John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington
Encyclopedia
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington (18 February 1743 – 8 January 1813), styled Hon. John Byng until 1812, was one of the most notable of English eighteenth-century diarists. His fifteen extant diaries cover the years 1781–1794, describing his travels on horseback in England and Wales during the summers of twelve of those years.
, of Southill, Bedfordshire
, he succeeded his brother, George
, as 5th Viscount on 14 December 1812 but died before he could take his seat in the House of Lords
. The family seat having been sold in his elder brother's lifetime for the repayment of debt, John Byng was thus a Viscount without an estate.
He was succeeded by his eldest son, George
, who took his seat in the House of Lords
on 3 February 1813.
Byng was a great-uncle of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
.
On 3 March 1767, he married Bridget Forrest, daughter of Commodore
Arthur Forrest
RN
(d. 1770) and Juliana Frederica Marina Cecila Lynch (1722–1804). The marriage produced 14 children, 13 of whom survived infancy:
2. A Ride into the West, [23 August-9 September] 1782, Hampshire Archives & Local Studies, Winchester (Diary of a Tour through Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset).
3. A Tour to North Wales, [25 June-31 July] 1784, Cardiff Central Library.
4. A Ride taken in July, [2 July-12 July] 1785, Shakespeare Centre Library & Archive, Stratford-upon-Avon (Diary of a Tour through Oxfordshire and Warwickshire).
5. Of a Tour into South Wales, [21 July-18 August] 1787, Cardiff Central Library.
6. Fragment of a diary of a Tour in Hertfordshire, (circa 11-circa 21) June 1788, Cambridge University Library (Torrington Diary, June 1788).
7. A Tour into Sussex, [15 August-25 August] 1788, Brighton & Hove Library Service (Diary of a Tour through Sussex).
8. A Tour in the Midlands, [9 June-4 July] 1789, Bodleian Library, Oxford (Travel Journals).
9. Tour in the Midlands, [7 June-22 June, 29 June-20 July] 1790, Manchester Archives & Local Studies (Diary of Tours from Leicester to Manchester & through the East Midlands).
10. A Tour into Bedfordshire, [21 August-5 September] 1790, Luton Central Library.
11. A Tour into Kent, [17 September-26 September] 1790, in private hands.
12. A Tour into Lincolnshire, [13 June-27 July] 1791, Lincoln Central Library (Diary of a Tour of Lincolnshire).
13. A Tour to the North, [27 May-17 July] 1792, Bodleian Library, Oxford (Travel Journals).
14. Tour into North Wales, [9 July-20 August] 1793, Cardiff Central Library.
15. A Tour in Bedfordshire, [1 May-13 June, 6 September-28 September] 1794, Luton Central Library.
There is also said to be a missing diary of a tour of Devon.
.
Byng has written no travel journal for Scotland though he may have been acquainted with that country. He travelled the Midlands in 1774 without leaving any record of his impressions.
On his travels Byng displays the training and attitude of a retired Army officer (subsequently, from 1782 to 1799, a commissioner of stamps) together with the intellectual outlook of an antiquary steeped from his schooldays in Shakespeare and in the Classics of Greek and Roman antiquity. He delights in ruins, such as those of Tintern Abbey
, Crowland Abbey and Fountains Abbey
, studies gravestones in many or most of the churchyards he visits, and records the inscriptions on some of them. He makes detours in order to view historic mansions whilst taking care not to stay at any of them even when they are inhabited by his aristocratic relations. He does not, for example, enter Woburn Abbey
although it is the home of his niece’s brother-in-law, the future 6th Duke of Bedford
. He does not stay with his brother the 4th Viscount Torrington
but at the Sun Inn at Biggleswade
, which he calls his “country seat” .
In keeping with his military training Byng is gifted with his pencil. Like Turner
in the Lake District
, he uses his paintbrushes to sketch charming but somewhat naïve watercolour scenes, as of Barfreston church , Greta Bridge
or the “tortur'd tree” at Bell Bar
.
Like Horace Walpole or William Thomas Beckford
, he loves Gothic architecture
, thus foreshadowing the Romantic movement. (It is the attitude satirized by Jane Austen
in Northanger Abbey
.) He deplores any “ugly, staring, red-brick house” , such as Dunham Massey
, Adlington Hall
, Etruria Hall
or Attingham Park
. And yet, as befits a former Army officer, he admires orderliness and the well-kept economy of a flourishing country estate.
