Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/204

 feeling. Their communications were not without effect upon James, and at one moment it was thought that James meant to break with the jesuitical party, and to create a diversion by sending for Somers and other men who enjoyed the confidence of the country party.

In the Convention Trenchard represented Thetford, but he took no very prominent part in the debates. William showed how well he was disposed to him by giving him the degree of the coif on 21 May 1689. He was knighted at Whitehall on 29 Oct. following, and about the same time became one of ‘their majesties' serjeants,’ and received the lucrative post of chief justice of Chester, which he held by deputy until his death. In February 1690 he was elected M.P. for Poole in his native county. In March 1692 Trenchard was appointed secretary of state in place of, earl of Romney [q. v.] As was usual for a newcomer, he took the northern department. Later in the year he was appointed a privy councillor, and for a time seems to have acted as sole secretary of state. One of his first cares was to reorganise the system of spies at the chief French ports, an undertaking of no common difficulty (see the curious correspondence between Pierre Jurieu, ‘chef d'espions,’ and ‘Sir Trenchard’ in, Archives de la Bastille, t. x. pp. 82–7). But Trenchard's secretariate was chiefly distinguished by the activity displayed against the Jacobites. He seems to have convinced himself of (or was over-persuaded by the solicitor to the treasury, Aaron Smith, into believing in) the genuineness of the apocryphal Lancashire plot of 1694 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. App. iv. 387), and the breakdown of the crown witnesses involved him in ridicule and discredit [see ]. Of the numerous pamphlets in which the ‘Lancashire plot’ was classed with Oates's plot and other such sinister fabrications, the bitterest was a long ‘Letter to Mr. Secretary Trenchard’ signed A. B., in which the malignity of the dying [q. v.] has been traced (Macaulay thinks that Ferguson may at least have furnished some of the materials, History, 1858, iv. 523). Sir [q. v.] was associated with Trenchard in the course of May 1694, but no other events of note marked his tenure of the seals. At the close of 1693 Trenchard sent some letters (in a complicated numerical cypher) which had been intercepted on their way from Turkey, to Dr. John Wallis, the mathematician, for him to try his skill upon. Wallis succeeded in deciphering them, and Trenchard promised to commend his service to the king (this correspondence is in Addit. MS. 32499). In November 1694 Trenchard, whose health had long been failing, suffered a severe relapse. On 4 April 1695 he was given over by his physician, and he died on the 27th of that month. He was buried in Bloxworth church, where, in the west aisle, is a monument to his memory. According to Anthony à Wood, the exact date of the death of this ‘turbulent and aspiring politician’ had been predicted by an astrologer. Both Trenchard and his successor Trumbull were treated with far less consideration than subsequently attached to the post of secretary of state.

Trenchard married, in November 1682, Philippa, daughter of George Speke and sister of the notorious [q. v.] She died, aged 79, in 1743, and was buried at Bloxworth. By her he had issue four sons and three daughters. The eldest son, George Trenchard, married his cousin Mary Trenchard, the heiress of Wolverton, and soon after his father's death sold Bloxworth to his son-in-law, Jocelyn Pickard.

A portrait of Trenchard was engraved by Bestland from a miniature by [q. v.] Another portrait, by James Watson, was engraved in mezzotint for Hutchins's ‘History of Dorset’ (1796, iii. 22).



TRENCHARD, JOHN (1662–1723), political writer, born in 1662, was son of William Trenchard (1640–1710) of Cutteridge (a distant connection of Sir [q. v.]). His mother was Ellen, daughter of Sir George Norton. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where, or Smyth [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Down and Connor, was his tutor. Having been called to the bar, he left the legal pro-