SPENCER, JOHN, a learned theologian, was born at Bocton-under-Blean, in Kent, in the year 1620. From the grammar-school of Canterbury he was removed to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge, where he was entered on the 26th of March 1645. Having taken the degree of A.B. in 1648, and of A.M. in 1652, he was chosen a fellow in 1655. In 1660 he preached a sermon before the university, and during the same year it was published under the title of The Righteous Ruler. He afterwards published a learned and curious work, entitled A Discourse concerning Prodigies. To the second edition, corrected and enlarged, he added A Discourse concerning vulgar Prophesies, Lond., 1665, 8vo. During the same year, he took his degree of D.D. In 1667, he was presented by his college to the rectory of Landbeach, and on the 3d of August elected master of the college. About a month after his election, he was preferred by the king to the archdeaconry of Sudbury, in 1672 to a prebend of Ely, and in 1677 to the deanery of that church. In 1669 he had published a Latin dissertation concerning Urim and Thummim. But his most elaborate work is De Legibus Hebraorum Ritualibus, et earum Rationibus, libri tres, Cantab., 1685, 2 tom. fol. An edition, with the author's additions and improvements, was published at Cambridge in 1727; and several editions, one by Pfaff, was printed on the continent. Dr Spencer died on the 27th of May 1695, in the 63d year of his age. He was a great benefactor to his college, to which he bequeathed an estate that had cost him L.3600. He married Hannah, the daughter of Isaac Pullen of Hertford, and had a son and a daughter, who both died before their father.