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NOTES AND QUERIES.
S. NO 2.. JAK. 12. '56.
Who lately such a fatal instance gave -\
What precious care they'd of Religion have, > That durst Adore a Fool and Trust a Knave.J Shou'd it be thus, how would our Isle complain, And beg to have our Wandring King again ? Intreat the worst his incens'd Rage can do, The less important Mischief of the two : Which is the Crnel'st Beast will then be known, An English Prelate or a French Dragoon,,
" From hence, my Lord, you may with ease'/oreknow What epitaphs we shall on such bestow : When such depart, (when will just Heaven think fit To strike and do an injur'd Nation right !) The most Obdurate Muse will strain a Verse, And Bathe with Tears, of joy each Bishop's Herse. FINIS."
HUGH SPEKE AND THE FORGED DECLARATION OF
THE PRINCE OF ORANGE.
Mr. Macaulay tells us (vol. iv. p. 517.), that when Trenchard was Secretary of State, he had constantly at his side Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith ; men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was the most exciting of all sports. There was, he says, "a constant bustle at the secretary's office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and of messengers with warrants going out." This may be true, and yet it does not necessarily fol- low that either Speke or Smith were there as informers. Aaron Smith was Solicitor to the Treasury, and Speke was Trenchard's brother-in- law. But there is no doubt that Speke loved the sport of hunting a Jacobite it had become a second nature to him ; and when his antecedents are remembered, this is not very extraordinary. Mr. Macaulay, however, had previously damaged the character of Hugh Speke by very hard words, for which I know no warrant. The Protestant zeal of Hugh Speke had been persecuted into political fanaticism ; and political fanatics and political conspirators are not, and never can be, men of a very refined or delicate sense. The agents, instruments, and means with which they work, must tend to perplex the moral judgment, if it does not deaden the moral sense. We, therefore, who live in peaceful times, under a just adminis- tration of the law, may naturally condemn Hugh Speke ; but only so far as we condemn all political fanatics and politicnl conspirators, who are of necessity of much the same class and character, differing only in degree.
But my special subject is the forged Declara- tion of the Prince of Orange. Mr. Macaulay sneaks of the skilful audacity with which this De- claration was written, and of the immense effect which it produced :
" Discerning men," he says, " had no difficulty in pro- nouncing it a forgery, devised by some unjust "and un-
principled adventurer, such as in troubled times are always
busy in the foulest and darkest offices of faction. . . When
it was known that no such document had really pro-
ceeded from William, men asked anxiously what im-
postor had so daringly and so successfully personated his
highness? Some suspected Ferguson, others Johnson.
At length, after the lapse of twenty -seven years, Hugh
Speke avowed the forgery. . . He asserted . . that when
the Dutch invasion had thrown Whitehall into conster-
nation, he had offered his services to the Court . . had
thus obtained admittance to the royal closet, &c. . . The
forged proclamation he claimed as one of his contrivances :
but whether his claims were well founded, may be doubted.
He delayed to make it so long, that we may reasonably
suspect him of having waited for the death of those who
could confute him." -*- Vol. ii. p. 533.
On another occasion, Mr. Macaulay speaks of Hugh Speke as of a "singularly base and de- praved nature. His love of mischief, and of dark and crooked ways, amounted almost to madness." (Vol.ii. p. 105.)
Now, with all respect for Mr. Macaulay, I can- not think that this is a fair statement; and as to the doubt about the authorship of the forged De- claration, it rests, I suspect, on a conjecture of Echard's, and a confident assertion of Oldmixon's neither party assigning reasons. Mr. Macau- lay, however, ventures to be a little more specific thanj^chard has translated his vague words "of late years " into " after the lapse of twenty-seven years," the interval between the occurrence and the publication of the Secret History.
Before I draw attention to what appear to be positive errors, let us consider the antecedents, circumstances, and position of Speke ; for it might fairly be inferred from Mr. Macaulay's statement, that Speke was " an unprincipled adventurer."
The Spekes were an old Cavalier family, settled for many generations at White Lackington, in Somersetshire. The father of Hugh Speke had the honour to serve and suffer to raise men and advance money in the service of Charles I., and the greater honour, so he considered it, to be per- secuted and imprisoned by the Cromwellians ; and to compound for his delinquencies by payment of many thousand pounds. At the Restoration, the Spekes, like so many others of their class, sank back into quiet country gentlemen ; but they were once again stirred into action by the Popish Plot. The Cavaliers loved the king much, but the Church more; and the Spekes became wild about the Exclusion Bill. In 1679, the father, George Speko, offered himself as the Protestant champion, and was returned knight of the shire ; while his eldest son, on like grounds, became member for the county town, Ilchester. His son - in-law was equally zealous in the same cause ; and John Trenchard won for himself a name in his- tory. The whole femily were, from that hour, marked men. Speke, the father, was soon after apprehended, and brought before the council, charged with having spoken treason with having