There is a vividness and an immediacy about Byng’s documentary record which is seldom if ever to be found in the work of any other British diarist.
, the county of his childhood.
Faithful to the established Church of England
(although conscious of its imperfections), he had only limited sympathy with Methodism
– whilst recognizing its potential to rejuvenate traditional churchgoing.
He was aware that great social changes were afoot and did not totally disapprove of them. He was full of admiration for Cromford Mill
in Derbyshire
, and for the pioneering technology of Richard Arkwright
. He admired the silk-mills at Overton
near Basingstoke
, the mining and the navigation tunnel at Sapperton
in Gloucestershire
, and Josiah Wedgwood
’s potteries at Etruria, Staffordshire
. But this was the picturesque
side. Of the Derbyshire mills he writes: “These cotton mills, seven storeys high and fill'd with inhabitants, remind me of a first-rate man of war and, when they are lighted up on a dark night, look most luminously beautiful” . Politically, however, he dreaded revolution or even reform .
In the course of his journeyings Byng provides much information about the inns and alehouses of that time. Often included in his diaries are the bills he has paid at his various stopping-places. Partly because they were so often on his routes, there were four inns he especially liked: the Sun at Biggleswade
, the Haycock at Wansford, the Ram’s Head at Disley
, and the Wheatsheaf at Alconbury
(Hill). People travelled with their own sheets , merely renting a bed at an inn in preference to sleeping in “damp house sheets” . At Leicester
the diarist's bed was “sheeted, contrary to [his] orders” . A rushlight
would faintly illuminate his bedroom during the hours of darkness .
Byng rose early in the morning and sometimes breakfasted as late as nine . Broadly speaking, dinner was at two o’clock. However, it could be called for as late as four . Supper could be at any time between seven o'clock and nine. At both meals there was sometimes a fairly wide range of dishes, all of which could be chosen, or just some. The breakfast drink was usually coffee . The food was standard fare, with recipes that were fairly identical in whichever part of the country Byng happened to be. Breakfast would cost 10d, the price of dinner would be 1/6d or 2/-, and supper 1/- : at Boston, Lincolnshire
it is called a “gentleman's supper”, at 1/9d . Wine, the cost varying with the quantity consumed, would be an additional charge. Also additional were the horses' hay and corn , which generally cost 3/6d to 4/-.
The quality of inn fare varied enormously. At Bedford
Byng lifted the lid of a damson tart and decided not to have any of it – plastering it down “for the next comer”, and adding caustically that “it was not the first time of the lids being removed” . A good “pigeon-pie, with a pint of good port wine” was one of his favourite collations . James Burnett, Lord Monboddo
had for “supper ... a provincial dish, cook'd from his directions” .
At the Sun Inn at Biggleswade Byng had not only his own parlour , where he could eat privately, but was also provided with his own lockable chest of drawers (complete with “nightcap, shirts, fishing-tackle” ) and with grazing for his horse whilst he was in London. Though at Broadway, Worcestershire
he enjoyed the luxury of a “spacious and clean parlour” , he was often in the “public parlours” ; and this was all the more remarkable because of the great disparity which then existed between the grand bedrooms and dining-rooms of historic houses and the cold, draughty, ill-lit “gallery chamber[s]” where he so frequently had to spend the night. In the era of inns and alehouses hotels had scarcely come into existence (though there was one at Buxton
and in Manchester
there was the Bridgewater Arms Hotel . The bedrooms in these inns and alehouses could be very primitive indeed. There might be “dirty blankets” (25 August 1782). At Settle
his “windows, door and chimney board kept an incessant clatter” . A traveller, or Tourist, might even be made to share a servants' bedroom . At Lewes
Byng and Isaac Dalby had to share a double bed . On the more positive side, it was sometimes possible to have supper served in one's bedroom .
On his travels Byng met up with, or glimpsed, many of the prominent people of his age. In August 1788 he undertook a tour into Sussex with the mathematician Isaac Dalby. At Biggleswade, in 1792, he met Humphry Repton
. At Birmingham
, in the same year, he encountered Sarah Siddons
. Two years later, at Ampthill
, he glimpsed Lord Monboddo travelling post-haste from London to Edinburgh. Byng leaves unforgettable memories of Blenheim Palace
(its grounds, gardens and gardeners but not of the Duke of Marlborough
himself). His meeting with Colonel Johnson , told with economy, lingers in the imagination.
The overall impression is that of a man keenly aware of social change: that is Byng’s head; but in his heart he clings to the old ways.
