 Spencer, who had become an Anglican clergyman and a minor canon of Canterbury Cathedral, years later sought and obtained leave from Queen Victoria to change his family's name to Meadows, his petition having been received on the ground that his wife was the sole heir of her maternal grandfather of that name.In his mother's will, bequeathing property to the amount of £50,000, she styled herself a "spinster", though legally speaking she died a widow, predeceasing her widowed mother.Matthews (1969) writes