George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough, KG, PC, FRS (26 January 1739 – 29 January 1817), styled Marquess of Blandford until 1758, was a British courtier and politician from the Spencer family. He served as Lord Chamberlain between 1762 and 1763 and as Lord Privy Seal between 1763 and 1765. He is the great-great-great grandfather of Sir Winston Churchill.
'The Marlborough Family' is a 1778 large portrait painting by the British artist Joshua Reynolds. It is a group portrait of Fourth Duke of Marlborough, his wife the Duchess of Marlborough and their children including George, later the fifth Duke.
Reynolds was the president of the Royal Academy and leading British portrait painter of the era. With eight sitters, it was the most ambitious group painting he had so far attempted. He travelled to Blenheim Palace between 13 August and 4 September 1777, where he spent much of his time with sittings of the children. According to the young artist William Beechey the Duchesses mother the Duchess of Bedford was not impressed with the depiction of her daughter but Reynolds pretended not to hear because of his well-known deafness.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, KG (28 April 1801 – 1 October 1885), styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was a British Tory politician, philanthropist, and social reformer. He was the eldest son of the 6th Earl of Shaftesbury and Lady Anne Spencer (daughter of the 4th Duke of Marlborough), and elder brother of Henry Ashley, MP. A social reformer who was called the "Poor Man's Earl", he campaigned for better working conditions, reform to lunacy laws, education and the limitation of child labour. He was also an early supporter of the Zionist movement and the YMCA and a leading figure in the evangelical movement in the Church of England.
Caroline Spencer, Duchess of Marlborough (13 January 1743 – 26 November 1811), formerly Lady Caroline Russell, was the wife of George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough.
Baron Churchill, of Wychwood in the County of Oxford, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom and held by a branch of the Spencer family. It was created in 1815 for Lord Francis Spencer, younger son of the 4th Duke of Marlborough (see Duke of Marlborough for earlier history of the family). He had previously represented Oxfordshire in Parliament.
From 1902 to 2017, the barony was subsidiary title of the viscountcy of Churchill. The title of Viscount Churchill, of Rolleston in the County of Leicester, was created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom on 15 July 1902 for the first baron's grandson Conservative politician Victor Spencer, 3rd Baron Churchill. The viscountcy became extinct in 2017 on the death of the first Viscount's youngest son, the third Viscount, who had succeeded his half-brother, the second Viscount, in 1973.