. The Grand Tour, a leisurely exploration of outstanding cultural features of the European Continent, was undertaken by many young men -- though not by Byng himself -- before and during the 1780s. Byng, intensely patriotic, believed that there was just as much of interest in Britain as in France or Italy, particularly as England and Wales contained so much that was picturesque
.
He writes in his Fragment of a diary of a Tour in Hertfordshire, June 1788:-
Now I should be glad to ask of our Travellers, who brag of every country but their own, where they will find a cheaper charge than this [18/3d for 2½ days]; which was on a high road, [at South Mimms
,] near the metropolis of Europe!
Talk not, therefore, gentlemen, of foreign parts, till you have seen and learnt something of your own country: -- ye, who drive by Canterbury Cathedral
, without deigning a look, and return boasting of rialtos
, eclipsed by the work of the most ordinary Welsh masons.
“If my journals should remain legible, or be perused at the end of 200 years”, he writes elsewhere ), “there will, even then, be little curious in them relative to travel, or the people; because our island is now so explored; our roads, in general, are so fine; and our speed has reach'd the summit”.
But it is impossible to agree with his assessment that The Torrington Diaries or Rides Round Britain have no enduring historical value. Like Samuel Pepys
, Byng conveys a most vivid impression of what it was like for the diarist to live from day to day in the society of his own period.
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, The Torrington Diaries, ed. C.B. & Fanny Andrews, 1954.
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, The Torrington Diaries. A Literary Account of English Life and Thought in the 18th Century, ed. Bothaina Abd-El-Hamid Mohamed, 1958.
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, Byng’s Tours: The Journals of the Hon. John Byng, 1781-1792, ed. David Souden, 1991.
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, Rides Round Britain, ed. Donald Adamson
, 1996.
Donald Adamson
, "Following John Byng", Folio, summer 1996, pp. 3-9.
Family
The younger son of George Byng, 3rd Viscount TorringtonGeorge Byng, 3rd Viscount Torrington
Major General George Byng, 3rd Viscount Torrington , styled The Honourable from 1721 to 1747, was a British Army officer and peer. He was the son of Admiral George Byng, 1st Viscount Torrington. He married Elizabeth Daniel, granddaughter of Sir Peter Daniel, on 21 August 1736...
, of Southill, Bedfordshire
Southill, Bedfordshire
Southill is a village and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, about from Biggleswade.The principal residence, Southill Park, was formerly the home of the Viscounts Torrington, but was bought at the end of the 18th century by Samuel Whitbread....
, he succeeded his brother, George
George Byng, 4th Viscount Torrington
George Byng was the 4th Viscount Torrington, son of George Byng, 3rd Viscount Torrington and Elizabeth Daniel.He gained the title 4th Viscount Torrington at the death of his father in 1750....
, as 5th Viscount on 14 December 1812 but died before he could take his seat in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
. The family seat having been sold in his elder brother's lifetime for the repayment of debt, John Byng was thus a Viscount without an estate.
He was succeeded by his eldest son, George
George Byng, 6th Viscount Torrington
George Byng, 6th Viscount Torrington was a Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy. His son, the seventh Viscount, served as Governor of Ceylon between 1847 and 1850....
, who took his seat in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
on 3 February 1813.
Byng was a great-uncle of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, KG, GCMG, PC , known as Lord John Russell before 1861, was an English Whig and Liberal politician who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century....
.
On 3 March 1767, he married Bridget Forrest, daughter of Commodore
Commodore (Royal Navy)
Commodore is a rank of the Royal Navy above Captain and below Rear Admiral. It has a NATO ranking code of OF-6. The rank is equivalent to Brigadier in the British Army and Royal Marines and to Air Commodore in the Royal Air Force.-Insignia:...
Arthur Forrest
Arthur Forrest (Royal Navy officer)
Arthur Forrest was an officer of the Royal Navy who saw service during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War, rising to the rank of captain and the post of commodore.-Early life:...
RN
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
(d. 1770) and Juliana Frederica Marina Cecila Lynch (1722–1804). The marriage produced 14 children, 13 of whom survived infancy:
- George ByngGeorge Byng, 6th Viscount TorringtonGeorge Byng, 6th Viscount Torrington was a Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy. His son, the seventh Viscount, served as Governor of Ceylon between 1847 and 1850....
