The tensions between his social status and his religious beliefs were heightened with the building of an extremely large and luxurious new rectory for him in Brington, a structure thought fitting for someone of his heritage, with a substantial income of £3,000 per year, and the apparently limitless private resources of the Spencer family. Lavinia Spencer saw to it that everything inside the rectory — the upholstery, the linen, the furniture — was of the highest quality. All this while her son, the priest, was busy trying to help the poor and the wretched in his parish, outside the rectory’s imposing gates. While his mother clucked around the place with ideas for grander decoration schemes, George would talk to his housekeeper, Mrs Wykes, about his wish to open his doors to the needy, converting the rectory into a hospital.
Lavinia wanted to see her youngest son married. At this stage there were no dynastic reasons for him to do so: Jack may have sunk into a life of bachelorhood, but there were still Bob and Frederick to keep the Spencer line secure. No, what Lavinia hoped to achieve was an end to George’s obvious uncertainty about his lot in life; she wanted his ‘metaphysical fancies’ to be replaced by the realities of domesticity.
George did fall in love. He even went so far as to order his carriage down to Althorp, in order to seek his father’s blessing to propose to the lady in question. However, when in the park and near the front door to the mansion, he stopped the driver and ordered him to return to the rectory in Brington. In his most far-reaching personal denial yet, he had resolved never to marry, invoking I Corinthians vii, verses 32 and 33, as his reasons: ‘He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.’ One day, near the end of his life, he was asked what had happened to the lady he had meant to marry. George replied, without apparent self-pity: ‘I passed by her house a few days ago. I believe her husband is a very excellent man, and that she is happy.’
Self-denial and generosity marked the few years of his Protestant ministry. When he made his rounds in his parish, he always had a bottle of wine in his pocket, together with as much money as he could afford to be without, to give to the ill and the poor. For the sick, he bought medicine, while the poor he helped to clothe, sometimes dressing the sores of the former, and giving the clothes off his own back to the latter. Concerned that the allowance he gave his son was being used unwisely, George John cut it back, but George simply adapted his own lifestyle, to ensure that he still had a surplus to give away: he stopped drinking wine and gave up eating puddings, while saving on the housekeeping expenses at the rectory, particularly cutting back on the laundry.
Eyewitnesses to his Christian generosity recalled how George would sometimes be approached by impostors, preying on his unquestioning open-handedness. If he did rumble them, he still gave equally liberally, and thanked God for the lesson in humility He was giving him by sending such people to him.
He dispensed with his horses, choosing instead to walk wherever he needed to go — to Northampton, five miles away, or beyond — his clothes in a knapsack, his stride purposeful and unfaltering, despite the mockery he attracted from people threatened or amused by his devotion to his beliefs. His housekeeper summed him up, during his Protestant priesthood: ‘He was indeed the father of the poor, and a peace-maker, though meeting with many contradictions, particularly among the Dissenters. He bore all with patience and cheerfulness, and went on hoping all would end well in due time.’
His reward from his conventional and well-meaning father was not pride in a son’s earnest endeavours, but a firm and wide-ranging rebuke:
I should not thus argue with you, my dear George, if I did not from my heart, as God is my judge, firmly believe that your welfare, both temporal and eternal, as well as the health both of your body and mind, depended upon your taking every possible means to follow a better course of thinking, and of study, and of occupation, than you have hitherto done since you have entered the profession for which, as I fondly hoped, and you seemed fitted by inclination, you would have been in due time, if well directed and well advised, formed to become as much an ornament to it as your brothers are, God Almighty be thanked for it, to those they have entered into.
George John was liberal in his beliefs, and this extended to Church matters. Both he and Jack fought for Catholic Emancipation, whereby barriers preventing Roman Catholics from being fully qualified citizens, with a right to hold all manner of public offices, would be removed. However, he had no sympathy with the teachings of the Catholic faith. As Father Pius noted, ‘Lord Spencer was always favourable to Catholics, but it was in the spirit of generosity to a fallen, or justice to an injured, people.’
Moreover, the above communication makes it clear that he had not expected George to take to the most austere side of Christianity with such relish. Being God-fearing by nature was fine, but the goings-on at Brington were unacceptable — the sight of one of his sons fraternizing with the very poorest in society, and even appearing less well cared for than they, was embarrassing and threatening. As for Lavinia, she found that she could not even muster a civil word for George, so deep was her disappointment that her own Christian aims were being, in her view, subverted by a wilful son.
The problems were not simply related to conduct, though. George was also looking critically at the doctrinal inadequacies of the Church that he was serving. By the end of 1827, he was struggling with the text of the Athanasian Creed. This confession of the Christian faith started with a clear and strong message: ‘Whosoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.’ The conclusion is equally clear-cut: ‘This is the Catholic Faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.’
