BYNG, George Stevens (1806-1886), of 88 Eaton Square, London, Mdx. and Wrotham Park, Herts.

Byng had followed his father, a distinguished army general, into the military and from 1828-9 served as one of his father’s aides-de-camp during his posting to Ireland as commander-in-chief. Whilst there he had met his wife, a daughter of the pro-Catholic Irish viceroy Lord Anglesey, from whom both he and his father secured promotion and preferment in the years ahead. Byng had been returned for Anglesey’s pocket borough of Milborne Port at the 1830 general election and following Anglesey’s reappointment as viceroy by the Grey administration, had temporarily vacated his seat in order to accommodate a ministerial nominee. In February 1831 he became comptroller of Anglesey’s Irish household. A loyal though silent Whig, Byng had sat for Milborne Port as a reformer until the borough’s abolition in 1832. His weakness for the turf, especially during crucial stages of the reform bill, however, did not go unnoticed.1HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 491-2.

It was not until June 1834 that a vacancy was found for him at the treasury borough of Chatham, where he came forward promising ‘to go every length in reforming the abuses in the church’, and was returned after a contest with a Tory.2Morning Post, 25 June 1834. His appointment in the reshuffle of that month as a lord of the treasury, along with that of Lord Conyingham, another son-in-law of Anglesey, to the office of postmaster-general, was ‘sneered and laughed at’, according to the Whig diarist Greville.3Greville Memoirs, iii. 95. Raikes recalled how one ‘learned lord, on these appointments being notified to him, is said to have asked, “What is the humour of all this, and in the name of all that is ridiculous, what are we to do with these two geniuses?”’ ‘The young gambler Byng is to have [the treasury board]’, quipped Creevey, ‘what accessions to the government!’4Raikes Journal, i. 248; Creevey Papers, ii. 279.

Byng remained at the treasury under Melbourne, who succeeded Grey as premier the following month, and of course left office with him when the king dismissed the Whigs in November 1834. He was one of the treasury lords charged with recommending compensatory allowances following the remodelling of the exchequer, whose report was submitted to the incoming ministry and adopted, 22 Dec. 1834.5PP 1835 (594), xxxvii. 26. Without government patronage he was defeated at Chatham in the 1835 general election, but following his father’s elevation to the lords by the reappointed Melbourne ministry in May 1835, offered as his replacement at Poole, citing his support for municipal reform and the appropriation of surplus Irish church revenues. After a two-day poll, in which there was ‘every reason to believe money has been flying pretty smartly’, he was returned with a slim majority.6Morning Chron., 11, 15, 21, 23 May 1835; Examiner, 24 May 1835; HP Commons, 1820-32. Later that month he was appointed comptroller of the royal household, in which capacity he continued to serve under Victoria, and as her treasurer from June until September 1841.

Byng, who is not known to have spoken in the reformed Commons or served on any committees, divided with the Melbourne ministry on most major issues, though it is possible that some of his recorded votes were those of his Whig uncle George Byng, the veteran MP for Middlesex, who died ‘Father of the House’. He was in the majority for an inquiry into the Poole town council election, 25 Feb., 2 Mar. 1836, and divided against the ballot, 7 Mar. 1837, but was later in the minorities for it, 18 June 1839, 24 Feb. 1842. At the 1837 general election he transferred back to Chatham, where he was returned unopposed. He of course voted against the motion of no confidence in ministers, 4 June 1841, and was re-elected for Chatham at the ensuing general election. Thereafter he divided with the opposition to Peel’s Conservative ministry in the lobbies, though he was by now a far less frequent attender. He was present to vote for a lowering of the corn duties, 16 Feb. 1842, 11 July 1842, 10 June 1845, supported Peel’s controversial bill to permanently endow the Irish Catholic seminary of Maynooth, 3, 18 Apr. 21 May 1845, divided for repeal of the corn laws in 1846, and was in the majority that ejected Peel from office over the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846.

Reappointed to junior office by the incoming Russell administration the following month, Byng continued to support the Whigs when present, but remained a lax attender, voting in just 15 of the 219 divisions held in 1849.7Hants. Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. He was a steady presence at the races, however, often entering his own horses. He was re-elected unopposed for Chatham at the 1847 general election, assumed the courtesy title of viscount Enfield following his father’s promotion to an earldom in September 1847, and relinquished office that November.8Morning Chronicle, 28 July 1847. He retired at the 1852 general election and the following year was elevated to the Lords in his father’s barony, from where he played a role behind the scenes in trying to effect a rapprochement between Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in 1858, with a view to turning out the Derby ministry.9Greville Memoirs, vii.. 182, 190; S. Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell (1889), ii. 297-8. In July 1855, following Russell’s resignation from Palmerston’s ministry in protest at the Crimean War, Byng had written to him:

Five and twenty years have now elapsed since I first took my place behind you in the House of Commons and nothing has ever occurred to weaken my allegiance or shake my confidence in a leader so specially qualified to direct the Liberal party. At no period during that quarter of a century have I felt more proud of our choice as I do now, or more indignant with the timidity of some and the malignity of others ... Believe me my dear lord John, that you have a numerous and staunch body of supporters, who respect and love you.10Walpole, Russell, ii. 268.

Byng, who succeeded to his father’s earldom in 1860, died from congestion of the lungs at his family seat at Wrotham Park in October 1886. His titles and estate, proved under £237,000, passed to his eldest son George Henry Charles Byng (1830-1928), Liberal MP for Tavistock, 1852-57, and Middlesex, 1857-74, who served as under-secretary for foreign affairs under Gladstone, 1871-74.