by John Pearson
It is only human for future members of the family to bemoan the loss of all this valuable land so close to the centre of London, but it would be wrong to blame the loss on John Charles Spencer. More important by far is how much he saved for the family. For just as he helped to preserve the country from the threat of revolution through the Great Reform Bill, so he also saved the core of the family possessions for the future; this included Althorp with all its treasures and his father’s library, and the family’s greatest extravagance of all – the incomparable Spencer House.
As for himself, he made one attempt to remarry by proposing to his old friend, Lady Clinton; but when she turned him down, he went on living alone as he always had in Esther’s family house at Wiseton. Although he was one of the greatest of the Spencers, he continued living as a farmer and a country squire and his greatest pride was probably his famous herd of Wiseton cattle.
When he died in 1843 he had given orders that ‘the gold heart which I wear round my neck be continued there when I am placed in my coffin. I promised Esther this should be so when she gave it to me.’ He also asked that after ‘simple and inexpensive rites’, his coffin should be placed beside Esther’s in the vault at Great Brington Church in readiness for Judgement Day.
John Charles was succeeded by his brother Frederick, always known in the family as Fritz. He was forty-seven years old and, as the third son in the family, had never expected to inherit. He and his older brother, Robert, had both joined the Royal Navy as midshipmen in the heroic days of Nelson and both had distinguished careers as professional naval officers. Fritz’s claim to fame came in 1827 when he commanded HMS Talbot, at the battle of Navarino, in which the combined fleets of Britain, France and Russia totally destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian men-of-war in the cause of Greek independence.
Since John Charles and Esther were childless, Robert had been the heir to Althorp and the Earldom. He was popular and charming and all the family had loved him. But in 1830, Robert died aboard his ship off Alexandria, and Fritz became heir to Althorp and the title.
In the spring before Robert’s death, Fritz had married his homely cousin, Elizabeth Poyntz. They had two daughters, Sarah and Georgiana, and in 1835 a longed for son and heir was born, christened John Poyntz Spencer.
Fritz was a man of serious and settled ways. The most interesting thing about him was the way his naval training enabled him to run the house and the estates at Althorp as efficiently as a man-of-war. Fearful of debt, he kept the family solvent and, after its long period of neglect under the third Earl, Althorp was brought back to life by him and his young family.
But Fritz made a further important contribution to the future of the Spencers. He became a courtier. Prince Albert had been impressed by his efficiency as a naval officer and, after he inherited the Spencer title, Queen Victoria offered him the post of Lord Chamberlain. This meant working closely with Prince Albert and thus becoming instrumental in reorganising much of the Palace bureaucracy. This brought the Spencers ever closer to the court and much of their time was spent in London.
In 1851, Elizabeth died and, although grief-stricken at the time, three years later Fritz married another cousin, Adelaide Seymour, who was always known as ‘Yaddy’. Although by now Fritz was seriously overweight and was twenty-seven years older than his wife, she adored him. Soon there were two more children, Victoria and Robert. But after less than three idyllic years of marriage, Fritz died quite unexpectedly in 1857. He was only fifty-nine, and left behind a distraught young widow with an infant son a few months old, her only consolation. Completely unprepared for what had happened, her twenty-two-year-old stepson, John Poyntz, suddenly found himself fifth Earl Spencer.
Chapter 10
The Holy Tramp
The Hon. George Spencer, Fr Ignatius of St Paul (1799-1864)
On a February morning in 1850 anyone walking up Westminster’s Parliament Street might have witnessed a portly Roman Catholic monk in shovel hat and long black habit entering Downing Street and pausing at the front door of Number 10 to ring the Prime Minister’s doorbell. A footman answered.
‘Is Lord John Russell at home?’ the monk inquired.
The footman may have thought it odd to find a monk asking for his master, but he could clearly recognise the accents of a gentleman, and decided to play safe.
‘Yes, sir, but he is at present engaged.’
‘Then be so good as to say to him that Lord Spencer’s brother would wish to speak with him.’
