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

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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. I could not locate any prior to Byng’s. More remarkable to me, the Battle of Minorca was not lost. My sense of justice triggered me to learn more. I had questions. The result is this book. I wanted to understand why Byng, blamed for something he did not do, was executed when others were convinced and argued of his innocence. Behind the political intrigues of Britain were dozens who knew that Byng was to take the fall for the failures of minis­ ters, yet did not come forward to prevent his killing. What was going on in Britain when John Byng was recalled, arrested, put on trial, convicted, and then executed? To answer that question, I went to the University of Bristol and earned my PhD. Bristol became my headquarters to access archives from Lon­ don to the Midlands. Microhistory became a methodological choice, the right one, though other historians had advised me against such a route. Nonetheless, with the support of Bristol’s history department, I chose to recover the story of Byng through avenues that history had yet to explore. My search for Byng turned out to be a founding for me, a place where I learned about a country I knew little about. I discovered the root of tensions between American colonialists and London-based indiffer­ ence. I located the eighteenth-century meaning of the word ‘liberty’ and how that applied to the British Atlantic. And I learned about John Byng and a tragic story where even elites can perish before nationalistic fury. Acknowledgements

This book would not be possible without the assistance of so many. Thanks to Richard Sheldon, who understood my need for exploring Brit­ ish society in the mid-eighteenth century. Thanks go to the entire History Department at the University of Bristol, but especially Ronald Hutton, Tim Cole, Robert Bickers, Simon Potter, Evan Jones, and Andrew Flack. Thanks go to Madge Dresser and also Stephen Poole at the University of West England. I also acknowledge the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research and that staff’s ability to schedule engaging public seminars. Other historians who assisted are Nicolas Rogers, Teresa Fos­ ter, Micah Alpaugh, and Jason Nice. This book, heavy on archival research, necessitated lodging require­ ments in London. To that, I owe an enormous debt to Thane Byng and Robert Nelson, and also to Katrina Ramsey. For stays in Bristol, thank you Alison Bromhead and Peter Almond, Elaine and Jerry Hardy, Nor­ man Taylor and Barbara Gallati. I also would be negligent if I did not offer thanks to some truly remark­ able archivists. Amanda Bevan at the National Archives in Kew, Carlos Corbin at the British Library, and Fran Baker at Chatsworth House all contributed in seeing this book to the end. Abbreviations

Newspapers

BBJ Bodley’s Bath Journal BWI Bristol Weekly Intelligencer BWJ Berrow’s Worcester Journal DA Daily Advertiser DM Derby Mercury EA Evening Advertiser EEC Edinburgh Evening Courant GA General Advertiser GEP General Evening Post GLDA Gazetteer, or London Daily Advertiser GJ Glasgow Journal IJ Ipswich Journal LC London Chronicle LEP London Evening Post LEPBC Lloyd’s Evening Post and British Chronicle MBF Monitor, or British Freeholder NC Newcastle Courant NCG North Carolina Gazette NJ Newcastle Journal PA Public Advertiser PG Pennsylvania Gazette RWJ Read’s Weekly Journal RM Reading Mercury SJC St. James Chronicle or the Evening British Post SMJCA Schofield’s Middlewich Journal or Cheshire Advertiser WEP Whitehall Evening Post WMMWA Whitworth’s Manchester Magazine or Weekly Advertiser xvi Abbreviations Archives

BRO Bristol Record Office BL British Library BM British Museum CH Chatsworth House DRO Derbyshire Record Office DWLDR Dr. Williams’ Library of Dissenting Religion LRO Lancashire Record Office NAM National Army Museum NMM National Maritime Museum NRL New Room Library TNA The National Archives Introduction

On the morning of 7 October 1758, John Wesley walked with Benja­ min Lawrence after a sunrise sermon. The two strode past the narrow- cobbled streets of Newport village heading for Wootton Bridge, the ferry point that connected the Isle of Wight to mainland, England. Here, pass­ ing time, the Methodist minister began to pepper Lawrence, a common soldier, with a series of questions about an event that occurred in the Mediterranean over two years earlier. ‘He was in St. Philip’s Fort dur­ ing the whole siege’, wrote Wesley later in his diary. The conversation between Wesley and Lawrence must have satisfied the travelling min­ ister’s nagging curiosity and found some sort of vindication at solving a festering riddle: how Britain lost the island of Minorca to the French at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War? The