SPENCER, Richard (1593-1661), of Althorp, Northants. and Orpington, Kent

A younger son of the famously wealthy Spencer family of Althorp, Spencer and his younger brother joined their two elder brothers at Oxford, though at a different college, studying at Corpus Christi under Thomas Jackson, a leading Arminian divine. T. Fowler, Hist. Corpus Christi Coll. (Oxf. Hist. Soc. xxv), 186. Jackson later dedicated a sermon on predestination to Spencer, who shared his Arminian inclinations. Thomas Jackson, Works (1673), ix. 504-8; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 7n, 143. Like his brothers, the eldest of whom died in France in 1610, Spencer subsequently visited Europe to complete his lengthy education. Upon his return he found a minor post at Court, and lived on a modest annuity provided by his father. M.E. Finch, Wealth of Five Northants. Fams. (Northants. Rec. Soc. xix), 58-9.

Spencer was elected as senior burgess for Northampton in 1620, together with Thomas Crewe, a lawyer resident at Steane in the south of the county, both of whom were described as gentlemen ‘of good descent and efficiency’, and sworn freemen without charge. Northants. RO, Northampton bor. 3/1, pp. 758, 780, 792, 796, 809. A third candidate, the unpopular chancellor of the diocese of Peterborough, Dr. John Lambe, was defeated or withdrew. It was probably Spencer who, on 11 May 1621, presented a petition from the Northampton corporation against Lambe, accusing him of oppression and extortion, and alleging that after ‘divers townsmen refused to give him their voices to be one of the burgesses of Parliament for Northampton (which he would fain have obtained by both fair means and threatenings) he presently cited many to the court, and there threatened them’. CD 1621, vi. 475-6; Nicholas, Procs. 1621, ii. 59. Spencer took an intelligent interest in the proceedings of the House, as his later remarks suggest, but made no recorded speeches. He is not always differentiated in the records from his brothers William and Edward, both of whom also sat in every Parliament between 1621-6. CD 1628, ii. 516, 519; iii. 165 Spencer’s legislative appointments included committees to make the estates of attainted persons liable for their debts (28 Apr. 1621) and prevent the taking of foreign bribes (moved by his brother Edward, 25 May). CJ, i. 595b, 626b. On 31 May he, his brothers and Sir Robert Phelips* heard evidence against Lambe, but the king intervened to halt the proceedings, and Lambe was knighted shortly after Parliament was adjourned for the summer. CD 1621, vii. 608. Although he made no recorded contribution to the second sitting, Spencer’s keen interest in proceedings is attested by his letter, dated 20 Nov. 1621, to Sir John Isham, reporting that the House would be called the following day, ‘and then without doubt we shall fall upon Sir Edwin Sandys his imprisonment, purposing to maintain the liberties of Parliament, or to live quietly in our countries’. Northants. RO, Isham of Lamport collection, I.C. 155.

Spencer was re-elected for Northampton in every subsequent Parliament of the 1620s, but a new recorder meant that he now settled for the second seat. In 1624 Spencer’s only committee appointment before the Easter recess was to investigate Exchequer abuses (26 February). CJ, i. 674b. When the Commons reassembled he was named to consider an estate bill of the Northamptonshire peer Lord Montagu (Sir Edward Montagu*, 5 April). Ibid. i. 755a. At a meeting of the committee for trade on 7 Apr. to examine the pretermitted customs, Spencer roundly condemned impositions, as did his father in the Lords, describing them as ‘against the essence of a free man and subject and against the ancient charter of England, Magna Carta, which provides for freedom in buying and traffic’. ‘Spring 1624’, p. 194 (9 April); R.E. Ruigh, Parl. of 1624, p. 324. He supported the impeachment of lord treasurer Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield*), whom he believed had personally profited from impositions, and on 28 May seconded a bill to make the estates of the fallen lord treasurer liable for his debts, without which his creditors would have no hope of redress. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 238. He was one of those ordered to examine the Virginia Company’s petition (27 Apr.), and educational grievances (28 Apr.), and was named to committees for the revived measure against foreign bribes (12 May), and a bill concerning brewhouses (19 May). CJ, i. 691a, 692b, 703a, 705b. Either he or his brother Edward presented a petition against Dr. Anyan, the master of Corpus Christi, Oxford, on 28 April. Ibid. 691b. On 3 May Spencer certainly presented a second petition from Northampton against Lambe, which was referred to the committee for courts of justice and reported by Phelips on 22 May. ‘Earle 1624’, f. 166v; CJ, i. 777a. He may also have been responsible for presenting a petition from his constituency against the alnage which was reported by his future father-in-law, Sir Edwin Sandys, on the same day. CJ, i. 709a-b, 774a, 793a. After the session was adjourned, in early August 1624, he was admitted to Gray’s Inn.

