Joanne le Despenser

Henry Spencer, of Badby was not the son of Thomas le Despenser, Esq. and Joanne le Despenser

Beginning 1595, it was claimed that Henry Spencer was the son of Thomas Despencer. This, along with a number of other false pedigrees, was refuted by Horace Round in his 1901 Studies in Peerage and Family History.

Round describes the Spencer pedigree as, “a typical case of the Heralds' College providing a family, when it has acquired wealth, with arms to which it is not entitled on the strength of a pedigree concocted for the purpose”.[3]

Citing Round, The Complete Peerage dismissed the false Spencer pedigree as "an elaborate imposture," ... "incapable of deceiving the most credulous."[4]

The November 1902 edition of The Ancestor had some fun with the Spencer family's fake pedigree, describing them as, "that pushful house of shepherd kings" -- referring to the well-known origin of the family's wealth.[5]

In a more gentle tone, the March 1996 edition of Soul Search sadly noted that the forged pedigree, "obscures the real achievement of the Spencers of Althorpe. Alone, perhaps among the English nobility, the Spencers owed their riches and their rise not to the favour of a king or to the spoils of monasteries, nor even to a fortune made in trade, but to successful farming."[6]