Col. Nicholas Spencer was a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 merchant who emigrated to Westmoreland County, Virginia

Westmoreland County, Virginia

As of the census of 2000, there were 16,718 people, 6,846 households, and 4,689 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 9,286 housing units at an average density of...

, where he became a planter and which he represented in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Spencer later served as Secretary and President of the Council of the Virginia Colony, and on the departure of his cousin Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper

Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper

Thomas Colpeper, 2nd Baron Culpeper of Thoresway was the colonial governor of Virginia from 1677 to 1683.-Biography:...

 in 1683, was named Acting Governor (1683–84), in which capacity Spencer served until the arrival of Governor Lord Howard of Effingham

Francis Howard, 5th Baron Howard of Effingham

-External links:* from the Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, Vol. I, June 11, 1680 - June 22, 1699....

. Spencer's role as agent for the Culpeppers helped him and his friend Lt. Col. John Washington

John Washington

John Washington was an English Virginia planter and politician. He was the immigrant ancestor and great-grandfather of George Washington, first president of the United States of America.-Early life and family:...

, ancestor of George Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

, secure the patent for their joint land grant of the Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon

The name Mount Vernon is a dedication to the English Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon. It was first applied to Mount Vernon, the Virginia estate of George Washington, the first President of the United States...

 estate.

Early life in England and arrival in Virginia Colony

Nicholas Spencer was born to an aristocratic English family long seated

Family seat

A seat or family seat is the principal residence of a family. The residence usually denotes the social, economic, political, or historic connection of the family within a given area. Some families took their dynasty name from their family seat , or named their family seat after their own dynasty...

 at Cople

Cople

Cople is a village and civil parish in the English county of Bedfordshire. The name Cople is derived from the phrase Cock Pool, a place where chickens were kept, that was mentioned in the Domesday Book.- History :...

, Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region.It borders Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east....

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The family was related to the Spencer family of Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...

, with whom they shared a coat of arms

Coat of arms

A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

. In 1531 the Spencers bought the manor of Rowlands at Cople, which they owned for several centuries. Nicholas Spencer Sr., father of the Virginia emigrant, and his wife, the former Mary Gostwick, second daughter of Sir Edward Gostwick had several sons, of these William inherited the family estates but died childless after making his heir his nephew, also William, son of his next-brother Nicholas who had moved to Virginia. Another brother, Robert Spencer later removed from Surry County, Virginia

Surry County, Virginia

As of the census of 2010, there were 7,058 people, 2,619 households, and 1,917 families residing in the county. The population density was 24 people per square mile . There were 3,294 housing units at an average density of 12 per square mile...

, to Talbot County, Maryland

Talbot County, Maryland

-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*81.4% White*12.8% Black*0.2% Native American*1.2% Asian*0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*1.6% Two or more races*2.7% Other races*5.5% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...

, where his descendants long lived at Spencer Hall, the family plantation.

Nicholas Spencer moved from London to Westmoreland County, Virginia, in the 1650s, where he served as agent for his cousin John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper

John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper

John Colepeper of Bedgebery, 1st Baron Culpeper of Thoresway was an English politician.-Life:He was the only son of Thomas Culpeper of Wigsell and Anne Slaney , daughter of Sir Stephan Slaney, Lord Mayor of London...

. Colepeper had inherited his father's share of ownership in the Virginia Company

Virginia Company

The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...

 in 1617, and was subsequently knighted and afterwards raised to the peerage. He became the one-seventh proprietor of the Northern Neck

Northern Neck

The Northern Neck is the northernmost of three peninsulas on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This peninsula is bounded by the Potomac River on the north and the Rappahannock River on the south. It encompasses the following Virginia counties: Lancaster,...

 of Virginia under the charter of 1649. Colepeper never lived in the colonies, and his son Thomas Culpeper, 2nd Baron Culpeper of Thoresway, who lived at Leeds Castle

Leeds Castle

Leeds Castle, southeast of Maidstone, Kent, England, dates back to 1119, though a Saxon fort stood on the same site from the 9th century. The castle is built on islands in a lake formed by the River Len to the east of the village of Leeds....

, did not arrive in Virginia until 1680. In the meantime Nicholas Spencer had come to Virginia to help oversee his cousin John's investment.

