an English writer and agitator. 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.
