3935 x 4932 px | 33,3 x 41,8 cm | 13,1 x 16,4 inches | 300dpi
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John Poyntz Spencer, 5th Earl Spencer, KG (27 October 1835–13 August 1910) (known as the Red Earl because of his distinctive long red beard) was a British Liberal Party politician under and close friend of British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. He was the son of Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer and the nephew of the prominent Whig politician Lord Althorp (later the third Earl). He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he graduated in 1857. He was almost immediately elected to parliament for South Northamptonshire as a Liberal, before departing for a tour of North America. He returned in December 1857, and within a few days his father died, leaving him as the new Earl Spencer. On 8 July 1858, he married Charlotte Seymour (a granddaughter of Lord Hugh Seymour), but the union did not produce any heirs and on his death, he was succeeded by his half-brother, Charles. Spencer continued his political career despite his elevation to the Lords and his service, for most of the period from 1859 to 1866, in the royal household, as a groom first to Prince Albert and then to the Prince of Wales. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1864, and the next year chaired a royal commission on cattle plague, alongside such luminaries as Lord Cranborne, Robert Lowe and Lyon Playfair, and served in 1867 on a special committee set up by the War Office to investigate breech-loading rifles. Spencer split from other whiggish aristocratic Liberals in 1866 on the issue of Russell's reform bill, which he supported, and his loyalty was rewarded by his appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when Gladstone returned to power in 1868. Ireland came to be a major preoccupation of the remainder of Spencer's long political career. In this first tenure as Lord Lieutenant, Spencer had to deal with implementation of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869 and of the Irish Land Act of 1870, both of which measures he strongly supported. Spenc
