SPELMAN, John (1594-1643), of Heydon, Norf.

Spelman must not be confused with John Spelman† of Narborough, head of the senior branch of the family who was returned for Castle Rising in 1645. C231/5, p. 157. The eldest son of the renowned antiquarian Sir Henry Spelman, he spent part of his early education with Sir Roger Townshend* under his father’s supervision. J. Stephens, ‘To the reader’, sig. c3, in H. Spelman, Larger Treatise Concerning Tithes (1647) ed. J. Stephens. In 1608 he was formally admitted to Gray’s Inn, but the following year he entered his father’s alma mater, Trinity College, Cambridge. By 1611 he had returned to his inn to study the law in earnest. Add. 34599, f. 11.

In 1618 Spelman married Townshend’s sister Anne despite her mother’s opposition. Lady Townshend feared that her daughter’s portion would be swallowed up in Sir Henry Spelman’s debts, and that having taken Anne’s money the Spelmans would ‘turn her big with child out of doors’. Add. 63081, f. 133; FSL, L.d.594. However she was powerless to act, as Anne was entitled to receive £2,000 on her marriage, with or without her family’s consent. PROB 11/131, f. 187. Relations worsened when, at Sir Henry’s instigation, the couple asked Lady Townshend for temporary accommodation, having found Sir Henry’s house in Westminster ‘over-pestered’. Lady Townshend cursed her daughter, and Spelman complained that the dispute made them ‘a gazing stock and table talk to the whole town’. L. Campbell, ‘Sir Roger Townshend and his Fam.’ (Univ. E. Anglia Ph.D. thesis, 1990), pp. 141-3. By the spring of 1621, Sir Henry had agreed to settle a substantial sum on the couple, and by 1628 Sir Roger Townshend had in his hands £4,000 in trust for Spelman and his wife, a sum which had risen to £5,000 by 1634. Ibid. 144; PROB 11/174, f. 363; 11/258, f. 221.

Spelman was living at Heydon in north Norfolk by 1625, almost certainly at Stinton Hall, which belonged to Townshend. Campbell, 145, 320. That same year his father and brother-in-law, Ralph Whitfield*, tried to get him returned to Parliament. However, hopes that George, 8th Lord Berkeley, would procure him a seat were disappointed. FSL, L.d.418. Spelman’s wife was the granddaughter of 7th Lord Berkeley’s second wife. The following year Spelman was returned for Worcester, which his father had represented in 1625 at the nomination of lord keeper Sir Thomas Coventry*, Chamber Order Bk. of Worcester ed. S. Bond (Worcs. Hist. Soc., n.s. viii), 202. but he made no mark on the parliamentary records. He did not seek re-election in 1628, but instead travelled to Italy and France, returning to England in 1630. CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 114, 531; Add. 34599, f. 107v.

Sir Henry Spelman described his son as the heir of his studies, E. Gibson, ‘The Life of Sir Henry Spelman Kt.’, sig. d, in Reliquiæ Spelmannianæ ed. E. Gibson. but initially at least Spelman showed little inclination towards antiquarian scholarship. F.M. Powicke, ‘Sir Henry Spelman and the "Concilia"’, in Studies in Hist. ed. L.S. Sutherland, 234. Nevertheless he published in 1639 an edition of an Anglo-Saxon psalter from a manuscript in his father’s library. Psalterium Davidis Latino-Saxonicum Vetus ed. J. Spelman. He also wrote a life of Alfred the Great, which was published posthumously. Spelman, Ælfredi Magni Anglorum Regis Invictissimi Vita. He was a royalist in the Civil War, although party to an agreement not to execute the Norfolk commission of array in the summer of 1642. R.W. Ketton-Cremer, Norfolk in the Civil War, 168. However, in December he was among those accused of disrupting a meeting of the parliamentarian deputy lieutenants. CJ, ii. 884. In February 1643 he told Sir John Potts† that he had always tried to keep the war out of Norfolk. Ketton-Cremer, 167-9. At the end of the month he fled to Oxford, Bodl., Tanner 55, f. 151. despite orders from Charles I to remain in Norfolk. Add. 34601, f. 182. Many years later it was alleged that Charles subsequently intended to appoint him secretary of state, [Walker], ‘Lectori’; Bodl., Tanner 26, f. 21. but the office was not vacant at that time. Several anonymous royalist tracts have been attributed to Spelman, although the evidence for his authorship is uncertain. D.L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, 226-8; M. Mendle, Henry Parker and the English Civil War, 104-7; F. Madan, Oxford Bks, ii. 207.

Spelman was resident at Brasenose College when he died of camp fever in July 1643 and was buried at St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on the 26th. St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, par. reg. (Soc. Gen. transcript) pt. 4, p. 18. His widow proved his will on 31 May 1646; it had been drafted in 1628 shortly before he undertook his foreign travels. PROB 11/200, f. 359. None of his descendants sat in Parliament.