At which point the footman’s manner changed abruptly.
‘Walk in, sir. I’ll inform His Lordship,’ he replied respectfully, and showed his visitor to a waiting room. Soon afterwards the dapper figure of Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, appeared in person, and asked the monk to take a chair.
‘Do you remember me, my lord?’ the monk inquired.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the Prime Minister, recalling a small boy he had seen at Althorp many years before. He asked what he wanted, which involved a lengthy explanation from the priest about his mission to reunite Britain to the faith of Rome, for which he was requesting His Lordship’s prayers – and any practical support that he could offer.
Lord Russell heard him out, and although it is hard to imagine the grandfather of Bertrand Russell being particularly impressed by pleas on behalf of organised religion, he listened patiently, and conceded that ‘anything that would tend to a diminution of the spirit of acrimony and of the disposition of people of opposite opinions to misrepresent one another’s views must be good’.
With this the interview concluded and thus encouraged, Fr Ignatius Spencer of St Paul, previously known as the Honourable George Spencer, youngest son of the second Earl Spencer, and brother of the current Earl, went off about his business.
Although his pastoral work involved him in the lives of many of the poorest in the land, George Spencer never hesitated to approach the great and famous in this manner, hoping to advance his mission. He had done so years before, when he met the future Queen Victoria when calling on her mother, the Duchess of Kent, soliciting a contribution for a Catholic church he was building at Dudley. Although the young princess was non-committal on the subject of belief, George came away convinced that her mother was at heart a Catholic. He was less successful when attempting to enlist Lord Palmerston to his cause, and the statesman ‘sarcastically’ informed him that he had ‘no wish to see England brought once more under the influence of Rome’. But once Palmerston had made his feelings clear on the subject of religion, he went on to say how good it was to see this old friend from the past, patted Ignatius on the back and wished him well.
Most of those who met George Spencer felt much the same about him, for he clearly had an innocence and gentleness of character that made it impossible to dislike him, and even those who disagreed with him seem to have regarded him as a harmless eccentric or a sort of ‘holy fool’. One of the few exceptions was his mother, Countess Lavinia, who believed that he was actually insane and went into deepest mourning on the day he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest.
But modern times are treating George Spencer more seriously than did his own. When Princess Diana and Prince Charles visited the Vatican during their visit to Italy, the Vatican Library put on a small exhibition of letters and documents of her great-great-great uncle, George Spencer, describing him as a forerunner of ecumenicalism, and one of the earliest advocates of unity between Catholics and Protestants. Then in 1992 Cardinal Worlock, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, began the first step towards his beatification which, if successful, will one day lead to George Spencer being made a saint.
The process of canonisation can be long and painstaking, with no certainty of the outcome, but with George Spencer it is hard to see the Vatican permitting his cause to fail. For, being realistic, no Pope is likely to forego this unique opportunity of one day being able to create a Roman Catholic saint from the family of the future king of England.
So who exactly was George Spencer? And why should the Spence
rs, who for three centuries had been foremost in the defence of Protestantism, have suddenly produced a potential Roman Catholic saint?
George started life in 1799 as the youngest son of Lavinia and George John, second Earl Spencer, being born in Admiralty House during his father’s spell as First Lord of the Admiralty. Within the family he was always known as Hodge, or Hodgekin and the natural humility which was such a feature of his priestly calling started early. In contrast with the older children, he seems to have succumbed completely to his fearsome mother’s domination, and soon became her favourite. When he was ten she described him as ‘our dearest boy who is indeed so amiable and as truly estimable a creature as ever made parents happy’.
As well as being ‘amiable’, George was clearly something of a softy – later he called himself ‘a chicken hearted creature’ - and at Eton he was badly bullied, which made him humbler still, and caused a tendency to melancholy which he called ‘the dumps’, and stayed with him for life.
