In the year 1707, the letters of Marshal Tallard arrived unsealed at the Secretary of State’s office. It was their appointed course to be examined, sealed, and dispatched by way of Holland into France. Within this narrow channel of communication between two warring realms, William Gregg discovered the means to slip his own intelligence into the packets. He addressed these missives to Monsieur de Chamillart, tendering his services both to the French Crown and to the exiled court at Saint-Germain, while supplying particulars regarding English affairs. The inquiry that brought these letters to light transformed a trusted clerk into a prisoner indicted for high treason.
Robert Harley had engaged his services, assigning him the duty of perusing and sealing the correspondence sent home by French prisoners of war quartered in England. According to the account of Bishop Burnet preserved by Borrow, Gregg had formerly served as secretary to the Queen’s envoy in Denmark, whence he was dismissed for his “ill qualities.” Harley made no inquiry into this antecedent disgrace. Employing the clerk to gather intelligence, he had in the course of time granted him familiar access to the Queen’s dispatches.
In time, certain letters of Tallard were unsealed in the Low Countries upon suspicions newly conceived. Hidden within the official cover, the packets Gregg had surreptitiously introduced were brought to light. Among them lay a transcription of the letter Queen Anne was to write with her own hand unto the Emperor. Gregg had carefully noted those passages drafted by the Secretary of State and distinguished them from the clauses added by the Lord Treasurer. The letter pressed the immediate dispatch of Prince Eugene into Spain. Had Gregg’s packet escaped interception, this copy might well have reached Versailles long before the royal original arrived in Vienna.
The intelligence was doubly perilous: it laid bare secrets of state while permitting France to inspect the very gears of their contrivance. Gregg joined to these disclosures an offer of continued service, entreating in substance that his zeal be met with fitting encouragement. The matter was remitted to the Duke of Marlborough, and the search soon led directly to Harley’s clerk. Upon his arrest, Gregg confessed his guilt and signed his examination. He pleaded guilty at the bar and received sentence as a traitor for holding correspondence with the Queen’s enemies.
The affair shook Harley’s standing to its foundations. The Whigs turned the discovery against him, and he was compelled to resign his seals. His adversaries sought to scrutinize his administration and past conduct with the utmost rigor. The House of Lords appointed a committee to examine Gregg and other prisoners. According to the record, Gregg informed them that papers of state lay so openly about the office that the under-clerks, and even the doorkeepers, might have read them at their pleasure.
He described Harley’s customary routine on foreign post nights. The minister was wont to arrive late, issue his directions, write his letters, and depart, leaving the documents behind to be transcribed. This practice afforded Gregg ample leisure to peruse them, most notably the Queen’s letter to the Emperor. Such testimony explained how the breach had occurred, though it fell short of proving that Harley had any knowledge of his clerk’s illicit traffic. Gregg maintained that he had entered upon these evil practices only in October. He acknowledged having been privy to the design against Toulon as early as May, yet avowed he had not disclosed it.
In parallel, the committee scrutinized another channel of illicit communication: that of Valiere and Bara, whom Harley had employed as spies and who stood accused of conveying intelligence to France. These two men plied the Channel between Calais, Boulogne, and the English coast. Their craft carried wool into France and brought back brandy, both commodities being subject to absolute prohibitions of trade. Upon making the French shore, the mariners were lodged under the eye of the governor or the commissary until their letters were dispatched and the answers returned.
Witnesses examined before the committee testified that Valiere and Bara collected intelligence concerning the merchant fleets and men-of-war anchored in the Downs. They were said to have instructed their crews to cast their letters into the sea if approached by an English or Dutch vessel, but never if a French sail bore down upon them. They were consequently regarded as French agents. Yet the historical record keeps this inquiry distinct from Gregg’s: these men had long enjoyed Harley’s protection, nor was it shown that they had ever furnished the minister with any intelligence of true value.
A single warning attributed to their agency was deemed authentic: a French vessel commanded by Fombin had reportedly sailed from Dunkirk to lie in wait for an English fleet bound for the Russia trade. The cruiser intercepted the convoy and captured a great part thereof. Harley, according to Burnet, neglected to apprise the Admiralty. While these events lent fuel to the political accusations leveled against the minister, they afforded no proof that Gregg had contributed to the loss of those ships. In his dying declaration, Gregg denied having ever betrayed the plan of Toulon or had any share in the disasters at sea.
The sittings of the committee extended over several weeks. The Lords laid their report and the examinations before the Queen, humbly petitioning that Gregg be made a public example. The depositions brought into view two distinct matters: that of the clerk who had made full confession, and that of the smugglers whose traffic remained shadowed by suspicion. In the former case, judgment was already pronounced; it remained only for the convict to answer those broader suspicions his treason had aroused.
As his execution drew near, Gregg persisted in absolving Harley of all complicity in transmitting letters to France. He subscribed a declaration affirming that the minister was wholly innocent of his practices, directly or indirectly. He maintained, moreover, that his first treasonable letter was dated October 24, 1707, well after the Toulon expedition and the naval losses laid to his charge. This date rested solely upon his posthumous defense; while it diminished nothing of his guilt, it was calculated to avert the suspicion that other military misfortunes were of his contriving. He alleged money, rather than any devotion to the Pretender, to have been the sole motive of his conduct, and he formally disowned all title in that prince. The document is no mere political disavowal: Gregg therein acknowledged his high treason and confessed to having sold the access his employer had granted him. His chronology and his motives, however, remain his own final declarations, penned when he knew his doom to be irrevocable.
In this dying paper, Gregg also cast off the imputation of coining that some had sought to attach to his former life. He affirmed that this act of high treason was his first offense of the kind, and declared that he had received no money whatsoever for the intelligence he had proffered. His creditors, whom he left entirely unpaid, were among those whose forgiveness he most earnestly besought. He commended them to divine restitution, having himself no longer any earthly means to make them whole.
Gregg delivered his paper into the hands of the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex upon the scaffold. He was executed at Tyburn on April 28, 1708. The letters he had concealed in Tallard’s dispatches had contained an offer of treasonable service; this final paper contained confessions, entreaties for pardon, and disavowals which he was determined should outlive his death.