SPENCE, William (1621-71), of Neyling, Balcombe, Suss.

Spence’s grandfather, Robert Spence (d. 1618), who came from a Norfolk family, prospered as a Fishmonger based in Stratford-le-Bow, Middlesex. By the time he made his will in May 1616 he was an alderman and held the manors of More Hall and Libury in Hertfordshire, as well as lands in Surrey.26PROB11/132/243; Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 99-100; Add. 39483, f. 374. In her 1633 will his widow Audry left £1,000 to her grandchildren, as well as substantial other bequests.27PROB11/169/248. Their son Robert the younger, William’s father, purchased lands in Sussex including in 1620 the manor of Neyland in the parish of Balcombe; his second son (another Robert) was baptized there in December 1621.28J. P. Fearon, ‘Nyland and Hilland in Balcombe’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xii. 158; Comber, Suss. Genealogies Lewes, 276-8; IGI.

Robert the younger, who was to be closely involved with church life in Balcombe and whose will testifies to notable piety, sent his eldest son to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.29E. Suss. RO, Par/234/1/1/2; PROB11/264/193. With its unconsecrated chapel, it was second only to Emmanuel as a ‘puritan’ seminary, and its master when William was admitted in 1635 was Samuel Ward, one of the university’s great patrons of learning, and a strict Calvinist. Spence obtained his BA before going on to Lincoln’s Inn, to which his father had gained a special admittance in 1619.30LI Admiss. i. 183. He himself was admitted in 1637 with the assistance of Humphrey Chambers, a close colleague of William Prynne*, one of the Inn’s ‘puritan martyrs’ of the 1630s.31LIL, Admiss. Bk. 6, f. 122. With Prynne, in May 1642 Spence was on a delegation from the inn who attended the parliamentary committee investigating building work in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.32LI Black Bks. ii. 362. He was called to the bar in July 1644, by which time his younger brother John (bap. 1623) was also a student at the inn.33LI Black Bks. ii. 363; LI Admiss. i. 249.

From at least the spring of 1643 their father Robert Spence was a staunch adherent of the parliamentarian cause in Sussex. Placed on the county committee (Mar.) and the sequestration committee (May), thereafter he was regularly appointed to, and active in, local commissions.34LJ v. 658b; vi. 53a; CJ iii. 173a; C181/5, ff. 235, 235v; A. and O.; SP28/181, pt. 1. One of his sons was a captain in parliamentary service in the county before June 1643; plausibly, given his subsequent career, this was William, but it was not certainly so.35SP28/135/78-9; SP28/144, ff. 28, 30, 35, 38, 55. In January 1645 William assisted in the rehabilitation attempts of suspected royalist, Thomas May*, by assuring the Committee for Compounding that May had never been at Oxford with the king: presumably his intervention would have carried no weight had he not gained some standing with the powers-that-be.36SP23/176, p. 211. From February, starting with the New Model ordinance, William began to be named to Sussex commissions.37A. and O. By the summer of 1647 he had joined his father on the commission of the peace, where Independents were beginning to take a more active role to counter the influence of Presbyterians and crypto-royalists.38C231/6, p. 76; Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 127; E. Suss. RO, QR/EW76; ASSI35/88/3. Spence attended the quarter sessions zealously until shortly before entering Parliament in 1653.39Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 137-99; Salzman, Town Bk. of Lewes, 74; E. Suss. RO, QO/EW2, ff. 4v-46.

Spence was still recorded as of Lincoln’s Inn when in 1648 his father settled on him the Hertfordshire manor of Moor Hall on his marriage to Mary, daughter of Kentish militia and sequestrations commissioner Samuel Short.40VCH Herts. iii. 197; CJ v. 652a; A. and O. That December William’s financial position was healthy enough for him to purchase a fifth part of Preston manor in Wingham, Kent, paying nearly £2,000.41C54/3397/4; C54/3400/12. Taken together, this suggests that he was possibly receiving some income from legal practice. He was perhaps the William Spence named in February 1649 among the commissioners to try the royalist rebel leaders of the previous year.42A list of the names of the judges (1649, 669.f.13.83).

Both Robert and William continued to serve in local administration under the commonwealth.43A. and O. As the father aged, the son probably began to exceed him in importance, but neither achieved the prominence of their near neighbour, Harbert Morley*. With Morley and his closest associates, William engaged in the prosecution of royalist John Goring in July 1651, and in the collection of assessments in 1652.44SP23/169, p. 571; SP28/181, pt. 2, unfol.; CCC 2860.

The republican group in Sussex around Morley splintered, however, after the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. While Morley retired from public life, William Spence and Anthony Stapley I* were nominated to the Parliament which met in July 1653. Despite Spence’s later connections to Congregational churches, it is unclear who proposed him. Once at Westminster, however, he was active among ‘radicals’ who were zealous for reform, particularly of the law, and he was listed as opposed to the maintenance of a public preaching ministry.45A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 669.f.19.3). Named to nine committees, he was delegated to draft legislation on at least four occasions, and acted four times as a teller.

Spence’s first appointment, to the committee considering the abolition of the Engagement to the commonwealth (9 July) set the tone for his other committee work: the topic was contentious, and the committee radical in its membership.46CJ vii. 283b. On the same day he was also named to the committee for Irish affairs, and when this committee was revamped on 20 July, Spence was among those who retained their places.47CJ vii. 283b, 286b. Now one of a minority of radicals, he was still active, and reported to the House (1 Aug.) a bill for the restraint of appeals from the Irish courts to the courts in England.48CJ vii. 293b. On 6 September, with another radical, John Anlaby*, he was a teller in support of remitting quitrents in Ireland for five years; they defeated the prominent moderate, Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*.49CJ vii. 315a.

