28 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[2"d S.No 2., Jaw. 12. 756. 
What precious care they’d of Religion have, 
That durst Adore a Fool and Trust a Knave. 
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 Cruel’st Beast will then be knowa, 
An English Prelate or a French Dragoon, 
“From hence, my Lord, you may with ease foreknow 
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.” 
Who lately such a fatal instance gave \ 
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 ofa 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 political 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 Fergugon, others Jolson. 
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. Tis 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 
than Echard — 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 L., 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 Speke, 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 family 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 
