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

Joseph J. Krulder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000381184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

According to Voltaire's Candide, Admiral John Byng's 1757 execution went forward to 'encourage the others'. Of course, the story is 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 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.

1
‘Sung Hoarse’

The Intersect of Byng and Ballads

My public letter to your Board, will acquaint you in general of our motions, but I think it proper, to let your Lordship know very particularly not only, whatever occurs, but also whatever inducements there may be, to any steps, which may not always be so proper as to go through inspections that a public letter must necessarily do.¹

Two dispatches inextricably linked, one public and the other private, sailed from Admiral John Byng’s fleet on 25 May 1756. Both letters explained the outcome of the seagoing Battle of Minorca and the unanimous decision of war council members to steer the battered fleet towards Gibraltar. The Admiralty Board received the public letter. The private dispatch, though, was meant for an audience of one, George Anson, the Admiralty’s First Lord. In tandem, the two dispatches constituted an acute awareness on Byng’s part that the ‘public’ letter must necessarily ‘go through inspections’ which ‘may not always be so proper’. More directly, Byng’s message to Anson posited an empathetic view. Byng alerted his superior the predicament of having to face the intrusive eyes of British newspapers.² Byng’s short dictums disclosed his steeped cultural propensity to view the ‘public sphere’ in terms of press accounts via letters, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets.³

However, there were other public modes of news-spreading by which some Britons initially heard of newsworthy events. Van Horn Melton’s dual ‘publics’ expresses this well, where a ‘burgeoning print culture provided one medium’ but that ‘expanding arenas of sociability like coffee houses, salons, and masonic lodges were another’.⁴ Brewer used the term ‘bridging’ to identify transmissions of printed information into oral forms, but perhaps the reverse is also true, that mere rumour made its way into prints, song, and other ephemera. The Byng affair offers a glimpse of such reciprocities in action, more so than what Brewer allows.⁵

This chapter is dedicated to ballads, one- or two-sided broadsheets that long gave ‘news in verse’.⁶ In this manner, ballads served as newspapers, of sorts, before the periodical press became an eighteenth-century mainstay. ‘Royalty, Murders, Topical News, Politics, Sport, Humour, and Advertisements’ were printed and sold on single or two-sided sheets throughout England well into the nineteenth century.⁷ When Horace Walpole investigated anti-Byng revelry in the streets of London one summer night in 1756, balladry filled his senses.

I have been but one night in town, and my head sung ballads about Admiral Byng all night, as one is apt to dream of the masquerade minuet: the streets swarm so with lampoons, that I begin to fancy myself a minister’s son again.⁸

Here, Walpole admitted to the immutability of ballads. Time, revelry in song form, and political unpopularity conjoined both his father and the admiral. Walpole confessed that the depth and breadth of ballads throughout the eighteenth century remained considerably potent. Historians must not underestimate their significance or the support networks and systems of distribution.⁹ Printers found willing and able traders, merchants, postal service employees, members of book clubs, societies, librarians, antiquarians, and collectors to take ballads off their hands. Printed musical broadsheets were quickly sent to alehouses, coffee houses, inns, and other locations for immediate public consumption.¹⁰ Balladry, for some, became initial and instantaneous path by which news reached certain segments of society ahead of printed newspapers. Byng ‘protests’ involved thousands of throats which sang ballads ‘to the tune of’ some well-known ditty or ancient song.

Additionally, ballads had functioned as a political outlet in English society for centuries, where plebeian society expressed dissatisfaction through song, noise, and entertainment.¹¹ One pamphlet which defended the admiral complained that Byng had been

hanged, quartered, and burnt in every Part of the City. Every Ballad-singing Throat has been sung hoarse to his Destruction, and Swarms of Hawkers flying all abroad, astonishing the Streets with their Cries, have been let loose, with a design to overwhelm him.¹²

Ballads were part of the regales, the throated pomp of street theatre. Clearly, during the Byng affair, balladry had been ‘let loose’. This chapter will focus on questions of who wrote them, who sung them, and to what effect.

