SPENCER, Robert

Save for his service as a member of the royal household, very little is known about Spencer. He first joined the Household as a servant to Henry V,1 CPR, 1446-52, p. 421. and in 1430 he was one of several yeomen who accompanied the young Henry VI on his coronation expedition to France, where he presumably remained until the King returned home in 1432.2 E404/46/302-3; E403/693, m. 20. As assigned a place in the hall of the household, his duties included requisitioning supplies of timber and employing carpenters for the maintenance of the building.3 CPR, 1429-36, p. 324; 1436-41, p. 34; E101/410/6. After reaching his majority in 1437 the King conferred many offices in the localities on those whom he knew personally. Spencer received the post of bailiff of the lordship of Havering atte Bower, followed some 18 months later with a grant for life of the office of master of the royal otterhunt, with a daily wage of 2d. for himself and provision for his groom and nine dogs. Although he relinquished the latter role in February 1445 he was then awarded keeping of the lordship of Havering, for an annual farm of £100.4 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 67, 161, 235; 1441-6, pp. 321, 324. It may be that he proved inadequate as a lessee, for he was summoned to the court of the Exchequer at Easter 1446 to answer Thomas Hamme for the sum of £3 9s. 2d. which he had failed to pay from the issues of Havering even though he had been instructed to do so.5 E13/144, rot. 42. This or other failings may have been behind his loss of the lease in August 1447, when Thomas Brown II* took on the tenancy for life and at a lower farm, although it is more likely that Brown, who was the under treasurer, had simply exerted his influence to obtain it.6 CPR, 1446-52, p. 84. Spencer nevertheless retained the bailiff-ship of Havering, and in May 1451 it was granted him for life. This served as his pension after his retirement as a yeoman of the hall.7 CPR, 1446-52, p. 421.

Spencer was among the many servants of Henry VI who were elected to the Parliament of 1453. He had no known connexion with the borough he represented. Indeed, the Crown’s electoral intervention at Bridport is strongly suggested on other occasions too, for Spencer was one of three men from distant Essex returned for the borough in this period. The others were John Torell*, who had sat in the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.), and Spencer’s colleague Thomas Skargill*, a yeoman of the chamber and parker at Havering, who had done so in the earlier Parliament of that year. Spencer and Skargill had been among those enfeoffed of land at Havering in June 1452, in association with the King’s carver Sir William Beauchamp*, but Spencer died before further transactions regarding this property were completed in March 1457.8 CAD, iii. C3519, 3723; vi. C5508. He had been last recorded on 1 Nov. 1455 when he was pardoned as ‘late farmer of our manor of Havering, alias of Romford, Essex, yeoman’.9 C67/41, m. 16.