SPENCER, Sir Edward (1595-1656), of Boston Manor, Mdx.

Spencer spent his early career in London as a legal and business adviser to his father, Sir Robert Spencer of Althorp, Northamptonshire, and held lodgings during this time at Lincoln’s Inn. He was preceded as MP for Brackley by his father and his brother William, whom Edward succeeded at the election of December 1620. He was twice re-elected for Brackley, in 1624 and 1625. In the latter year he married a wealthy widow and took up residence at her house at Boston Manor, Middlesex. He was returned as knight of the shire for that county in 1626.23HP Commons 1604-29. During the 1630s Spencer played little part in public affairs. In January 1631 he joined the 1st earl of Bridgewater in mortgaging the Middlesex lands of the 1st earl of Castlehaven (Sir Mervyn Audley†).24APC 1630-1, p. 196; HEHL, EL6413. In about 1636 he was appointed royal commissioner to survey Harefield and Moorhall in Middlesex; in January 1637 he was one of the local magistrates ordered to act against highwaymen on Hounslow Heath; and in July he presided over the county quarter sessions.25LMA, ACC/1085/EM/004; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 352; 1625-49, p. 561. In April 1639 he failed to respond to a request from the privy council for a contribution towards the king’s campaign against the Scots.26Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 910. In May 1641 he was one of the local justices of the peace ordered by the House of Lords to suppress enclosure riots on the king’s lands on Hounslow Heath, and in June he reported on the success of this intervention.27LJ iv. 257b; HMC 4th Rep. 70. In 1642 Spencer was appointed as a commissioner of array in Middlesex by the king, but was not active in raising support for the royalist cause.28Northants RO, FH133, unfol. Nevertheless, in November he was sent for as a delinquent by the House of Commons, having refused to deliver up horses on the warrant of the deputy lieutenant, Sir William Roberts*. On 5 November, a week before the battle of Brentford, the order was respited for the time being, while Roberts and Sir John Francklyn* searched Spencer’s house for weapons.29CJ ii. 836b. One account has it that the king watched the battle from the grounds of Boston Manor, but the story cannot be verified.30Mdx. County Recs. iii. 28; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p.561.

In June 1643, Spencer appeared before the Committee for Advance of Money to dispute a fine of £400, of which he was prepared to pay only £200. The lesser amount was accepted as sufficient in July, and an attempt by the committee to levy a further £100 would fail in September 1646.31CCAM 171. This leniency presumably reflected Spencer’s innocence of any charge of active royalism. He did not escape criticism for his financial conduct, however. In May 1646 he was accused of forcing a sick man to sign a land deed and then imprisoning him for non-payment, and in January 1647 he was again summoned to the Committee for Advance of Money about an undeclared debt he owed to a convicted delinquent.32HMC 6th Rep., 114; LJ viii. 290a; CCAM 171. Spencer stood for Parliament in May 1648 at the Middlesex by-election caused by Francklyn’s death, and was returned, according to one source, with the ‘general applause’ of the county, perhaps reacting against the increasingly radical position taken by the army and its supporters.33J. Howell, Familiar Letters, ed. J. Jacobs (1890), 547. Spencer received no committee appointments in the House during his short spell in Parliament, although he was named with Sir Gilbert Gerard*, William Wheler* and others to a committee to bring in the London assessment on 25 November.34CJ vi. 88a. He was probably secluded at the purge of the Commons on 6 December 1648, though he appears (with an incorrect forename) on only one of the contemporary lists.35A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 386.

After Charles I’s execution, it was alleged that Spencer helped raise money to aid the king’s chaplains and domestic servants, but once again this did not translate into active royalism.36Lysons, Environs, iv. 284-5. Spencer’s interest in philosophy and political theory led him to flights of fancy in his correspondence with the writer, James Howell, and in 1650 he published his own work, A Brief Epistle to the Learned Manasseh Ben Israel, which he circulated among friends, including John Harington I*, who discussed it with John Sadler* in November of that year.37Howell, Familiar Letters, 566, 604, 628, 636; Harrington’s Diary, 63. Dedicated to ‘my ancient friend’ from Lincoln’s Inn, William Lenthall*, the main part of the book was addressed personally to Ben Israel, as an overture from ‘a Member of that House you so much honour’.38Spencer, A Brief Epistle to the Learned Manasseh Ben Israel (1650), Sig. A2, A4. The arguments put forward for ‘the conversion of the Jews’, in both English and Latin, were a mixture of conventional theology and practical arrangements to facilitate those willing to come to England and conform to the true reformed religion. Spencer was called before the council of state in March 1651 to confirm that he was indeed the book’s author, but no further action was taken against him.39CSP Dom. 1651, p.70.

Spencer died childless on 11 February 1656 and was buried at his request in the family chapel in Brington, Northamptonshire. In his will, written at Bath in July 1655, he left all his property to his widow during her life, and thereafter to his brother Richard Spencer and Richard’s son, Edward. He also bequeathed £30 for ‘pious uses’, as defined in a codicil that has not survived, and made Richard Spencer and his friend, Christopher Doddington, the overseers of the will.40PROB11/254/34. Immediately after Spencer’s death, the will was contested, with a chancery case ensuing between Richard and Edward Spencer and the dowager countess of Sunderland, on behalf of her infant son, Robert earl of Sunderland, with both claiming to be the true heirs to the estate.41LMA, ACC/0276/74, 293.