Notes |
- BIOGRAPHY
Son of Albert Edward, 7th Earl Spencer and Lady Cynthia Hamilton, Edward John Spencer was born on 24 January 1924 in London.
Johnnie Spencer carried on the family tradition of personal service to the Monarch by becoming equerry to King George VI and later to Queen Elizabeth. In 1953, when about to accompany the Queen on a royal tour of Australasia, he announced his engagement to Frances Roche, daughter of Lord and Lady Fermoy.
On 1 June 1954 in Westminster Abbey he married the Hon Frances Burke Roche and they had five children. They made their home on the Sandringham estate at Park House where Frances herself had been born on 20 January 1936, the day when King George V died in nearby Sandringham House.
John Spencer had inherited his family's interest in agriculture. After his marriage he resigned his post as equerry in order to follow a course at Cirencester Agricultural College, and then started farming seriously both in Norfolk and at Althorp. Like so many Spencers he was a keep cricketer, and also a good shot; but his favourite hobby was photography.
The four surviving Spencer children Sarah, Jane, Diana, and Charles, were fortunate in enjoying a particularly close and loving relationship with both their father and their mother; but the relationship between those parents themselves was not so happy, and in 1967, their marriage finally collapsed and ended in a 1969 divorce.
On 9 June 1975 Edward John Spencer succeeded his father as 8th Earl Spencer and Althorp became the family home. In 1976 John Spencer married Raine McCorquodale and the children began to spent less and less time at Althorp. On 29 March 1992 he died in London.
|