As often happened in rich families, it was assumed that, as a younger son, George would become a clergyman in a well-endowed family benefice. He accepted the idea and, to prepare him for the priesthood, he was tutored at Eton by the pious Dr Godley, a fervent evangelical whose influence on the tender-hearted George was all-important. For as well as totally accepting Godley’s evangelicalism, George began studying tracts of deep devotion, and indulged in such extreme ascetic practices that his health became affected. Even his parents were alarmed and, after removing him from Eton, entrusted him to what they thought would be the corrective care of the future High Church Bishop of London, the Revd Charles Blomfield.
This seemed to work, for by the time George went to Cambridge, he had apparently become a High Anglican himself and enjoyed his time at university, dancing, shooting, playing cricket, and taking a degree in mathematics. Afterwards he joined his parents on one of their extravagant journeys to the Continent. But already something was at work preventing George from succumbing to the slumberous life of a well-connected country vicar. ‘The dumps’ still troubled him, and during his time in France he experienced what he later described as his first ‘true conversion’. It was somehow typical of George that this happened in the Paris Opera. During a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, as the Don was taken off to Hell, the vulnerable George was smitten with a vision of his own damnation.
From now on he appears to have existed on two separate levels. With his family and friends he was still the amiable Hodgekin, whose pastimes even included mild flirtations, and who was clearly anxious to remain the son his parents wanted. But at a deeper level, he treated his entry into the church with extreme seriousness, when the following year, at the age of twenty-three, he was appointed to the rich Spencer family living at neighbouring St Mary’s Church, Great Brington.
At first George went on living at Althorp with his parents while a new rectory was being built for him, barely noticing that his mother still treated him exactly like a schoolboy, telling him when he was to be home, and giving him instructions over almost everything he did. He also did his best to follow his father’s advice when he told him to find himself a wife once the rectory was finished. He got as far as driving off from Althorp to propose to a girl he admired, when the vision of Don Giovanni appeared before him, and he returned to Althorp without asking her.
This proved a foretaste of what was soon to come. Troubled by ‘the dumps’ and haunted by his vision of damnation, George felt increasingly obliged to prove his worthiness to God by his zeal within his parish. Soon he was out from dawn to dusk, visiting his flock, tending to their needs and ensuring that every member of his congregation was baptised and acquainted with the Bible. He prayed and fasted, but his permanent concern was with the poor. He did everything he could to help them, from providing them with food and money to attending Northampton Hospital, where he studied elementary medicine and learned to set broken bones.
At first Lavinia was condescending as she watched what she saw as her gentle, rather simple-minded son playing at being a clergyman. ‘It is quite comical to see him followed by his flock,’ she wrote. ‘He don’t allow any deviation from the right path … and his earnestness is truly persuasive, but when I see his authority amongst them it strikes me in the oddest way, for I can’t believe that this excellent and grave character is the boy whom I remember so little a while since as a little ragamuffin hobbledehoy.’ But when George’s earnestness increased, Lavinia’s tolerance did not.
He soon found himself afflicted by the curse of the believing classes - honest doubt. And it was honest doubt that drew George from the spiritual safety of the High Anglican beliefs of Bishop Blomfield, to the quicksands of evangelicalism and Wesleyan Methodism. When his mother heard of this, she dragged him back to Charles Blomfield, who by now was Bishop of Chester, trusting he would bring George to his senses. But George revealed a vein of unexpected toughness, and Lavinia became ‘most distressed’ at Bishop Blomfield’s inability to ‘reconvert’ him.
She found this difficult to forgive. ‘George,’ she wrote, was ‘entirely immersed in vanity and conceit.’ It was, she told her husband, ‘a great and distressing evil to have this kind of most awful schism taking place in our hitherto.united family’.
During his seven years as Rector at Great Brington, George Spencer tended his parishioners and wrestled with his faith. In terms of doctrine he increasingly inclined to Rome, but towards his parishioners he was equally influenced by the social conscience of the evangelicals. He was faced with a difficult dilemma, which in 1830 he resolved by exchanging the security of Great Brington for the deeper certainties of the Church of Rome.