impact of that morning conversation remained with Wesley throughout the day. Eventually, he voyaged by ‘cock-boat’1 on choppy waters across the Solent Strait to Gosport. We ‘must have sunk if one large wave had come over her’, he wrote later that night. But after a day filled with travels, afternoon meetings, and a dinner that lasted well into the evening, it was Wesley’s morning conversation with the soldier Benjamin Lawrence that preoc­ cupied his mind. Wesley sharpened his quill, adjusted himself, and then recalled Lawrence’s observations. First, the cattle that fed the garrison were left in the field ‘till the French (long expected) came and took them’. Next, all the wine was left in the nearby town, not enough kept for the castle, not ‘even for the sick men’. A ‘stone house’ within a short distance of the fort was left standing, and it was there that the French had gath­ ered before the last assault. Additionally, there were too few officers, and General Blakeney, the governor, ‘never came out of his house’ during the entire siege. Mines were planted about ‘but most of them were utterly useless’ since they had ‘never been looked after’. The captain in charge of Lawrence’s regiment of 100 men ran away prior to the second of the last attacks and the men ‘having none to command them went after’. On the morning Fort St. Philip capitulated, the soldiers were ‘mad to drive’ the French out and ‘would have done it in an hour’ – but that’s when we were told ‘the fort was given up’. And finally, we had ‘plenty of provision and 2 Introduction ammunition’ to hold them off longer. When, late at night, John Wesley had finished jotting down Lawrence’s unofficial testimony, the travelling preacher concluded with quick quill strokes, ‘O human justice! One great man is shot! And another is made a lord!’2 It is to this last sentence to which this book investigates. The Mediter­ ranean island of Minorca fell to the French on 29 June 1756. Minorca’s loss, however, served only to add insult upon Britain’s other military mis­ steps at the beginning of the war. Political anxiety, already high, surged spilling out into public newspapers and pamphlets. Hawkers and criers filled the streets, poems and ballads recited and sung, effigies were fab­ ricated, pelted, and then hung in retaliation for yet another defeat. An apparent cathartic reaction arose, and many British cities seethed with anger during the summer and fall of 1756 at the country’s latest military failings. Who to blame for another defeat consumed not only Britain’s political circles but captured the attention of an entire nation? Papers in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; papers in colonial America; and papers in foreign cities written in numerous languages all watched and reported upon the unfolding London-based repercussions caused by Minorca’s loss to France. Yet, before the status of Minorca had become publicly known, indeed prior to its capitulation, men of great power had affixed blame upon a lone figure: the admiral who was sent to save it, John Byng. Wesley’s quip, ‘One great man is shot!’ referred to the fallout over Minorca’s loss. Admiral John Byng was blamed, recalled, arrested, placed on trial, and after declared guilty of not doing one’s utmost, executed by firing squad. Wesley’s meeting with Lawrence took place 19 months after Byng was shot, 28 months after the Blakeney surrendered the island. Obviously, the minister remained puzzled by what became known as the Byng affair. Wesley simply didn’t believe in his government’s telling of Minorca’s loss. But why was John Wesley confused in the first place? Why did it take a chance meeting with a lowly soldier to provide Wesley’s epiphany that Byng, after all, was a ‘great man’ unfairly shot? To be sure, Wesley felt soldiers were ‘the most abandoned wretches . . . Their whole glory was in cursing, swearing, drunkenness, and lewdness’, yet it was one of these very ‘monsters’ who clarified Wesley’s cluttered perceptions.3 There was, after all, an official government line as told through theLondon Gazette: John Byng was a coward, a traitor, and as un-British a sea officer as could be. Wesley’s conversation with Lawrence, though, demonstrated the gov­ ernment’s telling was severely doubted. There on the Isle of Wight stood a lowly soldier, a self-proclaimed veteran of the siege of Fort St. Philip, and his telling was not only detailed but counter to most government-backed press reports that spread anti-Byng rhetoric through hearsay and rumour in the summer and fall of 1756. Wesley chose to believe his eyewitness rather than any London news story. Wesley concluded his plebeian sol­ dier delivered him truth. His government had delivered him lies. Introduction 3

Figure 0.1 Vice Admiral John Byng, 1704–57, by Thomas Hudson (1749). Collection of Royal Museums Greenwich.

