Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/125

 When parliament refused to interfere, and the king finally rejected the recommendation to mercy, the admiral was left for execution, and in face of the inevitable walked to his death with a calm and noble bearing. His misconduct might be due to a want of resolution, to an unnerving sense of responsibility, or possibly, even probably, to a feeling of disgust at the government which had sent him out with a command so limited when it might have given him a force that would have swept the Mediterranean. But this want of temper, of confidence, of resolution, though leading to criminal misconduct, was not cowardice, certainly not that type of cowardice of which the court acquitted him, that cowardice which regards death or personal danger as the most terrible of evils. Of this, in his last moments, Admiral Byng showed himself entirely free. His demeanour on the Monarque's quarter-deck has been the theme of many a panegyrist; and though panegyric on Admiral Byng seems strangely misplaced, it may be most truly said of him Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it. Admiral Byng was never married. His remains were buried in the family vault at Southill, with a monumental inscription in which even the usual license is somewhat exceeded.

[Official Documents in the Public Record Office; Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 31959, a statement of the case against Byng, prepared, apparently, for Lord Chancellor Hardwicke; Minutes of the Court-martial (published by order, fol. 1757). The copy of this in the British Museum (5805, g 1 (2)) is bound up with many other papers of great interest, including a series of plans of the engagement, a picture of the execution, and a portrait; Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Memoirs, vol. i.; Walpole's Mem. of George II, vol. ii. The literature on the subject of Byng's execution is most voluminous. The list under Byng's name occupies four pages in the British Museum printed Catalogue, and this is a very small portion of the whole. The number of contemporary pamphlets on each side of the question, for the most part equally scurrilous, is very great; but they have no historical value, and the same may be said of most modern criticisms. Sir John Barrow, in his Life of Anson, discusses the subject at some length, but with so little care that he bases a grave objection to the court-martial on the junior rank of the president, Vice-admiral Smith, and names as the three from whom the selection ought to have been made Admiral Steuart, who was at the time on his deathbed, and died on 30 March 1757, Admiral Martin, who died 17 Sept. 1756, two months before the convening of the court, and the Hon. George Clinton, who had retired from active service for more than sixteen years.] 

BYNG, JOHN,  (1772–1860), general, was the third son of Major George Byng of Wrotham Park, Middlesex, and M.P. for that county, a grandson of Admiral Sir George Byng, first Viscount Torrington [q. v.], by Anne Connolly, daughter of Lady Anne Wentworth, who was eventually co-heiress of the last Earl of Strafford of the second creation. He was born in 1772, and entered the army as ensign in the 33rd regiment on 30 Sept. 1793, and was promoted lieutenant on 1 Dec. 1793 and captain on 24 May 1794. With the 33rd, then commanded by Colonel Wellesley, he served in the disastrous campaigns in Flanders of 1793–5 and throughout the retreat to Bremen, and was wounded at the skirmish of Geldermalsen. In 1797 he was appointed aide-de-camp to General Vyse, then commanding the southern district of Ireland, and was much engaged in the suppression of the rebellion of 1798 in Ireland, when he was again wounded. In 1799 he became major in the 60th regiment, and in 1800 lieutenant-colonel of the 29th, and in 1804 he exchanged into the 3rd guards, with which he served in Hanover in 1805, at Copenhagen in 1807, and in the Walcheren expedition in 1809. In 1810 he was promoted colonel, and in 1811 ordered to join the army under Lord Wellington in Portugal. On 7 July 1811 the Duke of York wrote to Lord Wellington recommending him warmly (Wellington Supplementary Despatches, vii. 177), and shortly after Colonel Byng's arrival in Portugal in September 1811 he was posted to the command of a brigade in the second division under General Hill, and retained it until the end of the Peninsular war.

He was with Hill's corps in Estremadura and Andalusia, and so was not present at the battle of Salamanca. In 1813 his brigade was hotly engaged at Vittoria, and was attacked by Soult at the pass of Roncesvalles, when that marshal tried to break through Wellington's lines, and though Byng had to fall back on Sorauren, his heroic resistance enabled Wellington to concentrate enough troops to beat the French. He was engaged in the attack on the entrenched camp on the Nivelle, where he was wounded, at the passage of the Nive at Cambo, before Bayonne. For his conduct at this battle he was afterwards ‘permitted to bear as an honourable augmentation to his arms the colours of the 31st regiment, which he planted in the enemy's lines, as an especial mark in appreciation of the signal intrepidity and