The Spencer Family

by Charles Spencer

  The death from smallpox of Queen Mary in December 1694 was seen by Sunderland as the perfect opportunity to bring a full rapprochement between King William III and his sister-in-law Princess Anne. With Sunderland’s encouragement, Anne wrote her brother-in-law a letter of condolence. Soon after, again at Sunderland’s behest, William offered Anne the use of St James’s Palace, as fitting accommodation for the monarch-in-waiting.

  Given Anne’s hatred of Sunderland, clearly stated in her correspondence of a few years earlier, it is testimony to his diplomatic skills that, on her own accession to the throne in 1702, Queen Anne settled a £2,000 per annum pension on Sunderland, out of gratitude for his help during the previous years.

  As a family man, Robert was less successful than in his professional life. He and Anne suffered the loss, as was common at the time, of children in infancy: their third son, Henry, and fourth daughter, Mary, dying soon after their respective births. And Isabella, the third of the four daughters, died before marriage. Of the four children who survived into adulthood, the eldest son — and heir — Robert, Lord Spencer, was to be one of the most dissolute young men of his generation. The eldest of seven children, he was born in 1666 and went up to be educated at Oxford in 1680.

  We learn something of his character at that stage from his grandmother, Dorothy, First Countess of Sunderland, in a letter to Lord Halifax:

  He has no good nature, nor good humour: he is scornful and too pretending ... He comes to me seldom, seems weary in a minute, talks of my company as if I picked them up off the streets. My Lord Sunderland [her son, Robert, Second Earl of Sunderland] at his age did nothing like it. He will be spoiled, I can see it.

  In 1688, the diarist John Evelyn reported good things of the second Spencer son, Charles — ‘a youth of extraordinary hopes, very learned for his age and ingenious, and under a Governor of extraordinary worth’ — but he qualified that praise with a less sanguine look at the heir to the Sunderland title:

  Happy were it could as much be said of the elder brother, the Lord Spencer, who, rambling about the world, dishonours both his name and family, adding sorrow to sorrow, to a mother who had taken all imaginable care of his education: but vice, more and more predominantly, gives slender hopes of his reformation ...

  Evelyn was put in an invidious position when he had to judge between his allegiance to Anne, Second Countess of Sunderland, and his justifiable disregard for her first-born. Robert and Anne’s high living had left the Spencer family finances in some disarray, Robert’s taste for gambling compounding the problems brought about by their extravagant lifestyle and constant pursuit of artistic acquisitions.

  Anne decided that the simplest solution would be to marry her eldest son to an heiress. She therefore asked Evelyn to effect an introduction, with a view to a match being made, between Robert Spencer and Jane Fox, the daughter of Sir Stephen Fox, a millionaire financier. Evelyn, though always keen to stay in favour with prestigious society hostesses, judged that Robert was such a liability that he simply could not get involved, even if it meant incurring her ladyship’s displeasure. As he himself recorded:

  Come my Lady Sunderland to desire that I would [make] a match to Sir Stephen Fox for her son, Lord Spencer, to marry Miss Jane, Sir Stephen’s daughter. I excus’d myself all I was able for the truth is I was afraid he would prove an extravagant man: for though a youth of extraordinary parts, and had an excellent education to render him a worthy man, yet his early inclinations to extravagance made me apprehensive that I should not serve Sir Stephen by proposing it like a friend: this now being his only daughter, well bred, and likely to receive a large share of her father’s opulence.

  Robert Spencer’s remaining years were to show that Evelyn deserved the undying gratitude of Sir Stephen Fox, as Robert degenerated into a life of boorish — indeed, drunken and violent — behaviour. In August 1685, with his father one of the most important people in the kingdom, Robert and two friends went round to the home of the Earl of Carnarvon — whose forefather had perished with Robert’s own grandfather at Newbury — and whipped him. According to Sir Edmund Verney, the aristocratic trio also indulged in ‘some other peccadillos in his [Carnarvon’s] castle besides’.