Becoming a Virginia administrator and agent

On his arrival in the colony, Spencer secured an appointment as a customs collector, in addition to his post as the administrator of his cousin's Virginia estates. (Spencer's job as agent for his Colepeper cousins included such prosaic tasks as seizing 'winter beaver skins' or casks of tobacco for debts owed the Colepeper interests). Spencer and John Washington jointly held the post of customs collector on the Potomac. (After Washington's death in 1679, Spencer was sole customs collector on the Potomac.) He also won his own land grant. But Spencer was, unlikely as it sounds, apparently an efficient administrator on his own, later being appointed to additional posts in Virginia by virtue of his abilities.
Spencer was apparently a pragmatic administrator. He was also a hard-nosed capitalist. When it came to slavery, for instance, Spencer weighed the benefits of enslaved labor in a strictly cost-benefit way. "The low price of Tobacco," Spencer wrote, "requires it should bee made as cheap as possible, and that Blacks can make it cheaper than Whites." Spencer's rationale for slavery was probably as succinctly heartless as any committed to paper.

Spencer's role as an aristocratic bureaucrat in the new colony was a tricky one. He was navigating the shoals of dilemmas which have perplexed a nation for centuries. While simultaneously attempting to rationalize slavery, Spencer was also writing to the Privy Council in England about the Virginia Colony's precarious place on the edge of Catholic Maryland. "Unruly and unorderly spirits lay hold of ye motion of affairs," Spencer wrote, "and that under the pretext of Religion, soe as from those false glasses to pretend to betake themselves to Arms... from the groundless Imaginacon (sic) that the few Papists in Maryland and Virginia had conspired to hyre the Seneca Indians, to ye Cutting off, and totall distroying of all ye Protestants."

At the same time, the forces that were propelling the Virginia Colony into the forefront of American economic and social might – primarily the raising of tobacco based on slavery – were simultaneously making Spencer's administrative role tricky. The Virginia colony of the era was, as the eminent colonial historian Edmund S. Morgan wrote, "the volatile society." There were popular uprisings such as Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion was an uprising in 1676 in the Virginia Colony in North America, led by a 29-year-old planter, Nathaniel Bacon.About a thousand Virginians rose because they resented Virginia Governor William Berkeley's friendly policies towards the Native Americans...

, as well as the tobacco plant-cutting riots. A communication to the Crown in 1674 noted that his opposition to the Bacon Rebellion, for instance, had taken a toll on Spencer's estates. Having done the country "very good service against the Rebells, in that hee affected part of the Country where he resided, and as wee are credibly informed, by his Correspondence here is much Impaired in his Estate by the late Rebells."

In 1682 Spencer wrote to London in the wake of the events roiling Virginia. "Bacon's Rebellion," Spencer told colonial overseers in London, "had left an itching behind it. It was "plaine" that the class tensions stirred by the Rebellion had lingered, with a "mutinous mob" subsequently engaged in "wild and extravagant" rioting, going from farm to farm, tearing tobacco plants out by their roots. The Virginia government reacted harshly with militia patrols and the promise of steep fines. The "frenzy," according to Spencer, destroyed crops on over 200 plantations, and was driven by a glutted tobacco market which had depressed prices. Even the wives, Spencer wrote, took up hoes laid down by their husbands and continued to rip out the plants. Such civil disobedience, Nicholas Spencer saw, was the price paid by colonial administrators acting the foil for the empire's merchants back home.

For an aristocratic Englishman accustomed to centuries-old protocol, the mix must have been dizzying. One can almost sense Spencer's wish for some good old-fashioned English authority when, taken with symptoms of illness, he wrote to his brother in England outlining his pains, asking him to consult an English doctor and send him the diagnosis as quickly as possible.

Nor was Spencer's role as his Colepeper cousins' agent an easy job. As landlords of an almost-feudal domain eventually encompassing over five million acres (20,000 km²) in the new colony, the Colepeper Northern Neck grant, eventually passed on to their Fairfax heirs, came to be seen by some colonists as an onerous reminder of English aristocratic privilege. In Colepeper's absence, it fell to their relation Spencer to do the heavy-lifting of collecting rents and taxes on the Colepeper barony.

