Early Life in England and Arrival in Virginia Colony
Nicholas Spencer was born to an aristocratic English family long seated at Cople, Bedfordshire, England. The family was related to the Spencer family of Northamptonshire, with whom they shared a coat of arms. In 1531 the Spencers bought the manor of Rowlands at Cople, which they owned for several centuries. Nicholas Spencer Sr., father of the Virginia emigrant, and his wife, the former Mary Gostwick, second daughter of Sir Edward Gostwick had several sons, of these William inherited the family estates but died childless after making his heir his nephew, also William, son of his next-brother Nicholas who had moved to Virginia. Another brother, Robert Spencer later removed from Surry County, Virginia, to Talbot County, Maryland, where his descendants long lived at Spencer Hall, the family plantation.
Nicholas Spencer moved from London to Westmoreland County, Virginia, in the 1650s, where he served as agent for his cousin John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper. Colepeper had inherited his father's share of ownership in the Virginia Company in 1617, and was subsequently knighted and afterwards raised to the peerage. He became the one-seventh proprietor of the Northern Neck of Virginia under the charter of 1649. Colepeper never lived in the colonies, and his son Thomas Culpeper, 2nd Baron Culpeper of Thoresway, who lived at Leeds Castle, did not arrive in Virginia until 1680. In the meantime Nicholas Spencer had come to Virginia to help oversee his cousin John's investment.
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