(6 June 1768 – 18 June 1831). He married Elizabeth Langmead (d. 1810) on 8 February 1793 and Frances Harriet Barlow (d. 1868) on 5 October 1811. George succeeded his father as Viscount Torrington on 3 February 1813. - Elizabeth Lucy Byng (15 August 1770 – 18 January 1846), married Rear AdmiralRear AdmiralRear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. It is generally regarded as the lowest of the "admiral" ranks, which are also sometimes referred to as "flag officers" or "flag ranks"...
Percy Fraser (d. 9 December 1827) on 26 September 1797 and George Goodenough Lynn on 10 August 1836. - Cecilia Elizabeth Byng (b. 15 August 1770), married J. Robert Gregg Hopwood on 31 October 1805.
- Anna Maria Bridget Byng (18 August 1771 – 30 October 1852), married Charles Henry HallCharles Henry HallCharles Henry Hall was an English churchman and academic, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford and then Dean of Durham.-Life:He was the son of Charles Hall, dean of Bocking, Essex, and uncle of watercolour artist John Frederick Tayler. He was admitted to Westminster School in 1775, was elected Christ...
(1763–1827) on 29 August 1794. Hall was an ecclesiastic who served in several prominent positions in the Anglican Church. - Frances Byng (d. November 1796).
- Edmund John Byng (1774–1854).
- John Byng (d. 23 November 1811), married a Miss Mayne on 5 November 1806.
- Bridget Augusta Forrest Byng (d. 4 May 1876), married the Hon. Charles Herbert RNCharles Herbert (Royal Navy officer)The Honourable Charles Herbert was a British Royal Navy officer, and the son of Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Carnarvon...
(5 July 1774 – 12 September 1808) in July 1806. - Henry Dilkes Byng (d. 24 September 1860), married Maria Jane Clarke on 2 October 1810.
- Frederick Gerald Byng (4 December 1784 – 1876), known as 'Poodle Byng'. A Regency society dandy who served as a page of honour to GeorgeGeorge IV of the United KingdomGeorge IV was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and also of Hanover from the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later...
, Prince of WalesPrince of WalesPrince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
, held commissions in the army, and worked in the Foreign Office. In his later life he became actively involved in the campaign to improve sanitation in London. - Georgiana Byng (d. 23 July 1856), married the Rev. Geoffrey Hornby.
- Beatrice Charlotte Byng (d. 12 March 1848), married the Rev. Colin Alexander Campbell on 30 November 1820.
- Lucy Juliana Byng (d. 1851), married Sir John Morris, Bt., on 5 October 1809.
- A stillborn child, sex not recorded, born in 1794.
The diaries
1. Tour to the West, [31 May-14 July] 1781, Bodleian Library, Oxford (Travel Journals).2. A Ride into the West, [23 August-9 September] 1782, Hampshire Archives & Local Studies, Winchester (Diary of a Tour through Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset).
3. A Tour to North Wales, [25 June-31 July] 1784, Cardiff Central Library.
4. A Ride taken in July, [2 July-12 July] 1785, Shakespeare Centre Library & Archive, Stratford-upon-Avon (Diary of a Tour through Oxfordshire and Warwickshire).
5. Of a Tour into South Wales, [21 July-18 August] 1787, Cardiff Central Library.
6. Fragment of a diary of a Tour in Hertfordshire, (circa 11-circa 21) June 1788, Cambridge University Library (Torrington Diary, June 1788).
7. A Tour into Sussex, [15 August-25 August] 1788, Brighton & Hove Library Service (Diary of a Tour through Sussex).
8. A Tour in the Midlands, [9 June-4 July] 1789, Bodleian Library, Oxford (Travel Journals).
9. Tour in the Midlands, [7 June-22 June, 29 June-20 July] 1790, Manchester Archives & Local Studies (Diary of Tours from Leicester to Manchester & through the East Midlands).
10. A Tour into Bedfordshire, [21 August-5 September] 1790, Luton Central Library.
11. A Tour into Kent, [17 September-26 September] 1790, in private hands.
12. A Tour into Lincolnshire, [13 June-27 July] 1791, Lincoln Central Library (Diary of a Tour of Lincolnshire).
13. A Tour to the North, [27 May-17 July] 1792, Bodleian Library, Oxford (Travel Journals).
14. Tour into North Wales, [9 July-20 August] 1793, Cardiff Central Library.
15. A Tour in Bedfordshire, [1 May-13 June, 6 September-28 September] 1794, Luton Central Library.
There is also said to be a missing diary of a tour of Devon.
