President’s Address, March 2007.
Perpetual Disgrace:
Admiral John Byng’s Confinement at Greenwich, August – December 1756.
Anthony Cross
Talking thus, we approached Portsmouth. A multitude of people covered the shore, looking attentively at a stout gentleman who was on his knees with his eyes bandaged, on the quarter-deck of one of the vessels of the fleet. Four soldiers, placed in front of him, put each three balls in his head, in the most peaceable manner, and all the assembly then dispersed quite satisfied. ‘What is all this?’ quoth Candide, ‘and what devil reigns here?’ He asked who was the stout gentleman who came to die in this ceremonious manner. ‘It is an Admiral,’ they answered. ‘And why kill the Admiral?’ ‘It is because he has not killed enough of other people. He had to give battle to a French Admiral, and they find that he did not go near enough to him’. ‘But’, said Candide, ‘the French Admiral was as far from him as he was from the French Admiral’. ‘That is very true’, replied they; ‘but in this country it is useful to kill an Admiral now and then, just to encourage the others’.
The ‘Perpetual Disgrace’ in the title of this essay is taken from Admiral Byng’s memorial in the vault of All Saints Church, in the grounds of the family home Southill Park in Bedfordshire. Here, on 29 October 1704, the newborn John Byng was christened; likewise, it’s where his remains are interred today. In full the description reads:
To the Perpetual Disgrace
of Public Justice The Hon[oura]ble JOHN BYNG Esq Admiral of the Blue
Fell a MARTYR to
POLITICAL PERSECUTION
March 14th, in the Year 1757 when
BRAVERY and LOYALTY
were Insufficient Securities
For the
Life and Honour
of a
NAVAL OFFICER
Two hundred years after the event this essay does not intend to be drawn into an analysis of the political machinations that played a crucial, if unseen, part in Byng’s downfall. Nor, come to that, is it first and foremost a platform for the debate that continues to the present day regarding his guilt or innocence of the charges against him.
Instead it intends to be a narrative beginning approximately eight months before the final scene was played out on the quarterdeck of HMS Monarque in March 1757. It looks particularly at the time Byng spent in close confinement at Greenwich in the weeks between early/mid August and late December 1756 as an Admiralty prisoner awaiting his trial by court martial charged under Article XII of the 1749 Articles of War, which declared that:
Every Person in the Fleet, who through Cowardice, Negligence, or Disaffection, shall in Time of Action withdraw or keep, or not come into the Fight or Engagement, or shall not to do his utmost to take or destroy every Ship which it shall be his Duty to engage, and to assist and relieve all and every of his Majesty's Ships, or those of his Allies, which it shall be his Duty to assist and relieve, every such Person so offending, and being convicted thereof the Sentence of a Court-martial, shall suffer Death.
In order to set this scene in its proper context, it is necessary, as space permits, to give some thought to the man himself as well as to the events that immediately preceded his dilemma. Likewise, in précis, it gives some notice of what happened immediately after his unhappy sojourn at the Royal Hospital. For good measure, some notes are appended concerning the specific whereabouts of his incarceration.
Byng was brought up to Greenwich from Portsmouth in early August 1756, having been arrested at Spithead on 26 July on his return from the Mediterranean. Treated no better than a common criminal he was escorted along the seventy plus miles route by a troop of 50 dragoons - even though he was an Admiralty prisoner. This was said to be for his own protection against the mob ‘who were bitterly inflamed against him’.
After what must have been an extremely arduous journey delayed by such a lumbering retinue Admiral Byng is reported to have arrived in Greenwich before dawn on the morning of 11 August. He was received by the Deputy Governor of the Hospital, Isaac Townsend along with a platoon of Pensioners under arms. Without further ceremony Byng was marched off to his quarters ‘in one of the attics of the Queen Anne’s Building ... an apartment of the Hospital a hundred and seventy steps high’. Admiral Townsend received his orders directly from First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Anson. He is variously described (never benevolently) as ‘a thoroughly unpleasant officer’ and elsewhere as ‘sadistic [and] the government’s sycophant’. The room is described as ‘wretchedly cramped and practically unfurnished … under a roof, with just a small truckle bed, and a bare deal table, and one hard chair’. The sentries posted outside the room were changed every two hours (no doubt causing quite a clatter). In the even smaller room next door, Mr Brough, the Admiralty Marshall was kept, almost as much a prisoner as his supposed charge.
On his arrival Byng, not surprisingly, complained of such treatment. With a dignity appropriate to a man of his rank and standing: ‘That as he was the son of a peer, a M.P., and a vice-admiral in the British fleet, to be shut up in so mean an apartment, a garret, was using him very ill’ adding ‘he would [nevertheless] convince the world he had done his duty’. Untouched by these remarks, Admiral Townsend told him to make shift as best he could for the rest of the night, and this he did accordingly ‘by making a choice of the floor and his port-manteau’ for the next two nights. Nor did his complaint, when he repeated it to their Lordships of the Admiralty, meet with greater success: ‘Their Lordships were not condescending enough to honour him with any reply.’
What had brought about this abject state of affairs? The question demands a two-fold answer. First, it requires some description of the character of the man himself; second, something of the circumstances in which he found himself in 1756. Admiral the Honourable John Byng was 52 that year and the second highest-ranking officer in the Royal Navy. Thirty eight of his life had been spent in the service, and yet extraordinarily he had seen major action only once; this was at the battle of Cape Passaro on his first going to sea in 1718 with his uncle Captain Streynsham Master, who in turn was serving under John’s father George. Passaro was perhaps George Byng’s finest hour, certainly one of his most lucrative as both fame and fortune were heaped upon him in the aftermath of victory. Ironically, the second major engagement of Admiral John Byng’s career would also be his last and would lead to his ignominious end, though in between the two events lay years of good fortune and the accumulation of prize money galore. His London residence was in Berkeley Square, where for a while, until her death in late 1755, his mistress Susannah Hickson (a Woolwich girl) was happily ensconced. After that, apart however from a retinue of servants, he lived in rather disconsolate solitude.
So, what can be said of the character of John Byng? He has been often characterized as merely the son of his more famous father. Certainly he seemed to have had a desire to live up to the very high standard set by his father, and was perhaps flawed by a fear that he fail in the attempt. Another shortcoming was his tendency to see all sides of an argument, unmatched by an ability to evaluate and prioritize the same. However, to go so far the historian Michael Lewis did in his assessment and call him a ‘defeatist’ is unfair. He was without doubt an extremely successful peacetime admiral, though a doubtful choice in time of war…
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