Named for his godfather, Edward VII, he served in the Life Guards and was wounded in the early fighting of World War I. He was a difficult character to assess. To people he did not know or did not like "Jack" Spencer could be forbidding, gruff, and at times positiveley rude; but to friends, or sometimes to mere acquaintances whom he found congenial, he showed himself a kind, considerate and warm-hearted person. He has been described as "an ingrowing character". Perhaps the shyness inherited from his mother combined with his upbringing by an unsympathetic father to turn him in upon himself and to blunt his perception of other people.
A man totally lacking in any sense of the appropriate, he would say or do precisely what he himself thought true and right without the faintest regard for the reaction his words or deeds might produce. The "coffins" story, still current in Northamptonshire, is a good example of his strange obtuseness. The Spencer vault under Great Brington church was overcrowded, and many of the coffins were in a state of disintegration. Spencer had the place cleared and the bodies, or what
remained of them, burnt. The action was a sensible one, though he never thought to consider its effect on his more conventional neighbours, who still shudder with horror at the thought of his casual method of disposing of the bones of his ancestors.
As a young man at Trinity, Cambridge, he joined a dining-club deceptively known as the True Blue. The Whig aristocrats who belonged to this exclusive society were too conservative to recognize the
change in the significance of party colours and continued to call themselves after the "buff and blue" of Charles James Fox. The club owned some very fine plate which Jack Spencer, always concerned with the preservation of anything of artistic or historical interest, carried off at the beginning of the Second World War and put into safe-keeping until 1945.
Jack Spencer took little or no interest in the other traditional concerns of his family. As a young man he had enjoyed hunting, but in later life he gave it up entirely. He did, however, keep up some
connection with the Pytchley, performing such functions as the presentation of a testimonial to the famous huntsman, Frank Freeman, and keeping the coverts on his property in reasonable order, although more from a sense of duty to the neighbourhood than from any real interest in the sport.

The Spencers had always been known as good landlords and good neighbours; their roots went very deep into their native soil. Jack Spencer loved and served Northamptonshire well, devoting much of his time and energy to local affairs. For many years he was Lord Lieutenant of his native country. On the County Council he was the longest serving member, and he was also Chairman of the Northampton General Hospital Management Committee. At the very centre of Jack Spencer's local patriotism was his love for Althorp. To all Spencers, the great house had always been home, beloved as no other place could be; but in him this sentiment became the ruling passion of his life.
He knew the history of every picture, each stick of furniture, or piece of china; and he cherished them all with an informed devotion. In his lonely old age he liked to spend much time chatting to old scholars and enjoyed their company.
The knowledge and expertise of "the Curator Earl", as Spencer was nicknamed, became generally recognised and he was asked to serve on many important bodies concerned with art, antiques and the management of museums. He was a trustee of the Wallace Collection, represented both the Victoria and Albert and the Imperial War Museum on the Museums' Commission, and served on the Advisory Council of the Victoria and Albert, finally becoming its chairman.
His beautiful and beloved wife died in 1972 after a long and distressing illness, leaving him desolate. He did not, however, have to endure any long period of loneliness for he died three years later
on 9 June 1975, aged eighty-three. Jack Spencer's last years might have been happier had he been able to establish a warmer and closer relationship with his children and grandchildren.

The Spencers of Althorp,  Georgina Battiscombe.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas