His father was George John, Earl Spencer, K.G., &c., &c. He was connected by ties of consanguinity and affinity with the Earl of Sunderland and the renowned Duke of Marlborough; was successively member of Parliament, one of the Lords of the Treasury, and succeeded Lord Chatham as First Lord of the Admiralty on the 20th of December, 1794. This office he retained until 1800, and, during his administration, the naval history of England shone with the victories of St. Vincent, Camperdown, and the Nile. Perhaps his term of office was more glorious to himself from the moderation and justice with which he quelled the mutiny at the Nore, than from the fact of his having published the victories that gave such glory to his country. He married, in 1781, Lavinia, the daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, afterwards Earl of Lucan. Five sons and three daughters were the issue of this marriage. Two of them died in infancy. The oldest, John Charles, Lord Althorp, succeeded his father in 1834, and died childless in 1845; the second, Sarah, is the present Dowager Lady Lyttelton; the fifth, Robert Cavendish, died unmarried in 1830; the sixth, Georgiana, was married to Lord George Quin, son to the Marquis of Headfort, and died in 1823; the seventh, Frederick, father of the present earl, succeeded his eldest brother in 1845. The youngest, the Honourable George Spencer, is the subject of the present biography. He was born on the 21st of December, 1799, at the Admiralty in London, and baptized according to the rite of {3} the Church of England, by the Rev. Charles Norris, prebendary of Canterbury. Whether he was taken to Althorp, the family seat in Northamptonshire, to be nursed, before his father retired from office in 1800, we have no means of knowing; but, certain it is, that it was there he spent his childhood until he went to Eton in 1808. We will let himself give us the history of his mind during this portion of his existence: the history of his body is that of a nobleman's child, tended in all things as became his station:--