embarked in that
expedition to Minorca, which covered his character with disgrace, and
even exposed him to all the horrors of an ignominious death. On the
twenty-eighth day of December his trial began before a court-martial,
held on board the ship St. George, in the harbour of Portsmouth, to
which place Mr. Byng had been conveyed from Greenwich by a party of
horse-guards, and insulted by the populace in every town and village
through which he passed. The court having proceeded to examine the
evidences for the crown and the prisoner, from day to day, in the course
of a long sitting, agreed unanimously to thirty-seven resolutions,
implying their opinion, that admiral Byng, during the engagement between
the British and French fleets, on the twentieth day of May last, did
not do his utmost endeavour to take, seize, and destroy the ships of the
French king, which it was his duty to have engaged, and to assist such
of his majesty's ships as were engaged, which it was his duty to have
assisted; and that he did not exert his utmost-power for the relief of
St. Philip's castle. They, therefore, unanimously agreed that he fell
under part of the twelfth article of an act of parliament passed in the
twenty-second year of the present reign, for amending, explaining, and
reducing into one act of parliament, the laws relating to the government
of his majesty's ships, vessels, and forces by sea; and as that article
positively prescribed death, without any alternative left to the
discretion of the court under any variation of circumstances, they
unanimously adjudged the said admiral John Byng to be shot to death, at
such time, and on board of such ship, as the lords commissioners of the
admiralty should please to direct. But as it appeared, by the evidence
of the officers who were near the admiral's person, that no backwardness
was perceivable in him during the action, nor any mark of fear or
confusion either in his countenance or behaviour; but that he delivered
his orders coolly and distinctly, without seeming deficient in personal
courage; and, from other circumstances, they believed his misconduct did
not arise either from cowardice or disaffection, they unanimously and
earnestly recommended him as a proper object of mercy. The admiral
himself behaved through the whole trial with the most cheerful
composure, seemingly the effect of conscious innocence, upon which,
perhaps, he too much relied. Even after he heard the evidence examined