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.
Read more about this topic: Nicholas Spencer
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life, england, arrival and/or colony:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“In England the judges should have independence to protect the people against the crown. Here the judges should not be independent of the people, but be appointed for not more than seven years. The people would always re-elect the good judges.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten the arrival of that age.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
““Tall tales” were told of the sociability of the Texans, one even going so far as to picture a member of the Austin colony forcing a stranger at the point of a gun to visit him.”
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)