Hugh Speke

Hugh Speke (1656 – c. 1724) was an English writer and agitator.

Life He was a son of George and Mary Speke of Whitelackington, Somerset. His father was a member of the Green Ribbon Club, the Whig organization founded in 1675, and was a supporter of the Duke of Monmouth, voting for the Exclusion Bill in 1681.

Educated at St John's College, Oxford, Hugh Speke joined the Green Ribbon Club, and in 1683 he was put in prison for asserting that Arthur Capell, Earl of Essex, another of Monmouth's supporters, had been murdered by the friends of James, Duke of York. He was tried and sentenced to pay a fine, but he refused to find the money, and remained in prison for three years, being in captivity during Monmouth's rebellion, in consequence of which his brother Charles was hanged at Ilminster. In prison Speke kept a printing-press, and from this he issued the Address to all the English Protestants in the Present Army, a manifesto written by the Whig divine Samuel Johnson, urging the soldiers to mutiny.

After imploring both Anne and George I to reward his past services, Speke died in obscurity before 1725.