George John Spencer seemed to be overshadowed by his two beautiful and gifted sisters. A further misfortune seems to have been his marriage to the lovely but formidable Lavinia Bingham.

He was quiet, sensitive and able; however, he achieved much as he must be regarded as the real founder of the Althorp Library and, as First Lord of the Admiralty, of having had the courage to promote young Horatio Nelson over many officers with more seniority.
 

When he inherited Althorp, he had to renovate the building and make it weatherproof. In 1793 he bought the book collection of the Hungarian diplomat, Count Revicski. This collection, specializing in books in mint condition, was followed by that of the Italian Duke of Cassano-Sera. When he retired from politics, he devoted himself to his Library by cataloguing and adding more books.

Having chosen the opposite political party and married a woman his sisters found unsympathetic, he saw very little of his sisters and their families after that. His own family consisted of six children:
John, Sarah, Robert, Georgiana, Frederick and George. While they were young, Lavinia was distant; but when they grew up, she wanted to control them. Though Lavinia was reserved, she had a tongue that cut like a knife and Georgiana lived all her life in terror of her mother.

In politics he followed Pitt who, in 1794, made him First Lord of the Admiralty which he remained until 1801. He was in charge when the sea battles of Camperdown and St.Vincent were won. In April 1797 a
restrained mutiny took place, the mutineers asking for overdue reforms, higher pay, decent food and better medical attention. Thanks to Spencer's attitude, the Cabinet agreed to the demands.

In April 1798 he gave the command of the Mediterranean fleet to Horatio Nelson who went to fight the Battle of the Nile. However, reports of this great victory came slow with false reports of seven ships having been lost. But when the official news came that no ships had been lost at all, the First Lord fell down in a dead faint. However, Nelson's infatuation with Emma Hamilton still earned him a reprimand from Lord Spencer.

Source: Leo van de Pas