The largest number of Spence’s appointments concerned legal issues. On 20 July, he was nominated to the controversial committee for the law, which was eventually dominated by moderates.50CJ vii. 286b. Spence was involved in drafting the bill for the registration of births, marriages, and deaths (13, 16 Aug.), which had originally formed part of the draft legislation presented by the Hale Commission for the reform of the law.51CJ vii. 300a, 301b. When on 19 August this committee was replaced by one more radical, charged with considering a ‘new body of the law’, Spence was among those who dominated it.52CJ vii. 304b. On 6 October he was a teller for the second time, this time with Kentish radical Thomas Blount*, and again victorious, defeating moderates Nathaniel Barton* and Joachim Matthews* to establish the committee for prisons and prisoners.53CJ vii. 330b. Radicals like Spence also predominated on the committee to consider the bill for establishing a high court of justice (13 Oct.), which they probably opposed.54CJ vii. 334a. With reforming lawyer Andrew Broughton* he was nominated to bring in a bill for writs of error (15 Oct.).55CJ vii. 335a. With another, Augustine Wingfield, he was a teller in a division over a clause in the bill for the reform of chancery (17 Oct.), only to be defeated twice on the issue that day (later with John Ireton*). The bill split the House exactly in half, and the Speaker’s casting vote went against him.56CJ vii. 335b.

Spence was also named to two other major committees, to consider the question of tithes (19 July), and the advancement of learning (21 July). Both were dominated by moderates, and there is no indication of Spence’s active participation.57CJ vii. 286a, 287b. The increasing predominance of moderates may explain Spence’s disappearance from the Journal after 25 October, when he was ordered to take care of a petition received from the citizens of London, although he had already been invisible for a month between early September and early October.58CJ vii. 339b.

Despite his display of reforming zeal, after the dissolution of the Parliament Spence – like his father but unlike many former Members or other associates – was willing to accommodate to the new protectoral regime at Westminster. He began attending quarter sessions again in April 1654, after which he sat consistently until 1660, as well as on other commissions.59E. Suss. RO, QO/EW2, f. 61; QO/EW3; A. and O. This sat somewhat uneasily with the fact that in November 1655 Major-general William Goffe* told John Thurloe* that Spence’s father and brother John were responsible for a Baptist-led petition calling for the abolition of the court of chancery and of tithes, and for the disbandment of the army.60TSP iv. 151, 161. Spence himself appears to have been one of the eight elders of the general assembly of Baptist churches held in London in July 1656.61Mins. of the General Assembly of the General Baptist Churches in England ed. W. T. Whitley (1909), i. 9.

Meanwhile, Spence consolidated his position among the godly gentry in the county, a process which was to continue largely uninterrupted for the rest of his life. Through the mid and late 1650s he increased his property. By the time he drafted his will in November 1656, his father had passed on to him the family estates, while the successive deaths of his younger brothers Aubrey (buried in St Magnus the Martyr, London, 18 Nov. 1653) and Robert (‘sick’ when he made his will in May 1658) brought him further land and the latter’s stock of coals and iron.62St Magnus the Martyr, London, par. reg.; PROB11/239/269 (Awbry Spence); PROB11/264/193 (Robert Spence); PROB11/295/675 (Robert Spence). He was also a beneficiary from the death of his father-in-law, and made substantial land purchases.63PROB11/267/290 (Samuell Shorte); C54/3805/3; Add. 39483, f. 320; E. Suss. RO, SAS/CO/c/67.

In January 1659 Spence was again elected to Parliament, this time for the borough of Seaford, which had had no representation under the Instrument of Government. Since Sussex constituencies mostly returned a mixture of royalist sympathisers and disillusioned Rumpers, the choice of Spence was something of an anomaly. That his partner was George Parker*, whose father had held the seat in the Long Parliament, and who was himself a firm supporter of the Stuart cause, suggests division within the borough. Spence made no visible impression on this assembly before its dissolution in April.

However, during the period of the re-assembled Rump Spence was still active in local administration.64SP28/335/50, 52, 57, 59, 63. This involvement, together with suspicions regarding his religious beliefs, probably explains his disappearance from the commission of the peace sometime between March and October 1660.65A Perfect List [of JPs] (1660); C220/9/4. Yet even before the Restoration, Spence had begun a process of reinventing himself, and this continued thereafter. By October 1660 he secured a pardon from the king, in 1663 he was an enclosure commissioner, and by 1664 he had been restored to the county bench.66SO3/13, unfol; C231/7, pp. 45, 321; E. Suss. RO, Glynde MS 3162; R. Blaker, ‘Newhaven harbour’, Suss. Arch. Coll. lxiv. 196. He became assiduous in his attendance at the sessions, and used his power to protect Baptists, although he was active against Quakers and the Lewes conventicle of the early 1670s.67W. Figg, ‘Extracts from documents illustrative of the sufferings of the Quakers’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xvi. 75, 81, 89, 92; C231/7, p. 321; E. Suss. RO, QO/EW5, ff. 84, 85, 92, 99, 111, 114, 123, 130v; QR/E168, ff 69, 71 . In November 1664 his standing within the county was confirmed by his appointment to the shrievalty.68List of Sheriffs, 141. Becoming a great county squire, he acquired further land, including, in 1671, part of the barony, castle, and borough of Lewes.69Suss. Manors, i. 272; F. W. T. Attree, ‘Wivelsfield’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xxxv. 17; E. Suss. RO, Hil 6/15/1; C54/4054/1. Spence died in July 1677, and his estate, including his ‘great house’ in Lewes, as well as property in Kent, passed to his only surviving brother John, since Spence himself had no children.70PROB11/354/445; Add. 39483, f. 376; Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 103. No further members of his family sat in Parliament.