Henry Spencer, 1st Earl of Sunderland was his elder brother.
[1] He studied at Christ Church, Oxford and was admitted at King's College, Cambridge in 1646.
He also studied at the University of Padua in 1648 while travelling in France and Italy, returning to England in 1651.
[2] He was made Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) at Oxford in 1669.
In 1661, he was elected MP for Brackley in the Cavalier Parliament and sat until 1679.