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 the gravest import were open to the inspection of every clerk, doorkeeper, or laundress in the establishment. When, at the close of 1707, the antagonism between Godolphin and Harley was at its height, and the whigs were intriguing to exclude the latter from the council, intelligence came from the postmaster at Brussels that a packet of letters from the secretary's office, addressed to the French minister, Chamillart, had been opened upon advice received, and had been found to contain copies of important state papers; a covering note indicated that the copies were sent by Gregg. Gregg was arrested on 1 Jan. 1708, was examined by Sunderland on 3 Jan., and forthwith committed to Newgate. He was tried at the Old Bailey on 9 Jan. for correspondence with France, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to death. The culprit pleaded in extenuation poverty and debt, but swore positively that he had no participator in his crime. The whig leaders, however, eager to obtain matter against Harley, were in great hopes that the unfortunate man would say something to convict his chief of complicity. The House of Lords formed a committee of seven to examine Gregg, and placed upon it Somerset and two other dukes, besides Wharton, Townsend, Halifax, and Somers. The committee went to Newgate on 7 Feb., and informed Gregg that if he would make a full confession he might rely upon the intercession of the house.

In spite of the temptation thus dangled before him the poor fellow adhered manfully to the truth of his first statement. The committee had the cruelty to keep the condemned man in suspense for three months. At length, in bitter disappointment at making no other discovery than that the business of the secretary's office was conducted in a strangely lax manner, they sent the queen a recommendation that the execution should take place. Gregg was hanged at Tyburn on 28 April 1708, and, having been quartered, his head was placed on Westminster Hall. Before he met his fate he delivered a paper to the ordinary, in which he solemnly exculpated Harley from all participation in his offence. He also left a letter, the contrite tenor of which was warmly commended by Hearne. Harley, though he found it necessary during the second week in February 1708 to resign his secretaryship, had the generosity to allow the widow a pension of fifty pounds annually out of his private purse.

 GREGORY, WILLIAM (1766–1840), Irish under-secretary, was the youngest of three sons of Robert Gregory, a member of a family sprung from an offshoot of the Gregorys of Styvechale Hall, Coventry, who came to Ireland with Cromwell and settled in Tipperary. His father, Robert Gregory (1727–1810), himself a man of some mark, was chairman of the East India Company for many years till 1783, and member of parliament for Maidstone from 1768 to 1774, and for Rochester from 1774 to 1784; there is a portrait of him by Dance at the family seat, Coole Park, co. Galway, and a bust by Nollekens (Gent. Mag. 1810, ii. 385).

William Gregory was born in 1766 and educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1783 and M.A. in 1787. On 16 May 1781 he was admitted student of the Inner Temple. In the Irish parliament of 1798-1800 he appears to have sat for Portarlington (Off. Ret. ii. 690), and he served as high sheriff of co. Galway in 1799. Though it does not appear that he had had any previous official training, Gregory was appointed in October 1812 civil under-secretary to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland (, Lib. Mun. Hib. iii. 106). There was at this time a military under-secretary as well, but in 1821 the two offices were united, Gregory holding both for ten years. In this position he enjoyed great authority as the confidential adviser and close friend of successive viceroys and chief secretaries; was described by friendly critics as 'the dry nurse' of young English statesmen; and was credited by O'Connell and other hostile critics with being the real ruler of Ireland. He was on terms of warm intimacy with Sir Robert Peel during that 