Joseph J. Krulder - The Execution of Admiral John Byng as a Microhistory of Eighteenth-Century Britain

According to Voltaires Candide, Admiral John Byngs 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 Byngs 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 Byngs trial and execution.

Joseph J. Krulder is a Navy veteran, historian, and teacher who earned his doctorate from the University of Bristol, UK.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

History, Memory, Legacy

Edited by Andrzej Chwalba and Krzysztof Zamorski

German Imperial Knights

Noble Misfits Between Princely Authority and the Crown, 14791648

Richard J. Ninness

The Scramble for Italy

Continuity and Change in the Italian Wars, 14941559

Idan Sherer

Artistic and Political Patronage in Early Stuart England

The Career of William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke, 15801630

Brian OFarrell

Bringing the People Back In

State Building from Below in the Nordic Countries ca. 15001800

Edited by Knut Drum, Mats Hallenberg and Kimmo Katajala

Negotiating Exclusion in Early Modern England, 15501800

Edited by Naomi Pullin and Kathryn Woods

Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes

Mehmet Karabela

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

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

4.1 Bung Triumphant (1756)

5.1 A Late Epistle to Mr C_____d (1756)

6.1 A Court Conversation (1756)

6.2 Byng Coin (1756)

8.1 The Present Scene or the Pensive Monarch (1755)

11.1 Female Court Martial (1757)

8.1 French prisoners brought to the United Kingdom during the Seven Years War

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 Voltaires 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 Byngs culpability. Joe Krulder squarely exonerates Byng from the grave charges against him. If the admiral 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 the Monarch 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 radiates out of itself to explore wide frames of reference. Krulder asks the simple question, Why the anger directed at John Byng was disproportionate 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 communicative practices, diverse and transatlantic in compass, that scorned, misrepresented, and debated Byngs conduct and character. This is a magnificent 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 relationship 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.