Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/676

of the red, and reduced Gibraltar. He was in the battle of Malaga, which followed soon afterwards, and for his gallantry in that action received the honour of knighthood. In 1718 he was made admiral and Commander-in-chief of the fleet, and was sent with a squadron into the Mediterranean for the protection of Italy. This commission he executed so well that the king made him a handsome present, and sent him full powers to negotiate with the princes and states of Italy, as there should be occasion. He procured the emperor's troops free access into the fortresses which still held out in Sicily, sailed afterwards to Malta, and brought out the Sicilian galleys, and a ship belonging to the Turkey Company. By his advice and assistance the Germans retook the city of Messina in 1719, and destroyed the ships which lay in the basin an achievement which completed the ruin of the naval power of Spain. The Spaniards being much distressed offered to quit Sicily; but the admiral declared that the troops should never be suffered to depart from the island till the king of Spain had acceded to the quadruple alliance, and to his conduct it was entirely owing that Sicily was subdued, and the king forced to accept the terms prescribed him by the alliance. On his return to England he was made rear-admiral of Great Britain, a member of the privy council, Baron Byng of Southill, in the county of Bedford, and Viscount Torrington in Devonshire. He was also made one of the Knights Companions of the Bath upon the revival of that oi-der in 1725. In 1727 George II., on his accession to the crown, placed him at the head of naval affairs as first lord of the Admiralty. He died January 15, 1733, in the seventieth year of his age, and was buried at Southill, in Bedfordshire.

BYNG, The Hon. John (1704-1757), British admiral, fourth son of the subject of the preceding notice, entered the navy at an early age, became captain in 1727, and in 1745 was made rear-admiral of the red. In the year 1755 the British Government received intimation that the French were fitting out a naval expedition in Toulon, and it behoved them to attend to the defences of Gibraltar and Minorca. Nothing, however, was done until the intentions of the French were too apparent, and Byng was then entrusted with ten miserably equipped ships of war, and set sail from Spithead on the 7th April 1756. He put in at Gibraltar to receive stores, and there learnt that the French had made good their descent upon Minorca. On the 19th May he came in sight of St Philip's, still held by the British, but failed to establish communications with the governor. On the following day he engaged with the French fleet, which was inferior in number of vessels, but vastly superior in armament and equipment. There seems no doubt that the division under Byng's charge did not second with sufficient eagerness the bold attack made by Admiral West. The action was indecisive, and next morning Byng called a military council, and it was resolved that, under the circumstances, it was hopeless to attempt anything further, and that Minorca must be left to its fate. The fleet returned to Gibraltar. The indignation of the English at the transaction was intense, and the Government took advantage of it to avert from themselves the charge of incapacity. Byng was at once superseded and brought home under arrest. A court-martial on his conduct sat during December 1756 and January 1757, and found that the admiral had not done his utmost to relieve St Philip's, or to defeat the French fleet, though they fully acquitted him of cowardice or treachery. The only punishment open to them to inflict was that of death, and they passed their sentence with the utmost reluctance, coupling it with an earnest recommendation to mercy. No attention was paid to this or to other attempts to mitigate what was felt to be an unduly severe punishment for mere incapacity. The unfortunate admiral was shot on the 14th March 1757.

BYNKERSHOEK, Cornelius Van (1673-1743), a distinguished Dutch jurist, was born at Middleburg in Zeeland. In the prosecution of his legal studies, and while holding the offices first of member and afterwards of president of the supreme court, he found the common law of his country so defective as to be nearly useless for practical purposes. This abuse he resolved to reform, and took as the basis of a new system the principles of the ancient Roman lav/ . His works are very voluminous. The most important of them are the Olservationes Juris Eomani, published in 1710, of which a continuation in four books appeared in 1733; the treatise, De Dominio Maris, published in 1721; and the Qucestiones Juris Pullici, published in 1737. Complete editions of his works were published after his death; one in folio at Geneva in 1761, and another in two volumes folio at Leyden in 1766.

BYROM, John (1691-1763), a poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Kersall, near Manchester, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first poetical essay, the well-known Colin and Phoebe, appeared in the Spectator, No. 603. After leaving the university he studied medicine at Montpellier, and became a convert to the mystical theology of Bourignon and Boehme. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1723. Having reduced himself to narrow circumstances by a precipitate marriage, he supported himself by teaching a new method of short hand writing, of his own invention, till he succeeded to an estate on the death of an elder brother. He was a rnan of lively wit, of which, as opportunity offered, he gave many specimens. A collection of his miscellaneous poems was printed at Manchester, in two vols. 8vo, 1773, and reprinted at Leeds in 1814, with a life of Byrom by an anonymous writer. Byrom's Private Journal and Correspondence have appeared among the publications of the Chetham Society (vols. xxxiv. and xliv.)

BYRON, George Noel Gordon Byron, Lord (1788–1824). The portrait of the most remarkable figure in the literature of this century is still too often made up on the principle of putting in all the shadows and leaving out all the lights. Not only the facts of his own life, but even the records and traditions of his ancestry, are partially selected in this way. It is true, no doubt, that a man's immediate ancestors must be supposed to have most influence on his character, and that Byron's immediate ancestors were far from being quiet, respectable people. His father, Captain Byron, was a profligate officer, whose first wife was a divorced lady with whom he had eloped to France, who married a second time only to find the means for paying his debts, and who left his wife as soon as her fortune was exhausted. His mother, Catherine Gordon, heiress of Gight in Aberdeenshire, was a fitful and passionate woman, who knew no stable halting-place between the extremes of indulgent fondness and vindictive disfavour. His grand-uncle, whom he succeeded in the title, had killed his neighbour and relative, Mr Chaworth, in a drunken brawl, had been tried before the House of Lords on the charge of murder and acquitted, but had been so wrought upon by remorse and the sense of public opprobrium, that he shut himself up at Newstead, let the place go to ruin, and acquired such a bad repute by his solitary excesses that he was known as the " wicked Lord Byron." Even in this wild ancestry it is easy to detect the corruption of good things. In other parts of the family line the nobler elements are seen running clear and pure. The poet's grandfather, Admiral Byron, "Foulweather Jack," who had as little rest on sea as the poet on land, had the virtues without the vices of the race. Farther down the family tree we find the Byrons distinguishing themselves in the field. Seven brothers fought in the