  This escapade resulted in Robert being sent abroad by his family, in temporary banishment. But if the Spencers had hoped he would return a changed man, it was to prove a forlorn hope. Within a year, we find Sir John Reresby noting, ‘My Lord Spencer is not well by the ill usage he and the rest of his company received from the constables and watch three nights ago, being upon a high ramble.’ Far from bridling at the thrashing his son had received from these officers, Robert Sunderland only grumbled, ‘It was pity it was not worse.’

  Robert Spencer’s life was now unravelling fast. His father tried to channel his aggressive instincts, and put some structure into his son’s life, by buying him an officer’s commission in the army. It was not enough. In March 1687, young Robert exceeded even his usual ability to disgrace himself, interrupting a church service in Suffolk with his sword drawn, uttering profanities, and attempting to pull the preacher out of the pulpit. The congregation rushed to the priest’s defence, pummelling the errant young aristocrat, stripping his clothes off his back, and subjecting him to further humiliations.

  Robert had inherited a modicum of the persuasive charms of his father, and he knew how to ingratiate himself to his monarch. He showed great contrition for his appalling behaviour, and simultaneously claimed that he had been converted to Roman Catholicism. This was — as Robert well knew — bound to be a popular development with James II. Sure enough, the King now asked Spencer to represent him on a diplomatic mission to the Duke of Modena, brother to the Queen, Mary. But this was trust unwisely placed. Robert headed straight for the whoring and drinking places of Paris, and indulged himself to such an extent that, by the time he reached Turin, tales of his excesses were widely known.

  Living at such a pace took its inevitable toll. Spencer was unable even to reach Modena, being too ill to complete his mission. He stayed for several months in Turin, before retracing his steps to Paris. It was to be his final trip; and it was suitable that he should end his days in this city, which had witnessed the most excessive behaviour of a truly spoilt and irresponsible youth. He died on 16 September 1688, the Marquis de Dagneau recording in his diary:

  ‘Milord Spencer, fils aine du Comte de Sunderland, est mort cette nuit a Paris pour avoir trop bu d’eau de vie.’

  Anne, Second Countess of Sunderland’s match-making skills may have been stymied by John Evelyn’s good judgement, with regard to her eldest son, but she got her way with her daughter Elizabeth, whom she forced into a child marriage with Lord Clancarty, an Irish nobleman of enormous landed wealth. The lack of love in the relationship is underlined by the fact that, after several years, the union remained unconsummated.

  Clancarty was a Jacobite sympathizer, supporting the deposed James II against William III and Mary in Ireland. With the failure of the Jacobite campaign, Clancarty was declared an outlaw, and so he fled to the exiled Stuart court at St Germain. The Clancarty estates in Ireland were confiscated, and handed to William III ‘s favourite, Portland.

  Anne Sunderland was appalled that her daughter’s marital wealth had been taken from her, and planned ways of having it restored to her through the pardoning of Clancarty. It was decided to encourage Clancarty to come to consummate his marriage, the assumption being that his father-in-law, Sunderland, could then persuade William III to grant him a pardon, which, in turn, would lead to the restitution of the Clancarty estates.

  At the end of 1698, Clancarty sneaked into England to fulfil the marital obligations that had previously been beyond him. However, his brother-in-law, Charles Spencer, reported the whereabouts of the outlawed Clancarty to the authorities, and the latter was arrested while in the unaccustomed position of being in bed with his wife.

  With his usual inclination for self-preservation over integrity, Robert Sunderland publicly distanced himself
from the ensuing scandal by disowning the innocent in this sorry tale, his daughter Elizabeth. However, Sarah Marlborough joined Anne Sunderland in seeking clemency for Clancarty, and she being the right-hand woman of Princess Anne, William yielded, pardoning Clancarty, while allowing him a pension on the condition that Irish peer remain abroad for the rest of his life, and that he no longer base himself in the enemy Jacobite camp.

  Elizabeth Clancarty decided that the scandal had made her continued life in England too grim to contemplate, so she accompanied Clancarty into exile in Hamburg. She was never happy there, but it was where she spent the remainder of her very sad life. At least her marriage was consummated and she did become a mother, although she died before her eldest reached the age of six.