In the meantime, Spencer married Frances, the daughter of Col. John Mottrom

John Mottrom

John Mottrom , or Mottram, was one of the first, if not the first, white settlers in the Northern Neck region of Virginia between 1635 and 1640.-Political career:...

 of Coan Hall of Northumberland County, Virginia

Northumberland County, Virginia

Northumberland County is a county located on the Northern Neck in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a state in the United States. In 2010, its population was 12,330. Its county seat is Heathsville...

. Mottrom was likely the first white settler of the Northern Neck

Northern Neck

The Northern Neck is the northernmost of three peninsulas on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This peninsula is bounded by the Potomac River on the north and the Rappahannock River on the south. It encompasses the following Virginia counties: Lancaster,...

 in the early seventeenth century. He later served as the first Burgess for Northumberland in 1645, and presided over the county court for four years. Mottrom's daughter and her husband Nicholas Spencer named one of their sons, Mottrom, after John Mottrom. Another Spencer son, William, returned to England for schooling and remained there, serving as a Whig

British Whig Party

The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

 Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for Bedfordshire. William Spencer, the son of the Virginia emigrant Nicholas, married Lady Catherine Wentworth, daughter of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Cleveland

Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Cleveland

Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Cleveland was a Cavalier general who fought for Charles I during the English Civil War.He was the eldest son of Henry Wentworth, 3rd Baron Wentworth and Anne Hopton. His paternal grandfather was Thomas Wentworth, 2nd Baron Wentworth, the last Englishman to hold Calais...

. (Following the early death of William, his brother Nicholas Jr. returned to England to succeed to the family estates.)

Nicholas Spencer was prominent in the affairs of the Virginia colony, residing at his plantation on Nomini Creek. Westmoreland County's Cople Parish, the Anglican parish which embraced half the county, was renamed in 1668 to honor Spencer and his English birthplace at Cople. The Spencer family were connected to the Washington family in England, and later in Virginia. Col. Spencer patented the 5000 acres (20.2 km²) land grant at Mount Vernon with his friend Lt. Col. John Washington

John Washington

John Washington was an English Virginia planter and politician. He was the immigrant ancestor and great-grandfather of George Washington, first president of the United States of America.-Early life and family:...

 in 1674, with Spencer acting as the go-between in the sale. The successful patent on the acreage was due largely to Spencer, who acted as agent for his cousin Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper, who controlled the Northern Neck

Northern Neck

The Northern Neck is the northernmost of three peninsulas on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This peninsula is bounded by the Potomac River on the north and the Rappahannock River on the south. It encompasses the following Virginia counties: Lancaster,...

 of Virginia, in which the tract lay.

Spencer's business interests and later life

When John Washington died in 1677, his son Lawrence, George Washington's grandfather, inherited his father's stake in the Mount Vernon property. (Following Col. Nicholas Spencer's death, the Washingtons and the Spencers divided the land grant, with the Spencer heirs taking the larger southern half of the Mount Vernon grant bordering Dogue Creek, and the Washingtons the portion along Little Hunting Creek. The Spencer heirs paid Lawrence Washington 2,500 pounds of tobacco as compensation for their choice.) Later the Washingtons bought out the Spencer interest at Mount Vernon.

Aside from acting as agent for the Colepeper interests, Spencer was frequently involved in Virginia Colony business, and he often corresponded with English administrators in London, as well as family members in Bedfordshire and elsewhere. When his cousin Thomas Colepeper departed Virginia in 1683, Spencer was named Acting Governor

Governor

A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...

, in which capacity he served for nine months until the April 1684 arrival of Francis Howard, 5th Baron Howard of Effingham

Francis Howard, 5th Baron Howard of Effingham

-External links:* from the Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, Vol. I, June 11, 1680 - June 22, 1699....

. Because of the early deaths of his brothers, Spencer was the only surviving son of his father Nicholas, and so inherited extensive family estates in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire

Huntingdonshire

Huntingdonshire is a local government district of Cambridgeshire, covering the area around Huntingdon. Traditionally it is a county in its own right...

.

