John Byng - Legacy

Legacy

Byng's execution was satirized by Voltaire in his novel Candide. In Portsmouth, Candide witnesses the execution of an officer by firing squad; and is told that "in this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others" (Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres).

Byng was the last of his rank to be executed in this fashion, and 22 years after the event the Articles of War were amended to allow "such other punishment as the nature and degree of the offence shall be found to deserve" as an alternative to capital punishment. In 2007, some of Byng's descendants petitioned the government for a posthumous pardon; the Ministry of Defence refused. Members of his family and a group at Southill in Bedfordshire where the Byng family lived continue to seek a pardon.

Byng's execution has been called "the worst legalistic crime in the nation's annals". Nevertheless, it may have influenced the behaviour of later naval officers by helping inculcate "a culture of aggressive determination which set British officers apart from their foreign contemporaries, and which in time gave them a steadily mounting psychological ascendancy". This in turn may have contributed to the success of the Royal Navy and the acquisition and defence of the British Empire, as commanders knew that while there was a chance of failure in battle, not to risk battle was certain to result in punishment. In the words of one historian of the Royal Navy, this "judicial murder" had brutally demonstrated that more was expected of naval officers than just courage and loyalty.

Such policy considerations were no comfort to the family of their victim. Admiral Byng's epitaph at the family vault in All Saints Church, in Southill, Bedfordshire, expresses their view and the view of much of the country: