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 and the local rank of lieutenant-general (5 May 1810). He commanded his division at Busaco, in the lines of Torres Vedras, in the pursuit of Masésna, and at Fuentes de Oñoro. Wellington repeatedly mentioned in his despatches the able and cordial assistance which Spencer afforded him. He was left in command of the British troops in the north of Portugal, when Wellington was with Beresford near Badajoz, in the latter half of April 1811, and again from the middle of May to the middle of June. He had to watch Marmont; and when the latter moved southward to join Soult and relieve Badajoz, Spencer made a corresponding movement and joined Wellington.

Napier speaks of him as vacillating when left in separate command, and as ‘more noted for intrepidity than for military quickness.’ He was one of the officers who wrote despairing letters home at the time of the retreat to Torres Vedras, and helped to shake the faith of the government in Wellington's scheme of defence. In July Graham joined the army from Cadiz, superseding Spencer as second in command. The latter obtained leave to go home, and Wellington reported it without any expression of regret. Spencer received two clasps (for Busaco and Fuentes de Oñoro) and the Portuguese order of the Tower and Sword.

He saw no further service, and passed the rest of his life in retirement. He had become lieutenant-general in the army on 4 June 1811, and was made general on 27 May 1825. He was given the colonelcy of his old regiment (the 40th) on 2 July 1818. He was appointed a member of the consolidated board of general officers, and was also made governor of Cork. He died at Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, on 29 Dec. 1828. The only portrait of him known to exist is a sketch belonging to Lord Garvagh, reproduced in the ‘Records’ of the 40th.

[United Serv. Journ. 1829, ii. 83–8; Gent. Mag. 1829, i. 179; Georgian Era, ii. 478; Roy. Mil. Cal. ii. 208; Smythies's Hist. Records of the 40th Regt.; Bunbury's Narratives of some Passages in the Great War; Wellington Despatches; Napier's War in the Peninsula; Stockdale's Enquiry into the Convention of Cintra.]

 SPENCER, CHARLES, third (1674–1722), statesman and bibliophile, born in 1674, was second son of Robert Spencer, second earl [q. v.], by Lady Anne Digby, youngest daughter of George, second earl of Bristol [q. v.] Evelyn, after a visit to Althorp in 1688, called him ‘a youth of extraordinary hopes, very learned for his age, and ingenious’ (Diary, 18 Aug.). By the death of his elder brother in the same year he became Lord Spencer. When his father fled to Holland in December 1688, his son went with him, and remained for some time at Utrecht with his tutor, Charles Trimnell (afterwards bishop of Winchester), ‘to study the laws and religion of the Dutch.’ In 1691 he was back at Althorp (ib. 12 Oct. 1691). Two years later he had begun to form a library, and made a tour about England (ib. 4 Sept. 1693). In 1695 he bought Sir Charles Scarborough's mathematical collection (ib. 10 March 1695), and by 1699 had in his possession ‘an incomparable library … wherein, among other rare books, were several that were printed at the first invention of that wonderful art, as particularly Tully's Offices and a Homer and Suidas almost as ancient’ (ib. April 1699).

On coming of age in 1695, Spencer entered public life as member of parliament for Tiverton. During his first two sessions Macaulay says he conducted himself as a steady and zealous whig. According to Swift, when in the House of Commons he affected republicanism, ‘and would often, among his familiar friends, refuse the title of lord, swear he would never be called otherwise than Charles Spencer, and hoped to see the day when there should not be a peer in England’ (, Hist. of Four Last Years of Anne). On 21 Nov. 1696, in the debate on Sir John Fenwick's attainder, he ‘made a very unadvised motion about excluding the lords spirituall from the bill’ (Vernon Corresp. ed. James, i. 69).

Spencer had married, in 1695, Lady Arabella Cavendish, fifth daughter of the second Duke of Newcastle, and soon after her death in June 1698 proposals were set on foot through Godolphin and his sister, Mrs. Boscawen, for a match between Spencer and Lady Anne, second daughter of the then Earl of Marlborough. The latter was at first by no means eager, but Sunderland promised that his son should be ‘governed in everything public and private by him’ (, Marlborough, ed. Wade, i. 53). The marriage with Lady Anne Churchill, which was agreed upon in the autumn of 1699, was to take place secretly ‘before the writings are drawn and without the king's leave’ (Shrewsbury Corresp. ed. Coxe, p. 592). It was actually celebrated in January 1700. It was a political event of great importance, as through it Marlborough and his wife were gradually drawn towards the whigs. For some time afterwards, however, Spencer and his father-in-law remained political 