ABSTRACT
Print wars ensued after the Newcastle/Fox ministry chose to attack Admiral John Byng in newspapers, pamphlets, and prints. Both defenders of the admiral and of the government targeted one another via factional press accounts related to the loss of Minorca in the early throes of the Seven Years’ War. This chapter argues that Britain’s free press influenced ‘indoor’ politics challenging prevailing historical assumptions that such attributes belong to John Wilkes and the Wilkite Movement following the conclusion of the war. Ministers used the government newspaper the London Gazette to charge Byng with cowardice and other crimes. Factional papers such as the Monitor, financed by the Caribbean merchant William Beckford, and the Tory-driven London Evening Post countered. Anonymity, protean prose, and a presentation that used rumour and orality made newspapers powerful instruments in Britain’s print culture. As Samuel Johnson claimed, newspapers and pamphlets were ‘more dangerous enemies’ to Admiral Byng than were the French. Newspapers were used to mythologise the events surrounding the Battle of Minorca. Such ‘fake news’ increased sales, Byng became a hot commodity as press machines printed calumnies, the more fantastic the better.
