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SPE preface for applying Polybius' system to our English form of government. He also wrote a dissertation on the presence of the patricians in the Tributa Comitia, as well as a work entitled "Additional Observations on the Greek Accents," which was not published until 1775, eight years after his death.—F.  SPELMAN,, an eminent English antiquary, was a younger son of Sir John Spelman of Congham, near Lynn, where he was born in 1562. Educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, he studied law at Lincoln's inn, but marrying, became a country gentleman, and did not follow the profession of the law; his studies for which, however, were made available in his subsequent pursuits. Cultivating a taste for historical, ecclesiastical, and legal antiquities, he became the friend of Camden and Cotton, and was a member of the first Society of Antiquaries. He had been high sheriff of Norfolk, a member of two important commissions, knighted by King James I., and had written his book, "De Sepultura," on the exactions practised in the matter of burial fees, when in 1612, to benefit by the facilities afforded in the metropolis for the pursuit of his favourite studies, he settled in London. His treatise, "De non temerandis Ecclesiis," published in 1616, had a very powerful effect in its time, inducing several lay impropriators to surrender their property in that kind. In the course of his researches into the old constitution and laws of England, he saw the necessity for a knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, which he not only mastered himself but aided others to master, by establishing and endowing an Anglo-Saxon lecture at Cambridge. In 1626 he published part i., as far as the letter L, of his "Archæologus," a glossary of historical and legal terms current in old records. Part ii. was published by Dugdale in 1664, and the work is well known as "Spelman's Glossary." The chief of his other works was his great collection, the "Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones in re Ecclesiarum orbis Britannici," of which the first volume, from the introduction of Christianity to the Norman conquest, was published by himself in 1639; and a second volume, edited by Dugdale, in 1664. Spelman died in 1641. His English works, with a memoir by Bishop Gibson, were published in 1723.—F. E.  SPENCE,, remembered chiefly as the author of a volume of "Ana," was the son of the rector of Winnal, near Winchester, and was born in 1699. His education was cared for by a wealthy female relative, whose heir he expected to become, and by whom he was sent to Eton, Winchester, and New college, Oxford. His benefactress died without making a will, and Spence had to struggle for himself, which he did without repining. His struggle was neither long nor hard. He became a fellow of his college in 1722, taking holy orders in 1724, and in 1727 he was appointed professor of poetry at Oxford. This appointment was probably due to the success of his essay on Pope's Odyssey, published the year before. At any rate, and in spite of the occasional freedom of its criticisms, it procured him an acquaintance with Pope, which ripened into friendship, and proved in worldly matters useful to the critic of a poet familiar with the great. In 1730 he accompanied the earl of Middlesex, afterwards duke of Dorset, on a continental tour, and in 1736, three years after his return, he published an edition of Sackville's Gerboduc, it is said at the suggestion of Pope, but not improbably as a compliment to his noble pupil. Spence's converse with the great did not make him disdainful of the lowly. Before he set out on his tour, he left ready for publication an account of the poet of humble life, Stephen Duck, whom he otherwise befriended through life. Some fifteen years afterwards, moreover, he aided Blacklock, the blind Scottish poet, in his struggle, by publishing an account of the life and character, and by procuring subscribers to the works, of the northern bard. A kindly and friendly man, he was one of the earliest patrons of Dodsley in his rise from a footman to being a leading publisher. After two more continental tours—in the second of them he was companion to Lord Henry Lincoln, subsequently duke of Newcastle—Spence, who had meanwhile been made professor of modern history at Oxford, published his "Polymetis," in which the remains of ancient art were illustrated by and compared with descriptions in the poetry of the Romans, and vice versa—a work, though laughed at by the poet Gray, of some ingenuity, and the sale of which brought its author £1500. His pupil, Lord Lincoln, gave him a house and grounds at Byfleet in Surrey, near his own seat of Oatlands. He spent his later years between Durham—he was made a prebendary of the cathedral there in 1754—and his Byfleet