In the first Caroline Parliament, Spencer was among those appointed to manage the conference on the fast (23 June), to prepare heads for an address on religion in response to Montagu’s latest book (24 June), to consider a bill to mitigate excommunication (27 June), and to hear a petition against impositions on wine (29 June). Procs. 1625, pp. 228, 241, 253, 268. On 30 June he seconded the motion to grant two subsidies, one in October and one in April, moving that recusants’ arrears be added to them. Ibid. 276. He played no recorded part in the Oxford sitting.

At the general election of 1626 Spencer assured Lord Montagu of Boughton that he had done all he could to persuade the Northampton corporation to endorse Sir Lewis Watson* for a county seat, but had found them firmly resolved on his own brother, (Sir) William. HMC Buccleuch, i. 259. Disillusioned by the duke of Buckingham’s misconduct of the war, and by the Crown’s increasing resort to prerogative sources of revenue such as impositions, Spencer engaged with debate in 1626 much more actively than he had done in previous parliaments. On 15 Feb. he spoke against the projector of the pretermitted customs, Edmund Nicholson, reminding the House that hitherto not only had grievances been redressed but those responsible had been punished, citing the cases of Empson and Dudley and (more recently) of Middlesex. At the end of the debate he moved for a Remonstrance to be made against impositions, adding that ‘the Tunnage and Poundage taken by Privy Seal is of all other the greatest grievance’. Procs. 1626, ii. 45, 47, 51; iii. 83, 84, 86. Three days later he moved that Nicholson should be given 40 days to abjure the realm, and was appointed to chair a committee to scrutinize his patent. Ibid. ii. 69, 163, 194, 255. He was also appointed to a committee of inquiry into the wine imposts (20 February). Ibid. 73, 74, 262.

As one of those instructed to prepare for a debate on shipping, on 25 Feb. Spencer maintained that the decay of the Navy had been caused not by lack of funds, but by their misuse. Ibid. ii. 68, 128. With Sir George Goring*, Sir Robert Killigrew* and Sir Robert Pye* he was sent on 1 Mar. to ask Buckingham for an explanation for the renewed detention of the St. Peter of Le Havre. Ibid. i. 95, 105; ii. 162, 171. He reported that Buckingham was seeking the permission of the Upper House to reply, and was named to help manage a conference on the constitutional propriety of the demand (4 March). Ibid. ii. 177, 180, 195. He argued on 6 Mar. that the earlier dispatch of English ships to assist in the blockade of La Rochelle had diminished the honour and safety of the realm, and he was delegated to attend a conference on the Lords’ defence programme the following day. Ibid. 203, 209, 216. On 18 Mar. he agreed with Sir Alexander Temple* that incompetent officers had been appointed in the army and navy, and urged the House to inquire whether they had bought their places. Ibid. 314. In response to the king’s demand on 22 Mar. for disciplinary measures against Samuel Turner*, who had led the attack on Buckingham, Spencer seems to have favoured delaying tactics, and pointed out that ‘unless it be known who informs the king of Dr. Turner’s speech, it is to be taken upon common fame’. Ibid. 343, 344.

Spencer insisted on deferring any discussion of supply until a proper financial statement had been presented. ‘Unless the king’s reverence be laid open to us’, he said on 10 Mar., ‘we shall walk as blind men’, a point he repeated several times in subsequent debates. Ibid. 251, 275, 299-300, 323. In the meantime he turned his attention to other matters. He was appointed on 13 Mar. to consider a petition from the Levant Company merchants, and as the chairman of this committee recommended on 21 Mar. an address to the king against Sir Thomas Phelips’ appointment as successor to Sir Thomas Roe* as ambassador to Constantinople. Ibid. 271, 329. That same day he demanded the punishment of the ecclesiastical authorities responsible for imprisoning Sir Robert Howard*, even if their error was unintentional, and moved that all records of the case in High Commission should be expunged. Ibid. 332, 333, 334. By 27 Mar. he was prepared to annex three subsidies to the Tunnage and Poundage bill, but defended the principle of linking redress with supply. ‘Conditional grants of supply’, he asserted on 4 Apr., ‘have been made in as good times of as famous, valiant and worthy kings as ever were, and is justifiable’. Ibid. 380, 428. As one of the committee appointed on 14 Mar. to consider the proposal of Sir Dudley Digges* for a West India Company to finance a naval war with Spain, he proposed on 14 Apr. that customs should be levied on their imports at a fixed rate of five per cent. Ibid. 280, 441.