Admiral John Byng (1704–57) was the fourth son of the 1st Viscount Torrington, George Byng (1663–1733), and his mother was Margaret Master. In 1688, George Byng played a role in the Glorious Revolution delivering messages between Prince William of Orange and English naval captains off the coast of Torbay, Cornwall. These communications led to naval commanders switching their allegiances in support of William. John Byng’s father also participated in the capture of Gibraltar in 1704, directing an international fleet of 22 ships in a bombardment of Spanish defences for which George Byng received a knighthood. But it was at the Battle of Cape Passaro (1718) in the Mediterranean, where Admi­ ral George Byng gained his greatest acclaim. Byng’s forces annihilated 4 Introduction a Spanish fleet, capturing 14 vessels and sinking 4 others. John Byng sailed with his father during that campaign, and at the age of 13 was sent back to England with news of the victory which he hand-delivered to King George I.4 George Byng went on to become Treasurer of the Navy, a member of the Privy Council, and made Baron Byng of Southill, and Viscount Torrington in 1721.5 In 1727, George Byng became First Lord of the Admiralty for the Walpole/Townshend ministry.6 John Byng’s older brothers also held successful careers. Pattee Byng (1699–1747), like his father, became Treasurer of the Navy and 2nd Vis­ count Torrington upon his father’s death. In the House of Lords, Pattee was the political whip for the Henry Pelham administration. Pattee died in 1747 without an heir whereby his brother George Byng (1701–50) became the 3rd Viscount Torrington. George’s career was in the army and saw action in the Caribbean during the War of Jenkin’s Ear retir­ ing with the rank of Major General. Robert Byng (1703–40) died in Barbados while its governor. Numerous letters to his sister, Sarah Byng Osborn (1693–1775), the oldest of the Byng siblings, survived. These letters detailed Sarah’s misfortune at becoming a widow at the age of 24 and then navigating a debt-ridden estate to solvency. That success was apparent in her only surviving son’s (Danvers Osborn) marriage to Lady Mary Montagu, fourth daughter of the Earl of Halifax (George Dunk).7 John Byng, then, can and should be placed in the annals of eighteenth- century British gentility. At the age of 13, John Byng joined his father at sea. It would be the Royal Navy that would round out the rest of his education. He rose through the ranks steadily but not meteorically as his name would suggest. Byng’s resume from the 1740s included his gover­ norship of Newfoundland.8 He also showed ingenuity when confronted. Off Scotland during the 1745 Jacobite invasion, Admiral Byng sent men ashore to stop locals from resupplying French privateers.9 In the Medi­ terranean, at Vado Ligure, during the last years of the War of Austrian Succession, the admiral was said to have ‘built’ a small craft to halt the sea-going resupply of 3,000 Genoese army personnel.10 In 1755, Byng captured the bulk of 300 French maritime ships to which the press lauded great praise upon the admiral.11 Thus as one Parliamentary historian had claimed, Admiral John Byng was ‘esteemed one of the best officers in the navy’12 as he sailed to save the island of Minorca in April 1756. Yet, when Byng arrived at Gibraltar with a questionable, patched- together undermanned fleet in early May, he learned that the Balearic island had already been taken: 15,000 French troops were landed two weeks prior. Byng set sail and arrived off Port Mahon, the location of the Fort St. Philip, where a garrison of men (also undermanned) under the command of William Blakeney lay under siege. On 19 May, attempting to open communications, French warships were spotted on the horizon. The next day the two fleets engaged. Neither side captured or sunk a ves­ sel, though both sides were damaged and men were killed. The French Introduction 5 quit the fight as darkness descended. Byng converted a frigate into a hos­ pital ship, made repairs at sea as best he could, and called a Council of War. Attending officers, both navy and army, unanimously agreed with the admiral; the best course of action was to return to Gibraltar, make repairs and resupply his ships, pray that reinforcements had arrived, and then return to assist the sieged garrison. His fleet sailed for Gibraltar on 25 May, one