The Execution of Admiral John Byng As a Microhistory of Eighteenth-Century Britain

The Execution of Admiral John Byng as a Microhistory of Eighteenth-Century Britain According to Voltaire’s Candide, Admiral John Byng’s 1757 execution went forward to ‘encourage the others’. Of course, the story is much more complicated. This microhistorical account upon a macro-event presents an updated, revisionist, and detailed account of a dark chapter in British naval history. Asking ‘what was Britain like the moment Byng returned to Portsmouth after the Battle of Minorca (1756)?’ not only returns a glimpse of mid-eighteenth-century Britain but also provides a deeper understanding of how a wartime admiral, the son of a peer, of some wealth, a once colonial governor, and sitting member of parliament came to be scapegoated and then executed for the failings of others. This manuscript presents a cultural, social, and political dive into Britain at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Part 1 focuses on ballad, newspaper, and prize culture. Part 2 makes a turn towards the social where religion, morality, rioting, and disease play into the Byng saga. Admiral Byng’s record during the 1755 Channel Campaign is explored, as is the Mediterranean context of the Seven Years’ War, troubles elsewhere in the empire, and then the politics behind Byng’s trial and execution. Joseph J. Krulder is a Navy veteran, historian, and teacher who earned his doctorate from the University of Bristol, UK. Routledge Research in Early Modern History The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth History, Memory, Legacy Edited by Andrzej Chwalba and Krzysztof Zamorski German Imperial Knights Noble Misfits Between Princely Authority and the Crown, 1479–1648 Richard J. Ninness The Scramble for Italy Continuity and Change in the Italian Wars, 1494–1559 Idan Sherer Artistic and Political Patronage in Early Stuart England The Career of William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke, 1580–1630 Brian O’Farrell Bringing the People Back In State Building from Below in the Nordic Countries ca. 1500–1800 Edited by Knut Dørum, Mats Hallenberg and Kimmo Katajala Negotiating Exclusion in Early Modern England, 1550–1800 Edited by Naomi Pullin and Kathryn Woods Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes Mehmet Karabela The Execution of Admiral John Byng as a Microhistory of Eighteenth- Century Britain Joseph J. Krulder For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Early-Modern-History/book-series/RREMH The Execution of Admiral John Byng as a Microhistory of Eighteenth-Century Britain Joseph J. Krulder First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Joseph J. Krulder to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-76755-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-76759-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-16842-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC To Jori, Elizabeth, and Sarah Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables x Foreword xi Preface xii Acknowledgements xiv List of Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 1 ‘Sung Hoarse’: The Intersect of Byng and Ballads 11 2 ‘More Dangerous Enemies’: Newspapers, Pamphlets, and Print Wars 27 3 ‘The Moment They Have Permission’: Byng and Prize Culture 50 4 ‘The Fierce Anger of God’: Byng and Religion 67 5 ‘Grinding the Face of the Poor’: Byng, Dearth, and Morality 89 6 ‘A Mob to Declare’: Three Concurrent Riots 109 7 ‘Dangerously Ill of Fevers’: Disease, Society, and Manning Issues 144 8 ‘Hot Water’: The 1755 Channel Campaign 163 9 ‘This Island’: Minorca in Context and in Battle 183 viii Contents 10 ‘The Empire’: India, North America, and Byng 209 11 ‘Error in Judgement’: Trial, Inquiry, and Sentencing 227 Conclusion: ‘To Bingyfi’ and Other Concluding Remarks 262 Index 267 Figures 0.1 Vice Admiral John Byng, 1704–57, by Thomas Hudson (1749). Collection of Royal Museums Greenwich 3 4.1 Bung Triumphant (1756) 74 5.1 ‘A Late Epistle to Mr C_____d’ (1756) 101 6.1 A Court Conversation (1756) 124 6.2 Byng Coin (1756) 132 8.1 The Present Scene or the Pensive Monarch (1755) 173 11.1 Female Court Martial (1757) 253 Tables 8.1 French prisoners brought to the United Kingdom during the Seven Years’ War 171 Foreword The execution of Admiral John Byng for the loss of Minorca in 1756 has always been a controversial event and has lingered on in public memory. If some remember Voltaire’s famous quip in Candide, ‘Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres’, others note monuments that reinforce Byng’s culpability. Joe Krulder squarely exonerates Byng from the grave charges against him. If the admi ral was a trifle careless in his conduct of the battle of Minorca, he was certainly not guilty of such a neglect of duty that merited his execution by firing squad aboard theMonarch in March 1757. Krulder shows that Byng was a scapegoat of ministerial neglect and incompetence, a line of argument that has been made before but not in the way this monograph has crafted it. This is a detailed microhistory with a macro-perspective, an account of an event that Pierre Nora would describe as one that radi ates out of itself to explore wide frames of reference. Krulder asks the simple question, ‘Why the anger directed at John Byng was dispropor tionate to the military failure?’ and he comes up with a set of complex reasons: reasons that address the recruitment and health of the fleet; the strains of an emergent empire that spanned India and the New World as well as the Mediterranean; the political priorities of the Court and the politicians; the craze for naval prizes; the milieu of dearth; and the com municative practices, diverse and transatlantic in compass, that scorned, misrepresented, and debated Byng’s conduct and character. This is a mag nificent exercise in event history, more in tune with modern-day breaking news than a bizarre village event that alerts us to the strangeness of the past. It raises all sorts of questions about the nature of mid-eighteenth century publics, the difficulties of manning wartime fleets, the relation ship of merchant capital to political power and the manner in which a political oligarchy was able to wriggle out of public responsibility for the mishaps of war and warp the rule of law. Nicholas Rogers Preface I came across the name ‘John Byng’ as a graduate student studying Euro pean nationalism at a California university. I was not looking per se for Admiral Byng. I was, instead, searching for traces of European national ism as the Seven Years’ War developed. Most manuscripts on national ism peg its rise in the nineteenth century. I was, however, stubborn and refused to accept this. In studying nationalism, I also came to realise that Leah Greenfeld and a few others were likely correct; each country, or each people, experienced bouts of intense nationalistic fervour differ ently and on their own terms and at different points in time. Then I was reminded that Winston Churchill once declared that the ‘first world war’ belonged to the years 1756–63. The Seven Years’ War did, indeed, occur globally. The conflict began in North America and India and soon grew to encompass the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas and envelop whole armies fighting across Europe’s continent. The sun did not set on this war as its two principal belligerents, France and Britain, tussled over the extent of their empires for nearly a decade. Surely, I thought, with so much at stake, examples of drum beating and war recruiting and songs of heroism and past battles would be everywhere. I began searching France first and found nothing. For a full month, I chipped away at trying to understand French recruiting, French shipbuilding, French taxation, and French media and yet, crickets when it came time to attach outbreaks of national and patriotic pride. Taken aback, I then turned to Britain and thus began my plunge into the unfortunate admiral. London newspapers and pamphlets printed all sorts of things about John Byng; he was effeminate, a coward, a fop, a coxcomb, in effect, the epitome of everything un-British. As Linda Colley points out, early Britons habitually identified themselves by what they were not, and Byng was being portrayed in the eighteenth-century press as the most un-British naval officer the country had ever seen. In a nation alistic sense, Admiral John Byng was paraded in effigy and vilified before the masses just as the war raised anxiety levels to 11. But there was something else about the story that captured me. The admiral was executed for not doing his best. I searched for other historical Preface xiii examples where a general or an admiral or some other wartime military leader in European history since the Reformation had their life taken because they lost a battle.

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