an English historian and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1626. He is known for his biography of Alfred the Great. He edited from manuscripts in his father's library. Psalterium Davidis latino-saxonicum vetus (1640), and wrote a Life of Alfred the Great which was translated into Latin and published in 1678. Whereas his father was a leading expositor of the idea of an "ancient constitution", John Spelman was a theorist of the Royalist cause. He was knighted by Charles I of England in 1641 and served the king actively at Oxford at the beginning of the First English Civil War.