Scope of his work
Byng’s journeys encompass England and Wales in the summer months of 1781-1794. After this time he gave up his journeyings, feeling he was too old to cover so many miles on horseback with only his “man” – Thomas Bush, Garwood, young Thomas Bush or an unlikeable unnamed Valet – to accompany him and sometimes to ride on ahead to book the inn for the next night’s stay . It was also the valet's responsibility to carry his master's bedclothes on his own horse , make his master's bed , attend to both horses , call his master in the morning – and give him consequence . Viewed in a literary light, Bush or Garwood resembles Don Quixote’s Sancho PanzaSancho Panza
Sancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote, and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs,...
.
Byng has written no travel journal for Scotland though he may have been acquainted with that country. He travelled the Midlands in 1774 without leaving any record of his impressions.
On his travels Byng displays the training and attitude of a retired Army officer (subsequently, from 1782 to 1799, a commissioner of stamps) together with the intellectual outlook of an antiquary steeped from his schooldays in Shakespeare and in the Classics of Greek and Roman antiquity. He delights in ruins, such as those of Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey was founded by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow, on 9 May 1131. It is situated in the village of Tintern, on the Welsh bank of the River Wye in Monmouthshire, which forms the border between Monmouthshire in Wales and Gloucestershire in England. It was only the second Cistercian...
, Crowland Abbey and Fountains Abbey
Fountains Abbey
Fountains Abbey is near to Aldfield, approximately two miles southwest of Ripon in North Yorkshire, England. It is a ruined Cistercian monastery, founded in 1132. Fountains Abbey is one of the largest and best preserved Cistercian houses in England. It is a Grade I listed building and owned by the...
, studies gravestones in many or most of the churchyards he visits, and records the inscriptions on some of them. He makes detours in order to view historic mansions whilst taking care not to stay at any of them even when they are inhabited by his aristocratic relations. He does not, for example, enter Woburn Abbey
Woburn Abbey
Woburn Abbey , near Woburn, Bedfordshire, England, is a country house, the seat of the Duke of Bedford and the location of the Woburn Safari Park.- Pre-20th century :...
although it is the home of his niece’s brother-in-law, the future 6th Duke of Bedford
Duke of Bedford
thumb|right|240px|William Russell, 1st Duke of BedfordDuke of Bedford is a title that has been created five times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1414 in favour of Henry IV's third son, John, who later served as regent of France. He was made Earl of Kendal at the same time...
. He does not stay with his brother the 4th Viscount Torrington
Viscount Torrington
Viscount Torrington is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1721 for the statesman Sir George Byng, 1st Baronet, along with the subsidiary title Baron Byng, of Southill in the County of Bedford, also in the Peerage of Great Britain. He had already been created a Baronet, of...
but at the Sun Inn at Biggleswade
Biggleswade
Biggleswade is a market town and civil parish located on the River Ivel in Bedfordshire, England. It is well served by transport routes, being close to the A1 road between London and the North, as well as having a railway station on the main rail link North from London .-Geography:Located about 40...
, which he calls his “country seat” .
In keeping with his military training Byng is gifted with his pencil. Like Turner
Turner
Turner is a common surname of English 12th Century origin, meaning "one who works with a lathe". Turner is the 28th-most common surname in the United Kingdom.-List of people with surname Turner:...
in the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
, he uses his paintbrushes to sketch charming but somewhat naïve watercolour scenes, as of Barfreston church , Greta Bridge
Greta Bridge
Greta Bridge is a village on the River Greta in County Durham, England.-Geography and administration:Greta Bridge lies in the Pennine hills near to Barnard Castle...
or the “tortur'd tree” at Bell Bar
Bell Bar
Bell Bar is a village located in North Mymms, Hertfordshire, England.Thought to be named after the ancient Bell Inn which stood nearby, Bell Bar was a cluster of dwellings around this coaching inn on the Great North Road which used to pass through Bell Bar along what is now called Bell Lane...
.
Like Horace Walpole or William Thomas Beckford
William Thomas Beckford
William Thomas Beckford , usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England...
, he loves Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
, thus foreshadowing the Romantic movement. (It is the attitude satirized by Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
in Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan was written approximately during 1798–99...
.) He deplores any “ugly, staring, red-brick house” , such as Dunham Massey
Dunham Massey
Dunham Massey is a civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. The parish includes the villages of Sinderland Green, Dunham Woodhouse and Dunham Town, along with Dunham Massey Park, formerly the home of the last Earl of Stamford and owned by the National Trust...