The turning point of the session came for Spencer on 27 Apr., once he learnt that Buckingham was prepared to champion Arminianism. After the duke had been accused of a ‘transcendent presumption of dangerous consequence’ in interfering with the medical treatment of the late king in his last illness, Spencer acted as teller against the House forming into an immediate grand committee, but the division was lost and the committee went ahead. Ibid. iii. 84. He declared on 1 May that he thought the stay of the St. Peter was ‘no grievance’, and three days later urged the House not to be distracted by new allegations against Buckingham that would not correspond with the charges being investigated by the Lords. Later, on 4 May, in committee of the whole House, he doubted whether the duke could be blamed for ‘the increase of popery by countenancing men in authority’. Ibid. 114, 161, 162. On 3 June he also came to the defence of Sir Dudley Carleton*, who was accused of having been rewarded for favouring the duke by his recent elevation to the Lords. Ibid. 352, 357, 363. On the accusation that Buckingham had misled Parliament in 1624 over the Spanish marriage negotiations, Spencer reminded the House on 10 June that Buckingham’s account had been delivered at James’s express command, and ‘all the duke said was justified for true both by the king dead and this king’. Ibid. 416, 418, 419. He himself was rewarded with a post as gentleman of the bedchamber, intended perhaps to qualify him for the Hague embassy, in succession to Carleton; and it was reported that this appointment had ‘drawn a party to the duke’s side in both Houses’. NLW, Wynn ms 1414; CD 1628, ii. 104.

Spencer chaired to committee of a naturalization bill for the four sons of Sir Jacob Astley (11 May), which he reported on 6 June. Procs. 1626, iii. 227, 377. His other legislative committee appointments included those to codify the shipping laws, especially over the right to press seamen for the Navy (15 Apr.), to draft a bill to regulate the alnage (25 May), and to compose the preamble to the subsidy bill (25 May). Ibid. ii. 446; iii. 329, 330. He was chosen to help draft an address on augmenting royal revenue (4 May), after calling for the resumption of Crown lands to be considered. Ibid. iii. 155, 159. He reminded the House of the importance of ‘rectifying the king’s revenue’ again on 5 June. Ibid. 372. To Charles’s message of 9 June threatening dissolution, Spencer responded by proposing a committee ‘to put into order those things which are under commitment, and appoint what matters shall be handled’. Ibid. 409. Three days later, as the session drew to a close, he desired ‘that we may read the bill of subsidy tomorrow, and prepare our grievances to be answered as soon as we may’. Ibid. 426, 429. In the debate of 13 June on whether to demand that Buckingham be sequestered from any contact with the king, Spencer warned that ‘if the king says we conceive amiss, we must conceive better again’. Ibid. 434. The same day, he acted as teller against hearing the report of the committee investigating a charge of breach of privilege against another Buckingham supporter, Sir John Savile*. Ibid. 433. Two days later the Parliament was dissolved.

Spencer inherited £2,500 on his father’s death in 1627. Shortly afterwards he married the daughter of Sir Edwin Sandys, whose religious and political outlook he shared, and settled in Kent. PROB 11/152, f. 418; Finch, 58-9; Tyacke, 143-5. On 1 Mar. 1628 it was reported that the Northampton electorate, angered by his collection of the Forced Loan, had resolved to replace him with Sir Erasmus Dryden*, but he was nevertheless re-elected, probably because of his family’s influence. Procs. 1628, vi. 122-3. His first speech of the session, on 21 Mar. 1628, in response to a bill to restrain sending children abroad for their education, was to move that this should not ‘hinder many from travel ... but papists’, and should therefore be re-drafted to ensure that it affected only Catholics. He was thereupon named to the committee. CD 1628, ii. 41, 49. On the same day he moved that the Tunnage and Poundage bill and the 21 grievances in the hands of John Bankes* should be brought into the House. Ibid. 48. 50. Three days later he defended his old tutor, Thomas Jackson, against accusations of crypto-popery and Arminianism, asserting his confidence ‘that what he hath done he can maintain out of Scriptures. If he cannot, let him suffer ... I have read his epistle twice and whosever does so understandingly will confess that he doth there free himself from that title’. Ibid. 93.

