John Spencer (speaker)

John Spencer JP (20 April 1666 – 1743) was a colonial Rhode Island politician.

Early life
Spencer was born on 20 April 1666 in Newport in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He was the eldest son of nine children born to Dr. John Spencer (1638–1684), who was made freeman of Newport in 1668, and Susannah ( Griffin) Spencer (1644–1719).

His paternal grandfather, Michael Spencer, was born in Stotfold, Bedford, England before emigrating to the Massachusetts Bay Colony aboard the ship Mary and John in 1634, first settling at Cambridge before moving to Lynn. After his grandfather's death, his grandmother Isabel remarried to Thomas Robbins before her death in Salem in 1674. His maternal grandparents were Robert and Hannah Griffin.

Career
Spencer was a prominent landowner and Justice of the Peace and a cordwainer by trade. He served as Deputy (precursor to Representative) to the General Assembly between 1699 and 1729, as well as Speaker of the House of Deputies from February 1712 to May 1712.

Personal life
Spencer was married to Audrey Greene (1667–1733), a daughter of Deputy Governor John Greene Jr. and granddaughter of John Greene, an early settler of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations who was one of the 12 original proprietors of Providence and a co-founder of the town of Warwick. Together, they were the parents of:


 * John Spencer (1693–1774), who married his second cousin, Mary Frye, daughter of Deputy Governor Thomas Frye and Welthyan ( Greene) Frye, in 1716. After her death in 1732, he married her younger sister, Elizabeth, in 1740.
 * William Spencer (1695–1776), who married Elizabeth Rice, daughter of John Rice and Elnathan ( Whipple) Rice and great-granddaughter of Capt. Randall Holden, in 1716.

Spencer died in East Greenwich in 1743.