, Adlington Hall
Adlington Hall
Adlington Hall is a country house in Cheshire, England. The oldest part of the existing building, the Great Hall, was constructed between 1480 and 1505; the east wing was added in 1581. The Legh family has lived in the hall and in previous buildings on the same site since the early 14th century...
, Etruria Hall
Etruria Hall
Etruria Hall in Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England was the home of the potter Josiah Wedgwood. It was built between 1768–1771 by Joseph Pickford.Etruria Hall was the site of the innovative research into photography by Thomas Wedgwood in the 1790s...
or Attingham Park
Attingham Park
Attingham Park is a country house in Shropshire, England, which is owned by the National Trust. It is a Grade I listed building.- Location :It is located near to the village of Atcham, on the B4380 Shrewsbury to Wellington road.- History :...
. And yet, as befits a former Army officer, he admires orderliness and the well-kept economy of a flourishing country estate.
There is a vividness and an immediacy about Byng’s documentary record which is seldom if ever to be found in the work of any other British diarist.
Byng's picture of 18th-century society
Byng is a laudator temporis acti, or praiser of times past. As a Whig he looked favourably on the Hanoverian settlement and expressed a strong dislike for Scotland. He lamented that Scotland seemed to be taking over England: “like their native thistles, they never can be weeded out” . He was a countryman at heart, far happier fishing and shooting than endeavouring to adapt himself to the airs and graces of polite London society, for which he had little affection. He fondly recollects his visits to Yotes Court, Maidstone about 1755 . Yet emotionally he was rooted in BedfordshireBedfordshire
Bedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region.It borders Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east....
, the county of his childhood.
Faithful to the established Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
(although conscious of its imperfections), he had only limited sympathy with Methodism
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
– whilst recognizing its potential to rejuvenate traditional churchgoing.
He was aware that great social changes were afoot and did not totally disapprove of them. He was full of admiration for Cromford Mill
Cromford Mill
Cromford Mill was the first water-powered cotton spinning mill developed by Richard Arkwright in 1771 in Cromford, Derbyshire, England, which laid the foundation of his fortune and was quickly copied by mills in Lancashire, Germany and the United States...
in Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
, and for the pioneering technology of Richard Arkwright
Richard Arkwright
Sir Richard Arkwright , was an Englishman who, although the patents were eventually overturned, is often credited for inventing the spinning frame — later renamed the water frame following the transition to water power. He also patented a carding engine that could convert raw cotton into yarn...
. He admired the silk-mills at Overton
Overton
-People:* Constantine Overton* David M. Overton* Doug Overton* Edward Overton, Jr. , United States representative from Pennsylvania* Elli Overton* Frank Overton* Guy Overton* Hall Overton* Iain Overton...
near Basingstoke
Basingstoke
Basingstoke is a town in northeast Hampshire, in south central England. It lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon. It is southwest of London, northeast of Southampton, southwest of Reading and northeast of the county town, Winchester. In 2008 it had an estimated population of...
, the mining and the navigation tunnel at Sapperton
Sapperton
Sapperton may refer to:*Sapperton, Derbyshire, England*Sapperton, Gloucestershire, England**Sapperton Tunnel **Sapperton Canal Tunnel*Sapperton, Lincolnshire, England*Sapperton, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, and Josiah Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood was an English potter, founder of the Wedgwood company, credited with the industrialization of the manufacture of pottery. A prominent abolitionist, Wedgwood is remembered for his "Am I Not A Man And A Brother?" anti-slavery medallion. He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family...
’s potteries at Etruria, Staffordshire
Etruria, Staffordshire
Etruria is a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England.-Home of Wedgwood:Etruria was the fourth and penultimate site for the Wedgwood pottery business. Josiah Wedgwood, who was previously based in Burslem, opened his new works in 1769. It was named after the Italian district of Etruria,...
. But this was the picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
side. Of the Derbyshire mills he writes: “These cotton mills, seven storeys high and fill'd with inhabitants, remind me of a first-rate man of war and, when they are lighted up on a dark night, look most luminously beautiful” . Politically, however, he dreaded revolution or even reform .
In the course of his journeyings Byng provides much information about the inns and alehouses of that time. Often included in his diaries are the bills he has paid at his various stopping-places. Partly because they were so often on his routes, there were four inns he especially liked: the Sun at Biggleswade
Biggleswade
Biggleswade is a market town and civil parish located on the River Ivel in Bedfordshire, England. It is well served by transport routes, being close to the A1 road between London and the North, as well as having a railway station on the main rail link North from London .-Geography:Located about 40...
