discipline. The national disgrace was attributed
to him, and, on his arrival at Portsmouth where
he was immediately placed under close arrest,
the mob were with difficulty restrained from
tearing him to pieces. His younger brother,
Colonel the Honourable Edward Byng, hastened
to meet him, and such was the shock his proud
and sensitive temperament sustained at the
interview, that he died the following day in
convulsions. Lady Torrington, his sister-in-law, in
a letter written at the time, thus alluded to this
tragic episode: "What a cruel star presides
over this family at present. It must have been
a shocking incident to have his brother come to
him on Wednesday and die on Thursday morning."
The same popular rage awaited him
everywhere; a captain's guard of sixty dragoons
was required to save him from summary execution
on the road to London. Indignity was
heaped upon indignity. Greenwich Hospital
having been assigned as the place of his confinement,
the brutal Governor Townsend caused
him to be imprisoned in a garret, unfurnished,
save with a deal table and a chair, the window
barred with iron, and an iron bar across the
chimney to prevent his escape. Addresses from
several counties and large towns to George the
Second, demanded inquiry and vengeance on the
guilty; but the most dictatorial was that from
the capital, to which, according to Horace
Walpole, "the trembling ministers persuaded
the king to pledge his royal word that he would
save no delinquent from justice; a most inhuman
pledge, and too rigidly kept." A court-martial
was ordered to assemble on board H.M.S. Saint
George, at Portsmouth, and the prisoner returned
to that port, under a similar military escort.
The court was composed of thirteen members,
four of whom were admirals, all officers junior to
the accused; the remaining nine were of inferior
rank, being only post-captains. They continued
their sittings during a whole month.

Some of the disclosures displayed the
ministerial corruption of the period. It was asserted
that the letters and reports of the prisoner had
been garbled and perverted before they were
permitted to appear in the Gazette, so as to give
some colour to the charge of cowardice, and that
other flagitious arts had been employed to blacken
his reputation. The sentence was comprised
in thirty-seven resolutions. While it acquitted
him of "misconduct from cowardice or disaffection,"
the final one declared that "he did not do
his utmost," and, in obedience to the twelfth
article of war, then recently rendered more
Draconic, adjudged the prisoner to be shot. While
acquitting him of being "wanting in personal
courage," the court unanimously thought it "their
duty to recommend him as a proper object of
mercy." The administration, "whose terrors,"
according to Walpole, "were as great as the
clamours of the people," in order to screen
themselves, submitted a question to the twelve
judges of England, whether the sentence was
legal; but according to the dangerous and
unconstitutional practice which then prevailed, it was
considered in secret, and was not argued before
the judges by counsel; it was answered in the
affirmative. Nowhere did the ill-fated object
find more strenuous intercessors than amongst
his own immediate judges; Captain Augustus
Keppel, afterwards the popular admiral, being
in parliament, demanded as well on his own
behalf as at the instance of four other members
of the court, a bill to absolve them from their
oath of secresy, in order that they might reveal
matters of weight in relation to their sentence.
The bill passed the House of Commons
tumultuously, by one hundred and fifty-three to twenty-
three, notwithstanding which majority, the tide
of popular feeling abroad ran decidedly against
the victim, and Pitt, the great commoner, deeming
justice to be at stake, deliberately confronted
the torrent. Having detailed to his majesty, in
private, the relenting indications which were
apparent in debate, he declared that the House
wished to see the admiral pardoned; on which
the king replied, "Sir, you have taught me to
look for the sense of my subjects in another
place than in the House of Commons." The
answer was intended as a rebuke, but it was a
high compliment to the policy of a minister who
placed his reliance on public opinion. In the
Upper House the chief legal authorities, Lords
Hardwicke and Mansfield, the Chancellor and
Chief Justice, treated the subject with judicial
strictness; they separately examined at the bar
and on oath every member of the court, and
required answers: First, whether they knew
anything which passed previous to that sentence
which showed it to be unjust? Secondly,
whether any matter passed previous to it, which
showed it to have been given through any undue
motive? To the general surprise, every member,
even Keppel himself, answered both questions
in the negative; the bill was accordingly rejected
by the Lords, but not without some insulting
comments on the haste and heedlessness of the
Lower House of Parliament.

While his friends were incessant in their
applications for mercy, Byng rejected its acceptance
with disdain. "What satisfaction," said he, "can
I receive from the liberty to crawl a few years
longer on the earth, with the infamous load of a
pardon at my back? I despise life upon such
terms, and would rather have them take it!"
It is one among the many remarkable
circumstances of this melancholy, and we believe
unprecedented case, that a complete change of
ministry took place between the accusation
and the sentence, so that one political party
arranged the trial and another directed the
execution. The king entertained an opinion
which, in this instance, was in common with
the populace, that some rigorous example was
required; an opinion which gave rise to the
sneer of Voltaire, when Candide, on his visit to
England, declares, "Dans ce pays çi, il est bon
de tuer de temps en temps, un amiral pour
encourager les autres." All hopes of his friends