Aubrey George Spencer, Bishop of Jamaica
(1795-1872)
27 October 1860

Volume 2, page 61, sitting number 1542.

Born in London on 8 February 1795, Aubrey George Spencer was a descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough. He originally joined the Navy but his health failed him and he was instead ordained a priest in 1819. He eventually became a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionary to Newfoundland, and when the climate proved too cold for him, he moved to Bermuda. Nevertheless, he accepted when, in 1839, he was offered the first Anglican bishopric of Newfoundland but he was once again troubled by ill health and consequently in 1843 obtained his translation to Jamaica. Though he retired to England in 1855 he remained the Bishop of Jamaica until his death in 1872. He settled in Torquay, occasionally assisting the aging Bishop of Exeter, Henry Phillpotts.

Theologically, he was anti-Tractarian and anti-Catholic. His last publication, A Brief Account of the Church of England, its Faith and Worship (1867) was a decidedly traditional and Protestant work.

On 14 July 1822 he married Eliza, daughter of John Musson. Their marriage produced three daughters.

He appears on the 1861 census living with his wife Eliza and two servants at 14 Church Terrace at Lee in Kent (now a district of a southeast London between Eltham and Lewisham).

He died, aged 77, at ‘Braddon Tor,’ his residence in Torquay, on 24 February 1872, leaving an estate valued at £4000.

[His brother, George John Spencer, the Bishop of Madras in India, also sat for Silvy.]