John, a very learned theologian, was born at Bocton-under-Blean in Kent, in the year 1630. From the grammar school of Canterbury he was removed to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge, where he was entered on the 25th 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 Prophecies." Lond. 1665, 8vo. During the same year, he proceeded D.D. In 1667, he was presented by his college to the rectory of Landbeach, and on the 3rd 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 Hebraeorum 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, were printed on the continent. "It is," as Mr. Orme has remarked, "a very learned, but a very dangerous work; the great object of which is to show, that the Hebrew ritual was almost entirely borrowed from the Egyptians, and accommodated to the taste and prejudices which the Jews had acquired among that people. The same hypothesis had been stated by Maimonides, a philosophizing Jew, in his More Novochim, and was greedily laid hold of by Sir John Marsham, in his Canon Chronicus Egyptianus. A masterly refutation of the work of Spencer was furnished by Witsius, in his Egyptianus; and Shuckford, in his Connections, supplies also many arguments on the same side. Warburton partly espoused the system of Spencer, and replied to Witsius, for which he is very properly censured by Dr. Magee, in his work on the Atonement. Socinians and infidels have made very liberal use of the work and arguments of Spencer."

Dr. Spencer died on the 27th of May 1695, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was a great benefactor to his college, to which he bequeathed an estate that had cost him L3600. He married Hannah, the daughter of Isaac Pullen of Hertford, and had a son and a daughter, who both died before their father.

Spencer Cape, a pointed rocky cape, the east point of entrance into Spencer's Gulf on the south shore of New Holland. Long. 136. 56. E. Lat. 35. 18. S.

Spencer's Gulf, a large gulf on the south coast of New Holland, which extends 185 miles into the interior of the country, in a north-east direction. The entrance between Cape Catastrophe on the west, and Cape Spencer on the east, is forty-eight miles wide. Captain Flinders traced it to within eight miles of its termination.