damaged ship in tow. An advanced frigate arrived at Gibraltar on 16 June 1756, the remainder of the fleet on the 20th. Just as Byng was ready to set sail and make his return to Minorca, an overland letter arrived alerting him that he and other officers were recalled. On 8 July 1756, John Byng, Temple West (his second in command), and several other officers boarded theAntelope for a return to England.13 The sting of recall was nothing compared to the news of his arrest (given to him by Admiral Henry Osborn, his sister’s brother-in-law) when he arrived in Portsmouth, 26 July. By 9 August, John Byng was at Greenwich, London, imprisoned in a small room attached to the Royal Hospital for Disabled Seamen. Byng remained at Greenwich until the end of December, when he was taken to his court martial aboard the St. George anchored at Portsmouth. After a lengthy trial, Admiral John Byng was found guilty of not doing ‘his utmost to take, seize, and destroy the Ships of the French King’ nor did he ‘do his utmost to relieve St. Philips Castle’ and was then, after some additional legal proceedings, shot to death aboard the Mon­ arch on 14 March 1757.14 But the political debates concerning Byng, Minorca, trade, and the empire had readily appeared in public newspapers, pamphlets, prints, and other ephemera – and not just in London. News of Minorca’s loss, the Byng affair, and his subsequent execution spread to nearly every cor­ ner of the British Empire. Byng ‘riots’ appeared throughout England and as far away as Boston, Massachusetts. A savage public-based print war had ensued between those who attacked Byng’s alleged ‘cowardice’ and those who defended his honour. As the initial charges levied against the admiral begun to be countered, the administration of the Duke of New- castle and his Southern Secretary, Henry Fox, teetered and eventually collapsed. Eighteenth-century readers of the Byng affair were undoubt­ edly familiar with the overt political airs that enshrouded London at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Indeed, those political airs seem to have survived the centuries of his­ tory that have focused on the firestorm caused by Minorca’s loss and the subsequent recall, arrest, trial, and execution of a wartime admiral. Twentieth-century histories that focus solely on Minorca and the Byng affair continue to do so through that political and military lens. Cap­ tain Herbert William Richmond’s Papers Relating to the loss of Minorca (1913), Brian Tunstall’s Admiral Byng and the Loss of Minorca (1928), Gerald French’s The Martyrdom of Admiral Byng (1961), and Dudley Pope’s At 12 Mr Byng Was Shot (1962) all supply political and military 6 Introduction tracts by which to chase the history of this event.15 Chris Ware’s Admi­ ral Byng: His Rise and Execution (2009) follows the same political and military trajectory.16 Not this book. My research began with a simple question: what was England like the moment John Byng returned and was promptly arrested? Certainly, many contemporaries throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean found Byng’s death sentence excessive.17 And although this author concurs with that eighteenth-century sentiment, I was more interested in what else (other than the already covered political and military intrigues) may have lent a hand in leading to the admiral’s death sentence. A turn towards cultural and social conditions of mid-eighteenth­ century Britain and how they interrelated to the Byng affair following Minorca’s loss became the overarching goal. In other words, the cultural and social connections that expounded upon the historical players and agencies involved in responding to Minorca’s loss and the succeeding tribulations regarding Byng’s arrest, trial, and execution remained largely unexplored. In doing so, this book represents a severe piece of revision­ ary work. Yes, there have been essays and small chapter entries that refer to the Byng affair along these sociocultural lines. Three notable histori­ ans, in fact, have turned the spotlight on Admiral John Byng to make much larger and sweeping historical points. M. John Cardwell, Nicholas Rogers, and Kathleen Wilson have produced excellent demonstrations of sociocultural histories of the Byng affair, and references to their work are scattered throughout this book.18 But there has yet to be any book solely dedicated to