, the Haycock at Wansford, the Ram’s Head at Disley
Disley
Disley is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is located on the very edge of the Peak District, in the Goyt Valley, very close to the county boundary with Derbyshire at New Mills, and south of Stockport, Greater...
, and the Wheatsheaf at Alconbury
Alconbury
Alconbury is a village in the English county of Cambridgeshire.-Geography:It is in the district of Huntingdonshire and gives its name to RAF Alconbury. It is near to the point where a major north/south road, the A1, crosses the only major east/west road: the A14...
(Hill). People travelled with their own sheets , merely renting a bed at an inn in preference to sleeping in “damp house sheets” . At Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
the diarist's bed was “sheeted, contrary to [his] orders” . A rushlight
Rushlight
A rushlight is a type of candle or miniature torch formed by soaking the dried pith of the rush plant in fat or grease. For several centuries rushlights were a common source of artificial light for poor people throughout the British Isles. They were extremely inexpensive to make...
would faintly illuminate his bedroom during the hours of darkness .
Byng rose early in the morning and sometimes breakfasted as late as nine . Broadly speaking, dinner was at two o’clock. However, it could be called for as late as four . Supper could be at any time between seven o'clock and nine. At both meals there was sometimes a fairly wide range of dishes, all of which could be chosen, or just some. The breakfast drink was usually coffee . The food was standard fare, with recipes that were fairly identical in whichever part of the country Byng happened to be. Breakfast would cost 10d, the price of dinner would be 1/6d or 2/-, and supper 1/- : at Boston, Lincolnshire
Boston, Lincolnshire
Boston is a town and small port in Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. It is the largest town of the wider Borough of Boston local government district and had a total population of 55,750 at the 2001 census...
it is called a “gentleman's supper”, at 1/9d . Wine, the cost varying with the quantity consumed, would be an additional charge. Also additional were the horses' hay and corn , which generally cost 3/6d to 4/-.
The quality of inn fare varied enormously. At Bedford
Bedford
Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to the former Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town...
Byng lifted the lid of a damson tart and decided not to have any of it – plastering it down “for the next comer”, and adding caustically that “it was not the first time of the lids being removed” . A good “pigeon-pie, with a pint of good port wine” was one of his favourite collations . James Burnett, Lord Monboddo
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo was a Scottish judge, scholar of linguistic evolution, philosopher and deist. He is most famous today as a founder of modern comparative historical linguistics . In 1767 he became a judge in the Court of Session. As such, Burnett adopted an honorary title based on his...
had for “supper ... a provincial dish, cook'd from his directions” .
At the Sun Inn at Biggleswade Byng had not only his own parlour , where he could eat privately, but was also provided with his own lockable chest of drawers (complete with “nightcap, shirts, fishing-tackle” ) and with grazing for his horse whilst he was in London. Though at Broadway, Worcestershire
Broadway, Worcestershire
Broadway is a village and civil parish in the Worcestershire part of the Cotswolds in England.Often referred to as the "Jewel of the Cotswolds", Broadway village lies beneath Fish Hill on the western Cotswold escarpment...
he enjoyed the luxury of a “spacious and clean parlour” , he was often in the “public parlours” ; and this was all the more remarkable because of the great disparity which then existed between the grand bedrooms and dining-rooms of historic houses and the cold, draughty, ill-lit “gallery chamber[s]” where he so frequently had to spend the night. In the era of inns and alehouses hotels had scarcely come into existence (though there was one at Buxton
Buxton
Buxton is a spa town in Derbyshire, England. It has the highest elevation of any market town in England. Located close to the county boundary with Cheshire to the west and Staffordshire to the south, Buxton is described as "the gateway to the Peak District National Park"...
and in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
there was the Bridgewater Arms Hotel . The bedrooms in these inns and alehouses could be very primitive indeed. There might be “dirty blankets” (25 August 1782). At Settle
Settle
Settle is a small market town and civil parish within the Craven district of North Yorkshire, England. It is served by the Settle railway station, which is located near the town centre, and Giggleswick railway station which is a mile away. It is from Leeds Bradford Airport...
his “windows, door and chimney board kept an incessant clatter” . A traveller, or Tourist, might even be made to share a servants' bedroom . At Lewes
Lewes
Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...
Byng and Isaac Dalby had to share a double bed . On the more positive side, it was sometimes possible to have supper served in one's bedroom .
