Victor Spencer, 1st Viscount Churchill

Spencer was born at 32, Albemarle Street, London, the son of Francis Spencer, 2nd Baron Churchill, and his wife Jane. He was a Page of Honour to Queen Victoria from 1876 to 1881, and in 1886 he succeeded to his father's title of Baron Churchill.

Educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards[1] in 1884 as a lieutenant, staying in the Guards until 1889.[2] He was a colonel in the Home Defense from 1915 to 1918.[2]

For Edward VII's coronation he served as Lord Chamberlain, and at the coronation of Edward's successor, George V, he was Master of the Robes.[2] He was acting Master of the Buckhounds between 1900 and 1901 during the tenure of Charles Cavendish, the office holder, while Cavendish was in South Africa.[2][3]

Spencer was a Lord in Waiting from 1889 to 1892 and 1895 to 1905 in both of Salisbury's governments and was created Viscount Churchill, of Rolleston, in the County of Leicester, on 15 July 1902[4] (it had already been announced in the Coronation Honours list the previous month that he would be created a Viscount[5]).

He was chairman and director of several transport companies, including the Great Western Railway 1908-34 and was the longest serving chairman of the company.[1] He was also a director of the British India Steamship Company, P&O and the Grand Union Canal.[2]

British honours

• GCVO: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order – 9 November 1902 – 1902 Birthday Honours list, invested by King Edward VII at Sandringham House the same day.[6][7]

Foreign honours

•  Kingdom of Prussia: Knight 1st class of the Order of the Crown - 1899 - in connection with the visit of Emperor Wilhelm II to the United Kingdom.[8]
• The Red Eagle of the Kingdom of Prussia[2]
• The Order of the Crown of Italy[2]
• The Order of the Redeemer of Greece[2]
• The Order of Jesus Christ of Portugal[2]

Lord Churchill married Lady Verena Maud Lowther, daughter of Henry Lowther, 3rd Earl of Lonsdale, at Cottesmore, Rutland, on 1 January 1887. They had four children.[1] When she wished to divorce Lord Churchill, King Edward forbade it, to avoid a scandal among his social circle. Instead she disappeared in 1909 taking their son, aged 19, and two daughters, aged 13 and 8, with her. Lord Churchill placed an anonymous advertisement seeking information about his family's whereabouts, but the scandal soon became public. In 1927 he obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion.[2][9] Churchill married as his second wife Christine McRae Sinclair. They had two children. He died of pneumonia on 3 January 1934.[1]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Churchill