employing a cultural and social lens upon this politi­ cal crisis. Methodologically, then, the work presented here is microhistory. But here, too, such a method blazes a new path. Interposing the Byng affair within the bounds of microhistory creates something new. There does exist several kinds of microhistories. For example, Philip Greven’s Four Generations looks at one particular locality over a designated period of time.19 A microhistory of the Byng affair is quite different in that it is concerned with the loss of an island in the Mediterranean and the con­ comitant reaction by urban, rural, elites, and poor with a very small time frame over a very wide region, including parts of the greater empire. Other microhistories consist of deviant case studies illuminating peasants whose stories were ensnared and captured in perpetuity among various state documents and court records. Perhaps the most famous of these is Carlos Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms.20 John Byng, however, was no peasant, and though Byng appeared in court, his unique set of predicaments appeared in other public and private documents: news­ papers, pamphlets, ballads, handbills, diary entries, letters etc. Perhaps this study of the Byng affair is more aligned with the microhistories pre­ sented by Boyer and Nissenbaum’s Salem Possessed or Robert Gross’s Introduction 7 The Minuteman and Their World.21 Those two works focused on com­ munity and unusual events: certainly, the Byng affair fills the definition for an unusual event, but Byng’s plight travelled far and wide beyond the borders of English-speaking news, nor were anti-Byng protests centred in any one community. Newer microhistories such as Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale attempts to closely analyse the personal and the social over time rather than focus in on any single event but also employs a thorough contextualisation process which leaves a multidimensional product.22 Though Byng’s plight is a single event in history, historiography has yet to prove such a deep contextualisation, thus the book’s founding. A micro- history where deep contextualisation of a single event comes together can be found in Patricia Cline Cohen’s The Murder of Helen Jewett.23 Still, unlike Byng, Helen Jewitt was not an elite nor of extreme wealth, title, or rank. Thus, an intense contextualisation of the recall, arrest, trial, and execution of Admiral John Byng will be, to my best estimations, some­ thing new: using microhistory upon a macro-event.24 This book is split into three parts: focusing first on ‘British’ culture in the mid-eighteenth century, looking at said society next, and then reflect­ ing on how these cultural and social maxims affected the Minorca crisis and the Byng affair. Chapter 1 focuses on the cultural impact of ballads. I argue that bal­ lads remained a potent force in shaping public opinion. The analysis of scores of ballads demonstrates that various ministers, politicos, out-of­ door Tories, those from the ‘lower ranks’, as well as Byng himself, used song and wit to generate and guide public sentiment concerning the polit­ ical crisis caused by Minorca’s loss. Chapter 2 argues that it was the Byng affair that gave rise to the era of the newspaper, not the saga concerning John Wilkes. In fact, Byng and friends won the press war, beating back much of the calumny levied against him in the initial burst of government-sourced fake news. Numer­ ous provincial start-ups occurred during the Byng affair, and some histo­ rians claim a 25% increase in newspaper sales. Chapter 3 discovers and exposes ‘prize’ culture. A prize refers to a captured sea-going vessel that is then brought into port and sold. This chapter places an auditor’s document at the centre of a money trail which tallied the costs involved in processing 300 ‘prizes’ captured during the 1755 Channel Campaign. Various industries, dozens of them, either directly or indirectly, incurred financial benefits in the processing of these maritime vessels. In addition, the Royal Navy’s rules regarding prizes, developed and morphed over time, may have prevented its officers from exacting a heavier toll upon the French military fleet in the early stages of the Seven Years’ War. Chapter 4 focuses on the religious angles over Minorca’s loss and the Byng affair. Here is a story never told – the religious