I.

Songs about Byng spread across Britain. Sophisticated distribution networks ensured a geographic breadth beyond localised or even regionalised coverage. Songs on single sheets effectively lowered reproduction and transportation costs making ballads sufficiently profitable. Also, the number of printers, booksellers, and engravers capable of producing ballad sheets had ballooned during the long eighteenth century. Although 174 towns produced ballad sheets in the mid-1740s, 316 towns were printing such broadsides by 1790.¹³ As ballad printing spread, provincial productions twisted orthography to more closely match the regional dialects and trends in spelling.¹⁴ Popularity, though, did not affect pricing; ballad costs remained steady throughout the eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe charged but a penny selling his satirical ballads to London’s multitude.¹⁵ During the Byng affair, one-page song sheets remained around a penny.

Accordingly, the popularity of ballads transcended all ranks of British society.¹⁶ Over centuries, England witnessed the growth of a permanent ‘ballad community’.¹⁷ John Selden, for example, collected ballads in the Restoration era. Samuel Pepys purchased Selden’s collection and added a few hundreds of his own.¹⁸ Phil Withington claims that ‘ballads were appropriated for political purposes’ prior to the English Civil War. Warring factions found verse on broadsheets appealing; a means to influence and claim opinions over the populace.¹⁹ According to Andrew Lincoln, it was this ballad potency that added to their popularity among men of means. As for the ordinary lay folk, Jack Tars, and common soldiers, songs celebrated battles and heroes, regaled and recalled tales of bravery and courage, and often did so while taking swipes at the political status quo.²⁰ Historians looking to retrieve the voice of the poor must understandably spend time within this genre. Investigating Byng ballads may help unearth mid-eighteenth-century mentalités which cover circulating perceptions about war, nation, and empire.

Historically, ballads long served as a means for those from below to express themselves.²¹ However, by the mid-eighteenth century, ballad singers had come to possess sinister reputations: participants redolent of a criminal subculture. For example, a 1721 court case against John Webster, accused of striking, cursing, and abusing his mother, received a sentence with the following condemnation: Webster proved nothing more than a ‘Common Ballad Singer & being a Loose idle and disorderly person’.²² When Thomas Percy, soon to be George III’s chaplain, published Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Percy prefaced his work with an apology. He admitted that the collection included ballads which were ‘nothing better … than the rude songs of ancient minstrels’.²³ John Aiken, a Unitarian scholar, complained that ‘every collection of songs, without exception, was degraded by dullness, or debased by indecency’.²⁴ Seemingly contemporaries of the eighteenth century had concluded that balladeers represented the undesirable elements of British culture. To get to songs of virtue, one sifted through centuries of rude and indecent prose: those expressions which appealed to the mobile vulgar who sometimes dared to mock the powers that be with full-throat displays of regale and balladry.²⁵

Inspections of ballads written during the Byng affair demonstrate historical continuity. Whether for or against the admiral or, in some cases,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Sung Hoarse’: The Intersect of Byng and Ballads
• 2 ‘More Dangerous Enemies’: Newspapers, Pamphlets, and Print Wars
• 3 ‘The Moment They Have Permission’: Byng and Prize Culture
• 4 ‘The Fierce Anger of God’: Byng and Religion
• 5 ‘Grinding the Face of the Poor’: Byng, Dearth, and Morality
• 6 ‘A Mob to Declare’: Three Concurrent Riots
• 7 ‘Dangerously Ill of Fevers’: Disease, Society, and Manning Issues
• 8 ‘Hot Water’: The 1755 Channel Campaign
• 9 ‘This Island’: Minorca in Context and in Battle
• 10 ‘The Empire’: India, North America, and Byng
• 11 ‘Error in Judgement’: Trial, Inquiry, and Sentencing
• Conclusion: ‘To Bingyfi’ and Other Concluding Remarks
• Index