Lord Blandford represented
Oxfordshire in parliament as a Whig between 1790 and 1796 and
Tregony as a Tory between 1802 and 1806. From 1804 to 1806, he served under
William Pitt the Younger as a
Lord of the Treasury. The latter year he was summoned to the
House of Lords through a
writ of acceleration in his father's barony of Spencer of Wormleighton. During this time, he lived in
Berkshire, at
Remenham and
Hurst. From 1798, he resided at
Whiteknights Park at
Earley, near
Reading, where he became famous for his extravagant collecting of antiquities, especially books. He was invested as a Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries (FSA) on 8 December 1803. Although the Marquess was born and baptised with the name of George Spencer, soon after succeeding to the
Dukedom of Marlborough, he had it legally changed on 26 May 1817 to George Spencer-Churchill. This illustrious name did not, however, save him from his mounting debts, and his estates were seized and his collections sold. He retired to
Blenheim Palace, where he lived the remainder of his life off a small annuity granted to the
first Duke by
Queen Anne. , seats of Duke of Marlborough. The diarist
Harriet Arbuthnot wrote one of her most scathing comments about the Duke following a visit to Blenheim in 1824: ==Family==