side of a political crisis within the empire. This chapter follows a religious sermon written 8 Introduction in colonial Virginia, its transatlantic crossing upon well-established reli­ gious networks, and its reprinting in London. The sermon’s notable anti- Byng rhetoric arrived just as his trial was coming to an end. The story behind its London distribution and especially its distributor excavates the relationship between religion and politics after the Great Awakening. Chapter 5 begins the section of the book that focuses on British society. Two wet growing seasons found Britain short of food (1755–56). The concomitant rise in food prices and the riots that followed have been well documented. But this dearth occupied the same time and space as the Byng affair. What’s missing from the Byng saga is how the food crisis played a role in its outcome. Presented new, then, are primary materials connecting both Byng and dearth and how both were grounded upon a single reflexive abstract: morality. This chapter explores the moral dimensions of Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century. Chapter 6 picks up where the last chapter left off. Moral arguments appeared to have created a cathartic spate of riots and protests through­ out Britain. Three concurrent ‘riots’ took place from 1755 to 1757 over food, impressments, and Byng. A compare and contrast exercise indicates that Byng’s historiography may be overinflated in terms of origins and levels of violence associated with protests held against him. The violence against navy gangs sometimes led to planned ambushes upon naval per­ sonnel. Food riots, in contrast, were mostly violence against property. In both cases, the said riots do contain instances of cathartic expressions. However, in this chapter, I strongly suggest that the so-called Byng riots have far more in common with the Thomas Paine burnings of 1792 than they do with the food and impressment riots of 1755–57. Chapter 7 explores a rampant disease that struck the Royal Navy at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Admiral Edward Boscawen’s fleet ravaged by 2,000 deaths in the summer of 1755 is well documented. But fleets belonging to Admirals Byng, Hawke, and West also suffered a collective thousand deaths, and these fleets were in different ports. Even more odd, though sickness struck the navy hard, there was no noticeable uptick in civilian mortality rates. I suggest that ‘inland impressments’, which occurred for the first time in naval recruitment history, may be the source of that disease. Investigating England’s geographic, demographic, and economic transformations may help to explain how several thousand casualties exacerbated the Royal Navy’s manning needs and why Byng was sent to the Mediterranean with so few men. With social and cultural points explored, the last portion of the book turns towards politics. This is where revisions to the political story take place, in the context of the social and cultural reviews. Chapter 8 looks at the Channel Campaign of 1755, one of the most successful pre-emptive military strikes in British history. Two fleets commanded by Admirals Hawke and Byng, from August through November, ravaged French mari­ time vessels capturing 300 ships and holding over 7,200 French sailors as Introduction 9 prisoners. The attack, though, came at a cost: the readiness and manning levels of the fleets. This chapter assists in the understanding of why Byng was sent to the Mediterranean with so few ships, many of which were in disrepair while significantly undermanned. Chapter 9 investigates Mediterranean trade which did not figure large in Britain’s growing empire throughout the first few decades of the eight­ eenth century. Merchants from the Caribbean (William Beckford, for example) and merchants from India (Robert Clive, for example) held more political sway within Westminster’s city limits than anything related to the Mediterranean. The chapter supplies context as to the importance of Minorca and the Levant Trading Company. More importantly, the story picks up from where the last chapter left off: with limitations on men and readied warships, I examine how the Admiralty Office scraped together the Byng fleet, how Byng managed that fleet, how Gibraltar fumbled orders to assist Byng, how the French came to land 15,000 on the island unopposed, and how Byng’s battle