George believed these statements to be in contrast to the general message of the Scriptures, as he understood them. The outright condemnation struck him as being at odds with the redemption which Christianity celebrated as one of its themes. This matter and others, George tried to resolve in long discussions with a fellow priest, Mr Allen, from the Spencer parish of Battersea. However, nothing Allen said could allay George’s deepening suspicion that Anglicanism was deeply flawed.
If his fellow ministers from the Church of England were having little impact on George’s faith, the opposite was true when he came into contact with Catholic priests. In March 1828, George welcomed Dr Fletcher into the rectory at Brington. Fletcher was a practised advocate for the Catholic faith, and he found George’s state of doubt and confusion very promising; he could be a high-profile candidate for conversion.
It may well be that Fletcher arranged for a mystery correspondent to write to the troubled priest of Brington. Soon after, George received a letter from Lille, putting the case for Catholicism. He replied to it forcefully, but was surprised by the subsequent letter from the same source:
I expected only to convince him [the correspondent] that the Catholic Church was full of errors; but he answered my arguments ... I discovered by means of this correspondence that I had never duly considered the principles of our Reformation; that my objections to the Catholic Church were prejudices adopted from the saying of others, not the result of my own observation. Instead of gaining the advantage in this controversy, I saw, and I owned to my correspondent, that a great change had been produced in myself.
There were three such letters from Lille. In total, there were thirty-two pages, and these were what finally made George’s conversion inevitable. The argument that won him over was a simple one: that Scripture without Tradition cannot lead to salvation; that it is impossible for people to understand the composition, inspiration and interpretation of the Scriptures without that Tradition; that it is only through an unbroken succession of pastors to the present day that the Tradition can have been preserved, so only those pastors — the popes — can tell people with any authority what the Trad
ition comprises; that the creeds, liturgy, sacraments and jurisdiction of the Catholic Church are therefore the true Tradition of the teaching of Christ.
As the mystery correspondent said in the third letter:
It is certain that Jesus Christ founded a Church upon Earth for the salvation of man; where, then, is it? This is certainly the whole question among the different sects opposed to each other ... I am persuaded the Catholics do not found their belief on the opinions and interpretations of men; their authority is Jesus Christ, God Himself.
It was only after his conversion that George learned the identity of the person who, through their letters, had brought him to the brink of becoming Roman Catholic. Mrs Dolling, who died a year before George took the final step towards his new faith, had been converted only a short time before she started writing to George. She had hoped to become a nun of the Sacred Heart, but her death prevented her from taking the veil.
When George gave an account of his conversion, in 1834, he attracted hostile ridicule from sections of the Tory press that had no time for Catholicism. Under the caption, ‘The Hon. Priest Spencer’, one editorial stated, ‘We were in hopes that he would at least have had the prudence to have kept silent, but he has thought proper to publish an account of his conversion, motives, etc., etc.; and we are compelled to assert that a more stupendous exhibition of ignorance and folly was never before put forth in the world.’ It continued, with reference to Mrs Dolling’s input, ‘the immediate agent in his conversion was A LADY — a sort of “invisible girl”, we suppose, for he never saw her. He was convinced by her “fine Roman hand”, that she was a lady; and he surrendered his faith to an unseen priest in petticoats!’
The final step for George had come at the end of 1829 through his acquaintance with the seventeen-year-old Ambrose Lisle Phillipps, himself a convert to Catholicism. A week’s visit to Phillipps in Leicestershire in January 1830 satisfied George that he must leave the Protestant faith, and join the Church of Rome:
I saw how weak was the cause in behalf of which I had hitherto been engaged; I felt ashamed of arguing any longer against what I began to see clearly could not be fairly disproved. I now openly declared myself completely shaken, and, though I determined to take no decided step until I was entirely convinced, I determined to give myself no rest till I was satisfied, and had little doubt now of what the result would be.
After further deliberations, George felt an irresistible need to convert with immediate effect, telling Phillipps that he would declare himself a Catholic the following day.
The question now was how to break the news to his family. He was concerned that the shock would kill his father, whose health was floundering. As had happened at the time when he had considered marriage, so now a passage from the Scriptures gave him the strength to follow his conscience: ‘He that hateth not father and mother, and brothers and sisters, and houses and lands, and his own life too, cannot be my disciple.’
The next morning, at nine o’clock, George Spencer publicly turned his back on the Church of England and embraced Catholicism. The Spencers were stunned, despite their forebodings about their son’s recent behaviour. George, confident in the reasons behind his move, was unapologetic about, but sensitive to, the dismay he must have caused his family, writing to his brother, Jack: ‘You and Fritz [Frederick, later Fourth Earl Spencer] and many more are my witnesses that I did not conceal my mind being staggered by the arguments of Catholics. And I wrote to my Father, the very first day that my resolution was taken.’ In the same letter, he placed himself in George John’s hands financially: ‘I beg you will say to my Father, that whatever arrangement he pleases to make about me, I will agree to beforehand, for I have never found one cause to complain of him yet, and I am sure I never shall.’
