JAMES THE SECOND.

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which it was written, and by the immense effect which it pro-duced. It purported to be a supplemental declaration underthe hand and seal of the Prince of Orange: but it was writtenin a style very different from that of his genuine manifesto.Vengeance alien from the usages of Christian and civilisednations was denounced against all Papists who should dare toespouse the royal cause. They should be treated, not assoldiers or gentlemen, but as freebooters. The ferocity andlicentiousness of the invading army, which had hitherto beenrestrained with a strong hand, should be let loose on them.Good Protestants, and especially those who inhabited thecapital, were adjured, as they valued all that was dear tothem, and commanded, on peril of the Prince’s highest dis-pleasure, to seize, disarm, and imprison their Roman Ca-tholic neighbours. This document, it is said, was found bya Whig bookseller one morning under his shop door. Hemade haste to print it. Many copies were dispersed by thepost, and passed rapidly from hand to hand. Discerningmen had no difficulty in pronouncing it a forgery devisedby some unquiet and unprincipled adventurer, such as, introubled times, are always busy in the foulest and darkestoffices of faction. But the multitude was completely duped.Indeed to such a height had national and religious feelingbeen excited against the Irish Papists that most of those whobelieved the spurious proclamation to be genuine were in-clined to applaud it as a seasonable exhibition of vigour.When it was known that no such document had really pro-ceeded from William, men asked anxiously what impostorhad so daringly and so successfully personated his Highness.Some suspected Ferguson, others Johnson. At length,after the lapse of twenty-seven years, Hugh Speke avowedthe forgery, and demanded from the House of Brunswicka reward for so eminent a service rendered to the Protestantreligion. He asserted, in the tone of a man who conceiveshimself to have done something eminently virtuous andhonourable, that, when the Dutch invasion had thrown White-hall into consternation, he had offered his services to theCourt, had pretended to be estranged from the Whigs, and

CHAP.

IX.

16SS.