residence, on the gardens of which he laid out the profits of his "Polymetis." He was drowned accidentally in the August of 1768. He left in MS. his well known anecdotes. One copy he presented to the duke of Newcastle, who allowed Johnson to make use of it for the Lives of the Poets. Spence's own copy came at last into the hands of Mr. Singer, by whom it was published in 1820 (second edition, 1858) as "Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of books and men, collected from the conversation of Mr. Pope and other eminent persons of his time, by the Rev. Joseph Spence, with notes and a life of the author," which we have followed in the memoir. The "Anecdotes" form a repertory of great value to the biographer of Pope, and to those interested in the wits of Queen Anne's time generally. Unfortunately the Oxford professor was too dignified to Boswellize, and the sayings and remarks which he quotes are jotted down each isolated and detached from the particular conversation in which they were uttered, and without Boswell's lively presentation of the where, when, and how of their production. The form is too strictly that of the French "Ana."—F. E.  SPENCE,, F.R.S., a well-known entomologist, was born at Hull in 1783. The early part of his life was devoted to business. When young, however, he became deeply interested in the study of insects, and this taste led him to form an acquaintance with the Rev. Mr. Kirby, with whom he was afterwards associated as joint-author of the celebrated "Introduction to Entomology"—a work which holds a foremost place amongst English classical works on natural history. His acquaintance with Mr. Kirby began by the mutual exchange of entomological specimens, and ripening into friendship was continued throughout a long series of years. The idea of the great work on entomology is said to have originated with Mr. Spence, who suggested it in a letter to Mr. Kirby in 1808. The first volume appeared in 1815, and it ran through three editions before the second was published in 1817. The four volumes of which the work consisted were not completed till 1826. In 1856, after the death of Mr. Kirby, Mr. Spence published in a cheaper and more popular form a seventh edition. Besides the "Introduction to Entomology," Mr. Spence contributed several papers to the Transactions of the Linnæan and Entomological Societies. Of the latter he was several times president. Mr. Spence at one time represented Hull in parliament; and having during the war in the early part of the present century formed the notion that Great Britain could flourish on her own resources, independently of other nations, he embodied these views in a pamphlet entitled "Britain independent of Commerce," which at the time excited much attention. He afterwards replied to the criticisms of the Edinburgh and other reviews in an essay entitled "Agriculture the source of wealth of Britain," 1808. In his latter years Mr. Spence resided in London, and devoted himself to his favourite science. He was a regular attendant at the meetings of the Linnæan and other scientific societies. He died on the 6th January, 1860. The following are some of his published papers—"A Monograph of the British species of the genus Choleva," Linn. Trans., v. xi.; "On the Disease in Turnips termed in Holdernesse 'Fingers and Toes,'" Hull, 1812; "Observations relative to Dr. Carus' Discovery of the Circulation of Blood in Insects," Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. iii.; "On some peculiarities in the Construction of the Nets of the Epeira deadema," ibid. vol. v.; Address delivered before the Entomological Society, 1848.—F. C. W.  SPENCER: the surname of the noble families of the earls of Sunderland, now merged in the dukedom of Marlborough, and of the Earls Spencer. They trace their origin to Geoffrey Le Despencer, younger brother of Hugh, the famous justiciary of England in the reign of Edward II. His descendant. Sir Robert Spencer of Wormleighton, Northumberland, was elevated to the peerage in 1603 by the title of Baron Spencer of Wormleighton.

, third Lord Spencer, and first earl of Sunderland, was born in 1620. When only nineteen years of age he married Lady Dorothy Sidney, daughter of the earl of Leicester. He succeeded to his father's title in 1606. On the breaking out of the civil war he repaired to the royal standard, though he disapproved of many of the unconstitutional measures of the court. He was specially dissatisfied with the influence of the queen, and of the popish party, and declared in a letter to his wife that, but for "the punctilio of honour," he would not have remained an hour in the royal camp. He did not receive any military commission, but fought with great gallantry as a volunteer at the battle of Edgehill, 23rd September, 1642. In the following year he was created Earl of Sunderland, it was 