Lady Caroline Spencer, later Viscountess Clifden

British, 1763 - 1813

BiographyLady Caroline Spencer was born on October 27, 1763, the eldest of eight children of George Spencer (1738/9-1817), 4th Duke of Marlborough and his wife, Caroline Russell (1742/3-1811), only daughter of the 4th Duke of Bedford. Her sister, Lady Elizabeth Spencer, was born on December 20, 1764. Dominated by their cold and exacting mother, whom Queen Charlotte considered "the proudest woman in England," they had difficulty overcoming the notoriously insular and repressed atmosphere of their home life. While still in her teens, Caroline developed a reputation for jilting would-be husbands at the altar. In August 1782, just prior to their wedding, she broke off an engagement with her cousin Viscount Trentham in favor of his friend Lord Strathaven. He, too, was abruptly dismissed in January 1785. She was subsequently rumored to be engaged to her cousin Lord William Russell, a participant in private theatricals at Blenheim. Finally, on March 10, 1792 she married Henry Welbore Agar (1761-1836), 2nd Viscount Clifden of Gowran, who two years earlier had proposed to her younger sister Elizabeth. Lady Caroline's brother Lord Henry Spencer predicted a successful marriage with Lord Clifden ("a very solid and worthy man") as husband and wife were "both sedate and philosophical." Less charitable observers noted that Viscountess Clifden had inherited her parents' shyness and hypochondria. Horace Walpole called her "the silent woman", and Mrs. John Calvert observed in 1806 that although she was still rather pretty, she was at age forty-three "shy, and seems so frightened in company, that she wants manner and ease; also, she is so afraid of catching cold, and so careful of herself, that from keeping herself quite in cotton she is very delicate." Viscountess Clifden bore several children, of whom she was "passionately fond." She died "very suddenly and unexpectedly" at Blenheim on November 23, 1813 and was buried there six days later.
Lady Elizabeth Spencer's romantic life was less turbulent than her sister's. On February 5, 1790 she married the Hon. John Spencer (1767-1831)--"a good Actor, a good Musician, and a good Composer"--who was the son of her father's younger brother, Lord Charles Spencer. The couple had reportedly carried on a surreptitious courtship while performing together in fourteen private theatricals at Blenheim between October 1787 and December 1789. Sir Gilbert Elliot was struck by their shared passion for music, noting on April 28, 1792, "They have...set up an organ in their parish church in the country, where he plays, and she has taught the children and girls to sing. They sing psalms together in London as other people sing Italian duets." He described Lady Elizabeth as "a gentle, good sort of girl, tolerably well-looking but not to be called handsome." For reasons that remain obscure, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough turned against the newlyweds within months of their marriage, and the rift persisted as late as 1797, when Jacob Bryant sent the Duke of Marlborough a thinly veiled plea for reconciliation on the occasion of Elizabeth's giving birth to the first of three children. She died on December 15, 1812, following a final interview with her goddaughter, Charlotte Maria Nares, daughter of her younger sister Lady Charlotte.

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