On 26 Mar. he moved for a debate on arbitrary imprisonment, gave the example of the Proclamation of 20 Nov. 1622 enjoining gentlemen to return to their estates and keep hospitality as an example in which certain kinds of confinement could be justified. Ibid. 134, 137. In a subsequent debate on the liberties of the subject, particularly habeus corpus, when a message was received from the Lords on 17 Apr. requesting to see the clerk’s book for the 1621 Parliament, with reference to a bill against imprisonment without charge, Spencer was the first Member to declare ‘that he remembered well the bill’, and summarized its contents. Ibid. 519. As in his last Parliament, Spencer was named to the committee for the bill to regulate alnage (1 April), a matter of probable interest to his constituents. Ibid. 227. However, when his disapproving colleague, Christopher Sherland, recorder of Northampton, launched a blistering attack on John Baber*, recorder of Wells, for his part in the enforced billeting of soldiers, Spencer merely offered the bland advice that the House should be ‘wary that we may not determine anything but with deliberation’ (9 April). Ibid. 389.

In the supply debate of 2 Apr. he argued as he had in 1626 for a radical approach, declaring ‘the king’s revenue is out of order, and till that be settled, which must be dowered by this House, we shall find the arrears the next year as great as now they are’. He also made clear the necessity of debating the matter before consideration of subsidies. ‘Heretofore it was not expected that the subjects should supply all, but that the revenues of the Crown should bear a great part’. The failure to rectify this problem, he indicated, would have grave consequences: ‘it was promised the last Parliament, when we gave three subsidies and three fifteenths, that the ports should first be repaired, and I fear now they are in as ill case as ever’. Ibid. 247, 261, 269, 271. Two days later he nevertheless moved for five subsidies, and after this had been agreed, on 11 Apr. he urged the House to fix the dates for their collection without delay. Ibid. 307, 311, 316, 318, 418, 421; iii. 328. He remained ever mindful of the bill for Tunnage and Poundage, which he argued the same day was not fit to be referred to the committee of trade, because it concerned the whole House. Ibid. ii. 415.

In response to Secretary Coke’s message the following day, warning the Commons not to encroach upon the powers of the king, Spencer demanded an explanation of what ‘power’ this referred to; but he received only an evasive answer. Ibid. 431n. 10, 434. With reference to his ‘noble cousin’, Sir Edward Coke*, Spencer argued on 18 Apr. that martial law was ‘unlawful, yet the lawyers themselves confess it to be convenient’, and he therefore proposed a bill to show when and where martial law ought to be executed. Ibid. 548, 552. He served on the committee for the bill to make marriage possible at all times of year (22 Apr.), which unlike most Arminians, he supported: ‘I should be against the bill, if they that are in authority would be sparing in granting licences; but since they will grant any man a licence for 3s. or thereabouts I think it is fit to be committed’. Ibid. iii. 22, 30, 34, 36. It is interesting that in doing so he again took a contrarian line against Sherland, who flouted the views of most of his fellow puritans to disparage the measure. The enmity between the two Northampton Members, which sprang from their diametrically opposite views on both religion and the duke of Buckingham, in whose impeachment Sherland had played a leading role, was never directly expressed; but they contradicted one another with increasing frequency in this Parliament, in debates on a wide range of topics, for example billeting and temporal simony.

In the debate on the bill against the purchase of judicial offices (23 Apr.), a measure initiated by Sherland in 1626, Spencer argued that judges did not usually buy their places, and he was the first named to the bill committee. Ibid. 44, 54. On the same day he was ordered to attend a conference on liberty of the subject, and six days later moved for a bill on billeting with a preamble reciting Magna Carta and the six confirmatory statutes. Ibid. 44, 153, 156, 165. He acted as teller on 10 May for the immediate recommittal of an estate bill promoted by the earl of Devonshire (Sir William Cavendish I*). Ibid. 10, 355. Spencer unequivocally condemned Dr. Roger Mainwaring, who had claimed divine sanction for extra-parliamentary taxation, as ‘the cutpurse of the whole kingdom’, and moved on 5 May for a bill to attaint him. Ibid. 262, 406. This would also exempt him from the general pardon, but although it was against precedent Spencer was prepared to let Mainwaring defend himself before sending the bill up to the Lords, as he argued on 31 May. Ibid. iv. 45.

As chairman of the committee to consider the grievances of the Levant merchants (10 May), he reported inaccurately on 17 May that impositions on currants amounted to 26 per cent of the selling price, and accused Exchequer officers of passing the buck so that importers could receive no redress. The privy councillors in the House were therefore ordered to request the king to restore the confiscated goods. Ibid. iii. 354, 447, 449, 452. On the previous day Spencer attacked the bill against scandalous and unworthy ministers, asking ‘what justice of the peace ever did, or was fit to, meddle in such matters? And how shall they be able to conform them hereafter, when they themselves are so generally defective?’. Ibid. 431, 436,438, 442. He also opposed the subscription bill on 17 May, which would effectively reinstate all moderately nonconforming ministers deprived since the beginning of James’s reign. Ibid. 451, 455, 458.

