer, to visit Althorp. He considered Edward a traitor to his faith and upbringing for embracing Puritanism. Indeed, William refused to send his eldest son, Henry, to Sir Edward’s alma mater, Balliol College, Oxford, in case his heir was similarly contaminated. Instead, William chose Magdalen, secure in the knowledge that it was under the presidency of Dr Accepted Frewen, later Archbishop of York, who, despite his name, was strongly anti-Puritan.

  More welcome at Althorp in William’s time was a family from the other side of Northamptonshire, who had fallen on hard times: the Washingtons. The last English forebear of George Washington lies buried less than two miles from Althorp’s front door, in the same churchyard — Brington — as the Spencer tombs.

  In the early sixteenth century Lawrence Washington, of Warton in Lancashire, had decided to move south. A lawyer, Lawrence had become a member of the society of Gray’s Inn. However, an uncle who was a successful London merchant told him to forget law for the time being, and to take advantage of the boom in the wool trade. As had been the case with the Spencers, the wish to profit from sheep had brought him to the Northampton area, where he settled, becoming mayor of the town in 1532.