Spencer also was left land by other early prominent settlers in Westmoreland County. In a deposition of 1674 by Lt. Col. John Washington, for instance, who was related to the Pope family of Popes Creek, Washington testified that in his will of June 24, 1674, Washington's kinsman Richard Cole had left all his Virginia lands to Nicholas Spencer. Washington "declareth that hee hath heard Mr. Richard Cole Deceased declare that hee had made a will, and given his whole estate to younge Mr. Nicholas Spencer and further saith not." The controversial Richard Cole had also specified that his body be buried on his plantation in a black walnut coffin with a gravestone of English black marble (to be imported for the purpose) and a tombstone whose epitaph read: "Heere lies Dick Cole a grievous Sinner, That died a Little before Dinner, Yet hopes in Heaven to find a place, To Satiate his Soul with Grace."

Nicholas Spencer died in Virginia in 1688. In his will in April of 1688, Spencer styled himself "of Nominy in Westmoreland Co. in Virginia." Nicholas Spencer left five sons: William, Mottrom, Nicholas Jr., John, and Francis (to whom his father left Mount Vernon). Spencer probably had at least one daughter, to whom Mottrom Spencer referred to in his will as "my sister Mrs. Lettice Barnard." In his will, filed with the English courts at Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

, Col. Spencer named his "singular good friends Coll. Isaac Allerton

Isaac Allerton Jr.

Isaac Allerton Jr , the son of Mayflower Pilgrim Isaac Allerton and Fear Brewster, and was a Colonel, Merchant, and trader in Colonial America. He was first in business with his father in New England, and after his father's death, in Virginia...

 of Matchotick, Capt. George Brent of Stafford Co. (former Governor of Maryland

Governor of Maryland

The Governor of Maryland heads the executive branch of the government of Maryland, and he is the commander-in-chief of the state's National Guard units. The Governor is the highest-ranking official in the state, and he has a broad range of appointive powers in both the State and local governments,...

), and Capt. Lawrence Washington" to serve as trustees of his estates. Capt. Washington, named by Spencer as a trustee, was the younger brother of Lt. Col. John Washington and was born in 1635. He and the other trustees named by Col. Spencer in his will received forty shillings for mourning ring

Mourning ring

A mourning ring is a finger ring worn in memory of someone who has died. It often bears the name and date of death of the person, and possibly an image of them, or a motto. They were usually paid for by the person commemorated, or their heirs, and often specified, along with the list of intended...

s.

Following Nicholas Spencer's death, the family's 6000 acres (24.3 km²) plantation at Nomini in Westmoreland was sold. In 1709 Robert Carter

Robert Carter I

Robert "King" Carter , of Lancaster County, was a colonist in Virginia and became one of the wealthiest men in the colonies....

 purchased the Spencer property from the heirs of Col. Spencer for £800 sterling, marking the end of the Spencer family's residence in Westmoreland, and delineating the future site of Nomini Hall, the Carter family seat in Westmoreland occupying the former Spencer estate.

The English branch of the family continued to live in Bedfordshire, where members of the family served in Parliament and were large landowners. The Spencer family continued to hold its land at Cople

Cople

Cople is a village and civil parish in the English county of Bedfordshire. The name Cople is derived from the phrase Cock Pool, a place where chickens were kept, that was mentioned in the Domesday Book.- History :...

, Bedfordshire, until the nineteenth century. "The Spencers’ Cople estates," according to the Bedfordshire County Council, "were bought by Francis Brace for the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough

Duchess of Marlborough

Duchess of Marlborough may refer to:* Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough , wife of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough* Henrietta Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough , daughter and heiress of the 1st Duke of Marlborough...

, and the manor still was known as Rowlands when part of the Duke of Bedford’s estate at the start of the 19th century."

External links

• Deed to Col. Nicholas Spencer and Lt. Col. John Washington, Mount Vernon, George Washington as an Inventor and Promotor of the Useful Arts, Joseph Meredith Toner, Washington Patent Centennial Celebration 1891, D. C., Gedney & Roberts Co., 1892
• George Washington's Survey of Mount Vernon, October 1–2, 1759, George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens

Sources

• Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (ISBN 0195069056), David Hackett Fischer, Oxford University Press, 1989
• Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America, Giles Milton, Macmillan, New York, 2001
• American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, Edmund S. Morgan, W. W. Norton & Co. (reissue), 2003
• Cople, A History of the County of Bedford, Vol. 3, William Page (ed.), Victoria County History, British History Online, british-history.ac.uk