‘There goes three thousand pounds a year,’ he wrote light-heartedly, relieved that his doubts at least were over. But his family seemed as shocked as when his ancestor, Shameless Sunderland, converted to Catholicism two centuries earlier.
‘My dear and poor, poor brother,’ wrote his sister, Sarah. ‘What shall I say of him? I mean George, who is become a Catholic, we fear a Catholic priest… It is so deep an affliction to my dear Father and Mother, so great a breaking up of our family, so painful a loss at Althorp … that it weighs us all down.’
Sarah was in fact exaggerating. For while it is true that Lavinia was behaving as if George had died, donning mourning and refusing to speak to him ever again, the rest of the family soon recovered from the shock and behaved quite sensibly, treating the erring son with an understanding which was rare among rich families facing a similar situation. His father, generous as ever, gave him a lump sum and a stipend of £450, to compensate for the £3,000 he had lost. And it was his sister Sarah once again who best summed up the feelings of the family.
‘Poor George,’ she wrote. ‘His peculiarities are so many and so great. It is a most heavenly mind, but it is not fit for this unheavenly world.’
Thanks to his father’s generosity, George could enter the Catholic priesthood by studying at the English College at Rome, which was originally founded to train Catholic ‘missionaries’ to reconvert Elizabethan England. Closed by Napoleon, the College had recently reopened, and for George’s sake his sister was reassured that, as she says, ‘the English college is a particularly respectable establishment well conducted by a very clever man, Dr Wiseman.’
It was in fact an optimistic time for members of the College. Nicholas Wiseman, already an oriental scholar of repute, was at the centre of a group of young enthusiastic Catholic activists, and George’s ‘heavenly mind’ was strongly influenced by hopes within the college that England was ripe for reconversion to Catholicism. Although this was sheer wishful thinking, George never gave up hope that unity between the faiths could be achieved through prayer and preaching and his own personal example.
George’s conversion came some fifteen years before the so-called Oxford Tractarian movement’s failure to reconcile Anglican and Catholic doctrine brought a more celebrated convert over to the Church of Rome in the person of another ‘tortured’ former Church of
England parson, John Henry Newman. But George was content to take a humbler path than Newman. Ordained priest in 1832, George returned to England and was appointed to the large industrial parish of West Bromwich in the Midlands, and continued working with the poorest of the poor, using the money sent by his family to help alleviate the overwhelming local poverty. And just as this work among the Catholic poor was much the same as that with his Anglican flock at Great Brington, so he never wavered in his faith that prayer and goodwill were the surest way to heal the rift between the Churches. During this period he had little contact with the family at Althorp, since his evangelical brother, the third Earl, made it a condition that if he came he was not to try converting any of his former Anglican parishioners to Catholicism. The ban became even stronger when George’s strongly anti-Catholic brother, Fritz, acceded to the title.
By now George had started what he called his private ‘missions’, travelling the length and breadth of the country, preaching his message of union between the Churches, and continuing to work among the sick and desperately poor. But in 1839, when his own health began to suffer after seven years working in his parish, he was appointed to teach future priests in the newly opened Catholic seminary of Oscott College. Here he was regarded as a loveable, eccentric figure who still taught his students cricket along with Catholic doctrine, and continued to proclaim his absolute belief in England’s ultimate reconversion. While continuing to tend the needy, it was now that he first began to use his contacts with the great and famous to spread his message. In 1838, he journeyed specially to France and persuaded the Archbishop of Paris to ask all French Catholics to pray regularly for the conversion of England.
But he was dissatisfied with what he felt to be the undemanding life that he was living and in 1845 – the year in which John Henry Newman made his celebrated passage to the Church of Rome –George Spencer, deeply moved by reading the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, decided to become a monk. He adopted the name Ignatius in honour of his hero. But instead of becoming a Jesuit himself, he felt himself directed to the small missionary order of Passionists, founded in the late eighteenth century by St Paul of the Cross, to pray for the reconversion of England.