On his travels Byng met up with, or glimpsed, many of the prominent people of his age. In August 1788 he undertook a tour into Sussex with the mathematician Isaac Dalby. At Biggleswade, in 1792, he met Humphry Repton
Humphry Repton
Humphry Repton was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown; he also sowed the seeds of the more intricate and eclectic styles of the 19th century...
. At Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, in the same year, he encountered Sarah Siddons
Sarah Siddons
Sarah Siddons was a Welsh actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton and Elizabeth Whitlock, and the aunt of Fanny Kemble. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character,...
. Two years later, at Ampthill
Ampthill
Ampthill is a small town and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, between Bedford and Luton, with a population of about 6,000. It is administered by Central Bedfordshire Council. A regular market has taken place on Thursdays for centuries.-History:...
, he glimpsed Lord Monboddo travelling post-haste from London to Edinburgh. Byng leaves unforgettable memories of Blenheim Palace
Blenheim Palace
Blenheim Palace is a monumental country house situated in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, residence of the dukes of Marlborough. It is the only non-royal non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. The palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between...
(its grounds, gardens and gardeners but not of the Duke of Marlborough
Duke of Marlborough
Duke of Marlborough , is a hereditary title in the Peerage of England. The first holder of the title was John Churchill , the noted English general, and indeed an unqualified reference to the Duke of Marlborough in a historical text will almost certainly refer to him.-History:The dukedom was...
himself). His meeting with Colonel Johnson , told with economy, lingers in the imagination.
The overall impression is that of a man keenly aware of social change: that is Byng’s head; but in his heart he clings to the old ways.
Purpose of his work
In England and Wales Byng set out, year after year, on his own sort of Grand TourGrand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
. The Grand Tour, a leisurely exploration of outstanding cultural features of the European Continent, was undertaken by many young men -- though not by Byng himself -- before and during the 1780s. Byng, intensely patriotic, believed that there was just as much of interest in Britain as in France or Italy, particularly as England and Wales contained so much that was picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
.
He writes in his Fragment of a diary of a Tour in Hertfordshire, June 1788:-
Now I should be glad to ask of our Travellers, who brag of every country but their own, where they will find a cheaper charge than this [18/3d for 2½ days]; which was on a high road, [at South Mimms
South Mimms
South Mimms, sometimes spelt South Mymms, is a village and civil parish forming part of the Hertsmere district of Hertfordshire County Council in the East of England although geographically and historically is in the County of Middlesex.-History:...
,] near the metropolis of Europe!
Talk not, therefore, gentlemen, of foreign parts, till you have seen and learnt something of your own country: -- ye, who drive by Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site....
, without deigning a look, and return boasting of rialtos
Rialto
The Rialto is and has been for many centuries the financial and commercial centre of Venice. It is an area of the San Polo sestiere of Venice, Italy, also known for its markets and for the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal....
, eclipsed by the work of the most ordinary Welsh masons.
“If my journals should remain legible, or be perused at the end of 200 years”, he writes elsewhere ), “there will, even then, be little curious in them relative to travel, or the people; because our island is now so explored; our roads, in general, are so fine; and our speed has reach'd the summit”.
But it is impossible to agree with his assessment that The Torrington Diaries or Rides Round Britain have no enduring historical value. Like Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
, Byng conveys a most vivid impression of what it was like for the diarist to live from day to day in the society of his own period.
Further reading
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, The Torrington Diaries, ed. C.B. Andrews, 4 vols, 1934-1938.John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, The Torrington Diaries, ed. C.B. & Fanny Andrews, 1954.
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, The Torrington Diaries. A Literary Account of English Life and Thought in the 18th Century, ed. Bothaina Abd-El-Hamid Mohamed, 1958.
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, Byng’s Tours: The Journals of the Hon. John Byng, 1781-1792, ed. David Souden, 1991.
John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, Rides Round Britain, ed. Donald Adamson
Donald Adamson
Donald Adamson is a historian, biographer, philosophical writer, textual scholar, literary critic, and translator of French literature...
, 1996.
Donald Adamson
Donald Adamson
Donald Adamson is a historian, biographer, philosophical writer, textual scholar, literary critic, and translator of French literature...
, "Following John Byng", Folio, summer 1996, pp. 3-9.
External links
- Your Archives wiki of the National Archives, United Kingdom.
- Current research being undertaken on Byng and the Torrington Diaries
- Full text of Volume 4 of the Torrington Diaries on The Internet Archive, as page images.
- Full text of Volume 4 of the Torrington Diaries on A Vision of Britain through Time, as proofread text with links to the places named.