  The Clancarty affair had occurred after Robert Sunderland’s retirement from active political life. He had resigned his positions in 1697, the year in which he had been made Lord Chamberlain and a Lord of Regency, much to the disappointment of William III, who still believed him an indispensable adviser and ally, despite the cries of the Tories, who never left their monarch in any doubt as to their horror that such a man should have the King’s ear.

  Robert Sunderland lived out the remaining five years of his life at Althorp, surrounded by the spoils of his treacherous, self-seeking career. On his death, in September 1702, even a supporter such as Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, had to concede that Robert ‘had really a great many good qualities, with some bad ones’.

  Bishop Burnet was similarly generously disposed to the wily statesman in death, summing up his gifts and shortcomings thus:

  Lord Sunderland was a man of a clear and ready apprehension, and a quick decision in business. He had too much heat, both of imagination and passion, and was apt to speak very freely both of persons and things. His own notions were always good, but he was a man of great expense and ... he went into the prevailing counsels at Court, and he changed sides often, with little regard either to religion or to the interests of his country. He raised many enemies to himself by the contempt with which he treated those who differed from him. He had indeed the superior genius to all the men of business that I have yet known; and he had the dexterity of insinuating himself so entirely into the greatest degree of confidence with three succeeding Princes, who set up on very different interests, that he came by this to lose himself so much that even those who esteemed his parts depended little on his firmness.

  Within a few years of Robert Sunderland’s death, Queen Anne’s Whig ministry decided to commission the writer Edmund Smith to chronicle the history of the 1688 Revolution, showing the Whig influence in the event to its best possible effect. When being told his task by Addison, Smith retorted, ‘What shall I do with the character of Lord Sunderland?’ The implication was clear. Smith would have to address the deviousness and treachery of this most eminent of Whigs, if he were to give the full and true version of events; and yet that would show the Whigs in such a poor light, that the point of the propaganda exercise would clearly be severely compromised. Rather than deal with Sunderland and his disgraceful conduct, it was agreed that the history should not be written.

  Perhaps that is, in itself, the most fitting and eloquent testimony to a man about whom ‘too much cannot be said of his talents, nor too little of his principles’.

  8. The Spencer-Churchill Match

  Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland, was tall and plain, his skin pitted with scars from smallpox. Very highly sexed, he was to have three wives, several mistresses, and at least one illegitimate child. Contemporary gossip also had it that he was bisexual.

  Although free from the hard living that had resulted in his elder brother’s premature end, he had his own particular shortcomings, among which his hot temper was perhaps the most marked. Charles had incurred the grave displeasure of his father when, in his capacity as Member of Parliament for Tiverton, the young man had exploded during a debate that he ‘hoped to piss upon the House of Lords’. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, assessed him as having ‘no more genteelness than a porter’. Even his own mother — who doted on her children — conceded that Charles had too much ‘heart and overearnestness’ in his politics.

  And yet his father’s intellect and statesmanship had been inherited in full. He was to prove almost as significant a political force in the reigns of Queen Anne and, later, King George I, as his father had been in those of Charles II, James II and William and Mary. Although he was to be accused of financial impropriety, his character was superior to his father’s in terms of his having a genuine sense of public duty.

  Charles’s initial political career was certainly hindered as much as it was helped by his father’s notoriety. Queen Anne, although she had become respectful of the influence Robert Sunderland had wielded, and had agreed to pay him a pension on her accession, had never wavered in her personal hatred of the man, and this intensity of feeling she readily transferred to his only surviving son.

  In terms of the history of the Spencer family, as opposed to the history of England, Charles Sunderland’s true significance lies in the choice of his second wife; or, more accurately, in the identity of his second mother-in-law: for Sarah Marlborough was the greatest benefactor, in material terms, that the Spencers have ever prospered from, and her manipulative machinations set the tone for the conduct of the family for generations after her death, helping to establish them in parallel splendour at Blenheim and at Althorp.

  Having been unexpectedly widowed in July 1698, losing the former Lady Arabella Cavendish — daughter of the Second Duke of Newcastle — when he was in his early twenties, Charles Sunderland found himself once again one of the most eligible bachelors in the country.

