Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington (1673 – 2 July 1743[1]) was a British Whig statesman who served continuously in government from 1715 until his death in 1743.

He is considered to have been Britain's second prime minister, after Robert Walpole, but worked closely with the Secretary of State, Lord Carteret, in order to secure the support of the various factions making up the government.

Spencer was educated at St Paul's School and matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford on 28 February 1690, aged 15;[2] thereafter he was admitted into Middle Temple in 1687.

He first stood for Parliament at East Grinstead on the interest of his kinsman the Earl of Dorset at the 1695 English general election but was unsuccessful.

At the 1710 British general election he was dropped as a candidate for Eye by his patron Lord Cornwallis after a disagreement, and he was unwilling to risk standing anywhere else because of his involvement with the Sacheverell case.

[3] Instead of the high political office he had hoped for, Compton received the Court appointment of Treasurer to the Prince of Wales (later George II); shortly afterwards, however, he was unanimously elected as Speaker of the House of Commons.

He maintained the role of Speaker despite the split in the Whigs in 1717, in which he joined the Walpole-Townshend alliance and found himself in opposition to the government of the day.

[4] Compton had a reputation for being a lax Speaker, once telling an MP who complained of being interrupted, "No sir, you have a right to speak, but the House have a right to judge whether they will hear you."

In order to avoid this, Walpole sought to keep Compton on the margins of government, though he was appointed as Paymaster of the Forces, a very lucrative post, from 1722 until 1730.

In 1730 he attempted to form a coalition between the Patriot Whigs and the Hanoverian Tories to bring down Walpole, but this failed and he continued in office.

[10] However, during the Excise Crisis of 1733, he failed to carry through a threat to resign, after being bought off with the promise to make him a Knight of the Garter, which he duly was.