When the Lords desired a conference on 23 May on the difference between the Houses over the Petition of Right, Spencer was ordered to tell them that the Commons would consider their reply on the following day. Ibid. 558. He feared that if the petition were sent up to the Lords in the usual way they would amend it, and was named to a committee to consider how to present it (27 May). Ibid. 623, 631. When the king’s first answer was debated on 3 June, he moved that Sir John Eliot* should for his own good explain his meaning in terming English foreign policy ‘a conception of Spain’, thus allowing Eliot to put a favourable gloss on his words. Ibid. iv. 67, 70, 75, 78. Spencer remained a Buckingham supporter, and argued on 11 June that there was no proof to justify naming him as the cause of all evils, while he had been wrongly blamed for things that were beyond his control, as ‘for the guarding of the seas, [Buckingham lacked] money. For the ordnance, let the master of the ordnance be questioned; and for the impositions, I heard he opposed them as much as any’. Ibid. 248-9, 266.

On 14 June he spoke against the clause in the Remonstrance referring to alterations in religion, which provoked (Sir) Nathaniel Rich* to reply that he was sorry to see any Member countenancing Arminianism. Ibid. 321, 326. Spencer objected strongly to the Lords’ amendment of the phrase ‘the Commons’ grant’ in the subsidy bill preamble, to read ‘your subjects’ grant’, arguing that ‘hereafter they may dispute about the bill itself, and so overthrow the rights of this House. It is all we have to stand upon; we have the power to give subsidies’. Ibid. 349. To the plan to double customs duties he replied on 21 June that ‘the king did command Sir Edmund Sawyer* to give him a true information, which he had done if he had told him that, now being no law to take tunnage and poundage, he could not take it’. Ibid. 395-6, 414, 418. He therefore moved that Sawyer should be sent to the Tower. Ibid. 409, 412, 415, 419. Spencer’s final contribution before the dissolution was to include in their final petition to Charles a plea that the benefit of the impositions on currants go to the Crown rather than to private men. Ibid. 448, 457.

On 10 July 1628 a warrant was issued to pay Spencer £4 a day as ambassador to the United Provinces, and a fortnight later his departure was reported to be imminent. CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 202; CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 185. The appointment was revoked, however, possibly because Spencer was reluctant to accept. SP29/13/23. In the second session, he spoke on 26 Jan. 1629 on the export of foodstuffs to Spain, and was named to a committee to consider the matter. CD 1629, p. 107; CJ, i. 922a. He was one of those ordered to attend the king with a petition for a fast (29 January). CJ, i. 923a. The same day, he defended the principal Arminian writers (including Jackson), demanding that Sir Robert Harley* should ‘name particulars in what part of his book he doth not conform himself to our reformed religion’, and instead suggested that it was the anti-Arminians ‘that seek to bring in novel opinion’. CD 1629, 117. His suggestion that the Lambeth Articles, regarded by many anti-Arminians as authoritative, had in fact been revoked by Elizabeth, caused uproar. He was ordered to substantiate his claim, but is not recorded as speaking again. HMC Lonsdale, 66; Tyacke, 143-5.

In May 1629 Spencer was offered the post of ambassador to Venice, but managed to delay his departure for three years until the appointment was again rescinded. CSP Ven. 1629-32, pp. 57, 338, 614, 627. He failed to pay Ship Money in 1636 and was summoned before the Council, but he seems to have come to an arrangement with the sheriff. CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 132, 135, 341, 349, 384. He stood for Kent at the second election of 1640, but after a canvass withdrew before the poll. A.M. Everitt, Community of Kent and Great Rebellion, 76, 81. He signed the Kentish petition in 1642 and was imprisoned, subsequently fighting for the king at Edgehill. HMC 5th Rep. 22-4; Newman, 353. In 1646 he compounded on estates in Kent and Yorkshire, and spent much of the Interregnum abroad. CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 487; 1651, p. 528. After the Restoration he petitioned unsuccessfully for the vice-treasurership of Ireland and the provostship of Eton, claiming he had been granted both in reversion many years before, and for £4,000 never received upon his appointment as ambassador to the United Provinces. SP29/13/23; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 238. In his will, dated 5 June 1661, he divided his estates between his widow and two daughters. PROB 11/306, f. 224v-5. He died on 1 Nov. 1661 and was buried at Orpington. Chenevix-Trench, 35.