  By this stage, John and Sarah Churchill, First Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, had achieved the pre-eminence that was to make them dominant figures in court and in foreign policy over the next dozen years, until they fell out with Queen Anne in a spectacular and irreversible manner.

  Charles Spencer’s mother, Anne Sunderland, never shy of pushing forward her children when a good match was in the offing, did not even have the patience or decency to allow her daughter-in-law’s death a month’s mourning before going to see Sarah Marlborough about the possibility of her giving one of her four daughters to Charles as a second wife. Lady Anne Churchill was only fifteen but, apart from clearly being a frail girl, she allied the eminence of her parents with their very fine looks, to make her a more than worthy match for the Spencer heir.

  As for Sarah Marlborough, she was keen to establish her family as a dynasty, her four adult daughters clocking up two dukes and two earls as husbands. Indeed, of her seven granddaughters, five would become duchesses, one a countess and one a viscountess. In Charles Spencer, she smelt not only aristocratic lineage, but also huge political potential. What was more, that potential was as a leader of the Whig party, of which she thought herself a champion.

  The Spencer-Churchill marriage took place in January 1700, both families having retreated to Althorp the preceding September to negotiate a suitable financial settlement. Sarah Marlborough, now at the peak of her influence over Princess Anne, managed to persuade the future queen to help to fund the match — a considerable achievement, bearing in mind Anne’s dislike of the groom and his family. Given that another Churchill daughter was already married to the son of Lord Godolphin, who was to be Anne’s Treasurer, Sarah Marlborough had ensured that her family, in its broader sense, now contained a core of the most able and significant Whig politicians of the time. No wonder that Robert Walpole predicted that the Spencer-Churchill union would ‘certainly be turned to politics as every thing is’.

  It would be fair to say two things at this stage: first, that the marriage into the Churchill family was the most significant that the Spencers were to make until the late twentieth century, for the matriarch under whose strict control the Spencers now found themselves for forty-four years did more to shape the family’s fortune than anyone had done since the very early Warwickshire
sheep farmers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And secondly, that Sarah remains one of the most intriguing and controversial women in British history.

  Sarah Marlborough’s dynastic ambitions can be traced back to her own family background. Born a week after the day of Charles II’s Restoration in 1660, Sarah was the daughter of an impoverished gentleman from St Albans, Richard Jennings; in turn he was one of the twenty-two children of Sir John Jennings and Alice Spencer, a daughter of Sir Richard Spencer of Offley, a cousin of the Spencers of Althorp. There is no suggestion that this Spencer link in any way disposed Sarah to be as generous to her kinsmen as she was to be, but given the way in which she focused on her Spencer grandchildren as the key to her hopes and aspirations, it is a link worth noting.

  The feistiness, independence and pride of Sarah, together with her inability to control her own passions, were themes that would resurface sporadically in generations of Spencer women. Also, Sarah’s ravishing, glowing looks, with her golden-auburn hair, her fine skin and her natural hauteur, were to cascade down the female generations to follow. It seems her genetic stock has been as powerful as her character, and I believe that, in Sarah Jennings, you have the blueprint for the second half of the Spencer family history.

  Her early years were conventional enough. Like any pretty daughter of a county family eager to increase its financial and social standing, she was sent to court to find a suitable match. Aged only thirteen, she was appointed one of the four maids of honour to James, Duke of York’s, second wife, Mary of Modena. Vivacious and fine-looking, Sarah was extremely popular in court circles, but she was also clever enough not to become one of the many girls who were seduced and discarded — often pregnant — by the nobles and courtiers who preyed on the naïve young things who could be easily flattered and deceived.

  It was during her teens that Sarah’s dissatisfaction with the falseness and emptiness of court life first emerged, and with it a growing questioning of the wisdom of monarchs who oversaw and indulged in what she perceived to be a meaningless existence. Although not formally educated to any standard at all, Sarah was naturally intelligent enough to find the gossip and endless card-playing stultifying, and the constant waiting on the whims of spoilt royals, who assumed it was a privilege merely to be at the beck and call of their Highnesses and Majesties, was insulting and tedious to her. As a letter in middle age to Lady Cowper reveals, it did not take the spirited Sarah long to see through the sham that was court life: