Thomas Spencer

• General Notes
  • Reverend John Holding, Vicar of Stotfold, Bedfordshire, England, made an extensive search of old records and other historical data relating to the Spencers who migrated to America in 1632 from Bedfordshire, England. Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire are adjoining territory.(counties). Eton Socon lies near Badby, the home of Henry Spencer, and Mr. Holding suggests that Thomas Spencer, the second son of Henry Spencer, was the Thomas Spencer who resided at Eton Socon in 1433. The first official notice of the Spencer family in Bedfordshire, England, occurs in an official document issued by certain commissioners appointed by King Henry IV in the year 1433 as the result of an equiry that had been made by authority of Parlaiment. We are told that the Commons in the Parlaiment of 1433, thee having been complaints that the country swarmed with robbers, and oppressors of the people, and various evil doers, it was enacted that certain commissioners in every county should have power to summon
    them all persons of quality, and to administer to them an oath for better keeping of the peace and observing the King's laws, both as to themselves and their retainers. (See Blayde's Visitation of Bedfordshire, pg ix) The list of persons of quality thus summoned includes the names of Thomas Spencer and Johannes Spencer. In the Pamphlet compiled by the Rev. John Holding, M.A., he says: "Our search must commence then with the first recorded fact of 1433, and from this as a starting point our investigation must proceed. The Hearld's Visitation Book of 1566 was made more than a century afterwards, and the pedigrees that given embrace some of 3 or 4 generations at last before a family could claim to rank among the gentry." From an old manuscript in the British Museum, called Phillip's MS. (No 10376) Mr Holding found material which states that
    Thomas Spencer of Eton Socon left 3 sons: John, Robert and Thomas. The social status of Thomas Spencer of Eton Socon is not shown in any of the Herald's Visitations, although it is stated that he was a man of some standing in the county in 1433.  Mr Holding says: "One thing is certain, the Bedfordshire Spencers were allied to those of Northamptonshire, but where the point of junction lies it is impossible for us to say., as we have no material at our disposal to enable us to decide. they must have satisfied the Hearlds in their visitations in 1566, 1634 and 1666, that they were the same family, otherwise they would not have been allowed to bear the same coat of arms and crest, as they did, with only one slight difference, that whereas on the bend sable of the Northampton arms, there are three escallops (shells) on the Bedfordshire shield, there are three fleurs-di-lis.  The crest is exactly the same a griffin's head between two wings expanded, emerging out of a mural crown."

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