Note 172 — Chapter IX · NORTH END.

Horace Walpole, who also vindicated Byng, and regarded his fate as a gross injustice, or, rather, we should say, a judicial murder, tells us that, being with Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia at her villa of Gunnersbury, amongst other interesting anecdotes, she told him that while Byng’s affair was depending, the Duchess of Newcastle sent Lady Sophia Egerton (the wife of a clergyman, by the way) to beg her to be for the execution of the Admiral. ‘And, indeed,’ she continued, ‘I was already for it. The officers would never have fought if he had not been executed; nor would Lord Anson have been head of the Admiralty.’