plans went awry. Chapter 10 presents yet another side of the Byng affair left untold, namely the competing interests of companies trading overseas. New research reveals the East India Company’s concerns over an upcom­ ing war. The company’s incessant requests in 1755 and 1756 may have diverted ministerial attention away from the Mediterranean at the very moment when trade in the Levant needed increased protection. This chap­ ter explores how empire-wide demands (Caribbean and North America as well) may have contributed to the diminutive military presence in the Mediterranean at the outset of the Seven Years’ War. The last chapter examines Byng’s trial and the Minorca inquiry which followed. New evidence suggests that the Parliamentary inquiry into Minorca’s loss arrived with a scripted outcome. Additionally, that out­ come may have been set prior to the opening of Admiral John Byng’s court martial which began in December 1756. New evidence also sug­ gests the crown involved itself in the outcome of Byng’s trial. This serious revisionary work seeks to add multi-contextual layers to a story that has been singularly told. Reaching beyond the political and military narrative by engaging in social and cultural accounts, the story of an admiral shot in 1757 opens a window by which we may study Brit­ ain in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Notes 1. A large rowboat without a mast. 2. Admiral John Byng shot, William Blakeney elevated to peerage. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds., vol. 21 (Nashville, TN., Abingdon Press, 1992), 166–7. 3. Wesley, vol. 21, 166. 4. Thomas Corbett, An Account of the Expedition of the British Fleet to Sicily, in the Years 1718, 1719, and 1720, 5th edition (Dublin, 1739), 20–1. 10 Introduction 5. LG, 5 September 1721. 6. Robert Walpole and Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount. 7. Political and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Century, 1721–1777, Emily F. D. Osborn, ed. (New York: Dodd Mead & Company, 1891), 9–11. 8. John Campbell claimed Byng discharged ‘his duty with fidelity and to the satisfaction of the ministry’. John Campbell, Lives of the British Admirals: Containing Also a New and Accurate Naval History, From the Earliest Peri­ ods, vol. VI (London: 1814), 303. 9. GA, 29 October 1745. 10 . GEP, 5 April 1748. See also the International accolades for Byng, London Gazette, 5 April 1748. 11 . Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754–1763 (London: Routledge, 2014), 146. 12 . William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, vol. XV (London: 1813), 821. 13 . Augustus Hervey’s Journal: The Adventures Afloat and Ashore of a Naval Casanova, David Erskine, ed., paperback edition (London: Chatham Publish­ ing, 2002), 215–8. 14 . Admiralty Miscellanea, 1757, TNA, ADM 7/946, f. 125. 15 . Papers Relating to the Loss of Minorca in 1756, Herbert William Richmond, ed. (London: Navy Records Society, 1913); Brian Tunstall, Admiral Byng and the Loss of Minorca (London: Philip Allan & Co., 1928); Gerald French, The Martyrdom of Admiral Byng (Glasgow: William McLellan & Co., 1961); Dudley Pope, At 12 Mr. Byng Was Shot (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962). 16 . Chris Ware, Admiral Byng: His Rise and Execution (Barnsley, South York- shire, UK: Pen & Sword Books, 2009). 17 . Robert Beatson, Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, From the Year 1727 to the Present Time, vol. 2 (London: 1790), 93. 18 . M. John Cardwell, Arts and Arms: Literature, Politics and Patriotism Dur­ ing the Seven Years War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Nicholas Rogers, Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1998); Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 19 . Philip Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970). 20 . Carlos Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth- Century Miller (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). 21 . Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill & Wang, 1976). 22 . Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990). 23 . Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewitt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998). 24 . Richard D. Brown, ‘Microhistory and the Post-Modern Challenge’, Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 23 (Spring 2003), 9–12.