Author: Spencer, Frederic Charles
Biography:
SPENCER, Frederic Charles (1796-1831: ancestry.com)
The Vale of Bolton proved to be the swan-song of its author, a young aristocrat. He was the grandson of Lord Charles Spencer (1740-1820), MP for Oxfordshire, who had bought the park and manor house of Wheatfield, Oxfordshire, in 1770. (William Robert Spencer, q.v., was his uncle.) Frederick Charles was born at the house on 18 Mar. 1796 and baptised at the church on 28 Mar., the third child and second son of John Spencer, Esq. (1767-1831), and his wife Elizabeth Spencer (1764-1812), second daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. (All public records have the Frederick spelling; the Frederic of the title-page appears to have been a literary affectation though it could also be a printer’s error.) He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1813 (BA 1818, MA 1820), took orders, and was made Rector of the parish of Wheatfield by his grandfather in 1820. On 6 Oct. 1823 he married Mary Anne Bernard Morland (1800-82) at Lower Winchenden, Buckinghamshire. They had at least two children, a girl and a boy, at Wheatfield before he died there on 2 Oct. 1831. (ancestry.com 17 Nov. 2024; findmypast.com 17 Nov. 2024; Alumni Oxonienses; GM Oct. 1831, 378; LES 3 Oct. 1831) HJ