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  continued to live at Althorp, where she died on 16 April 1716. She was a lady of the bedchamber to Queen Anne, as to Queen Mary of Modena. Her letters to such varied correspondents as Evelyn, the Earl of Romney, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Lady Russell are a proof that in cleverness and versatility she was scarcely, if at all, inferior to her husband, whose intrigues she had during his lifetime seconded with rare ability. Almost simultaneous with her letters to her lover we have lucubrations from her to Evelyn deploring her husband's apostasies, and asking for a list of pious works to employ in the education of her children.

Her portrait, by Sir Peter Lely, preserved in the Windsor Gallery (of which there is a replica at Althorp), was engraved by T. Wright for Mrs. Jameson's ‘Beauties of the Court of Charles II.’

A portrait of Sunderland by Carlo Maratti, now at Althorp, was engraved for Walpole's ‘Royal and Noble Authors’ (iv. 5). It shows a subtle and rather effeminate countenance, the features of which bear a strange resemblance to those of his wife. Another engraving of this picture was executed by R. Cooper after a drawing by R. W. Satchwell. Less distinctive is another portrait of Sunderland by Sir P. Lely, of which an anonymous engraving (to which is appended a facsimile autograph) is in the print-room at the British Museum.

[There is no full biography of Sunderland. Short memoirs appear in Collins's Peerage, vol. i. s.v. Marlborough, in the introduction to Blencowe's edition of Henry Sidney's Correspondence, and in the Penny Cyclopædia, xxiii. 296–8. For the early portions of his career: Burnet's Own Time; North's Examen; H. Savile's Letters; Temple's Memoirs; Bulstrode Papers, p. 147; Christie's Life of Shaftesbury; Cartwright's Sacharissa; and the histories of Eachard, Ranke, and Lingard are of special value. For his career under James II, the autobiographies of Bramston and Reresby, the Clarendon Correspondence (ed. S.W. Singer), the Hatton Correspondence, Dalrymple's Memoirs, and the Journal de Dangeau supplement the Life of James II; Roberts's Life of Monmouth; Lonsdale's Memoirs of the Reign of James II; Ralph's History of England; the specially valuable History of the Revolution by Mackintosh; and the works of Ranke and Macaulay; the latter embodies the reports of Barillon, Van Citters, and L'Hermitage (Addit. MS. 17677). For the later period there is—in addition to the Shrewsbury Correspondence, ed. Coxe, 1821 (containing many of Sunderland's letters), Prinsterer's Archives de la Maison d'Orange, 2nd ser. vol. v. passim—Harris's William III; Boyer's William III, and the Lives of Marlborough by Coxe and Lord Wolseley. See also very numerous references in the first four volumes of Luttrell's Brief Hist. Narration of State Affairs; G. E. C[okayne]'s Peerage; Doyle's Official Baronage; Dalton's English Army Lists; Sanford and Townsend's Great Governing Families of England, i. 366; Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, iv. 5–9; Dibdin's Ædes Althorpianæ, 1822; Neale's Seats, 1820, iii. 38 (with a list of the splendid collection of portraits at Althorp); Magalotti's Travels of Cosmo III, 1821, p. 248; Dasent's St. James's Square, pp. 69, 218, 235; Mrs. Jameson's Beauties of the Court of Charles II, pp. 147–58; Dryden's Works, ed. Scott, vi. 231; Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence, passim; Grammont's Memoirs, ed. Vizetelly; Lives of the Norths, ed. Jessopp; Cooke's History of Party, vol. i.; Torrens's History of Cabinets; Cunningham's Lives of Illustr. Englishmen, iv. 31; autograph letters of Sunderland and his wife are in Mr. Alfred Morrison's Collection, Cat. 1892, pp. 208–10; Addit. MSS. 28094, 25079, 25082, and 28569, freq.]

 SPENCER, ROBERT CAVENDISH (1791–1830), captain in the navy, born on 24 Oct. 1791, was third son of George John, second earl Spencer [q. v.], and brother of John Charles Spencer, viscount Althorp and third earl Spencer [q. v.] In August 1804 he entered the navy on board the Tigre with Captain Benjamin Hallowell, afterwards Carew [q. v.], and served continuously with him, in the Tigre and afterwards in the Malta—being promoted to be lieutenant on 13 Dec. 1810—till appointed to command the Pelorus brig in October 1812. On 22 Jan. 1813 he was promoted to be commander of the Kite, from which he was moved into the Espoir, one of the squadron off Marseilles, under the command of Captain Thomas Ussher [q. v.] He was afterwards appointed to the Carron, employed on the coast of North America, was actively engaged in the operations against New Orleans, and was promoted to post rank by the commander-in-chief, Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane [q. v.], on 4 June 1814. In 1815 he commanded the Cydnus on the home station, and in 1817–19 the 26-gun frigate Ganymede in the Mediterranean, where he conducted a successful negotiation with the bey of Tunis. From 1819 to 1822 he commanded the Owen Glendower on the South American station, and from 1823 to 1826 the 46-gun frigate Naiad in the Mediterranean, where he took an active part in the operations against Algiers in the summer of 1824 [see ], and was afterwards employed on the coast of Greece during the war of independence. From August 1827 to September 1828 Spencer was private secretary and groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of Clarence, then lord high admiral; in October 1828 he was nominated a K.C.H.,