He was right to retain confidence in his father. Like all of his family except his mother — who insisted on wearing black to demonstrate her grief at the news — George John took the view that George was quite mistaken in what he had done, but it was an error born out of the purest and most irreproachable of motives. A small income was allowed George by his father; and this continued during the earldom of his brother, Jack, and of his nephew, John. Frederick alone, the sibling who had been the closest to him in childhood, was to cut off the renegade priest, insisting that the money George would have received be given instead to charities of Frederick’s choosing.
However accommodating his family might have been, George’s overall financial position changed dramatically through the loss of his income as a priest. Just after his conversion, George had been advised by the Dominican friars of Hinckley that he could not continue to draw money from his Protestant benefice. The Morning Herald, reporting on George’s new Catholicism, noted the monetary sacrifice implicit in such a move:
The conversion of so amiable and illustrious a nobleman in these eventful days, is in itself not a little remarkable; but what tenders it more so is, that by the change he will have to forgo a very large and lucrative church preferment, amounting to near three thousand a year. This fact, whatever may be thought of the change itself, is highly creditable to the honesty of him who has made so great a pecuniary sacrifice for the sake of his conscience.
George’s was the most prominent of several conversions made around this time, in the aftermath of the 1829 Catholic Emancipation. Another newspaper, of 28 February 1830, put George’s decision in context:
Lady Paget (the lady of Sir Charles Paget, Admiral on the Cork station) and her daughters, have been converted to the Roman Catholic Church; and so has a Reverend Gentleman at Leicester, a son of Earl Spencer, who, it is said, has become a Catholic Priest. — The late Dr Johnson, it is well known, had a ‘sneaking kindness’ for the Catholic worship; and Gibbon the historian took refuge at last in the bosom of that infallible Church.
Later, more hostile comment was passed on George’s act of conscience:
Is this unfortunate man to be pitied as a fool, or despised as a Jesuit? Is he to be censured for publishing his folly, or thanked for showing to the world the art of manufacturing Popish Priests? — Altogether we are pleased. We have gained a lesson ... and we have been spared the pain of having a weak (to say the least) and doubting man as Bishop or Archbishop of our Church — which we suppose Lord Althorp would have made him, had he remained one of our clergy.
George was oblivious to the sneering chorus of diehard Anglicans. He was, however, deeply offended by the spite exhibited by some senior members of the Church of England, furious at the loss of such a promising — and aristocratic — young priest. George wrote to his brother, Jack:
The Bishop of London has written to me, and says that he tells others as well as myself that I have not acted honestly. I will not resent this word from him, for he may be expected to be irritated; but he had better for his own sake, not use much more of such language, for he will have to recant it some day, when he hears more of my case.
There was little time for such local problems to trouble him, though, for George was sent to Rome to receive instruction in the faith whose beliefs he had found so irresistible. He embraced the strict life of his college there, marvelling at ‘Such discipline and obedience, united with perfect freedom and cordiality, [which] is the fruit of the Catholic religion alone.’
A year and a day after his arrival in Rome, on 13 March 1831, George received the junior office of a subdiaconate. Accepting this involved a commitment to celibacy for life. At this point, the future of the Spencer family looked decidedly doubtful: Jack had shown no genuine inclination to remarry and produce an heir; Bob had died the year before; and Frederick’s Poyntz bride was deemed unlikely to be able to have children, owing to the fragility of her health. The family sent a message to George, begging him not to proceed with the subdiaconate. However, as George responded, ‘You spoke too late’, for the plea only reached him days after his new vows were taken. Given the fervour which now possessed him, it is inconceivable that an earlier arrival of the Spencers’ communication would h
ave made any difference.
He stayed in Rome until July 1832, when he arrived at the Spencers’ Isle of Wight retreat at Ryde, two months after being ordained a priest. Following a brief holiday with his family, he settled in West Bromwich, from where he attempted to convert Protestants to his way of thinking. In what was to become the defining thought behind the remainder of his ministry, he wrote to his friend Phillipps: ‘Keep England’s conversion always next your heart.’
The rest of his family had now not only come to terms with George’s change of faith, they had had time to think through its implications for themselves. Jack, so progressive in his political thinking, proved to be disappointingly conservative in his treatment of his youngest brother. When Jack assumed the earldom, on the death of George John in 1834, the whole family gathered at Althorp. Jack, in one of his first acts as head of the family, forbade George from speaking to anyone on the estate unless they were of an equal social standing to the Spencers. He wanted to avoid the embarrassment of his Catholic brother trying to turn the tenants or servants away from the Church of England.
Sarah Lyttelton, however, the sister who was to be governess to Queen Victoria’s children, was open-minded about the whole matter. In August 1835, George became dangerously ill, and began to spit blood. Sarah looked after him at her husband’s family home, Hagley, showing him enormous tenderness and consideration — even arranging for a fellow Catholic priest to come to stay during his convalescence, to keep him company. George and she were to remain close throughout their lives.
The Spencer Family Page 27