The prisoners arrived at Portsmouth in July. Admiral West was graciously received by the King and made a Lord of the Admiralty. General Fowke was dismissed the service. Byng was taken to Greenwich, where he remained a close prisoner until December. He was then brought back to Portsmouth, to be tried by court-martial. The Court sat for a month. Admiral West deposed that there was no reason why the rest of the fleet should not have engaged the enemy as closely as he did; also that there was no signal for giving chase when the enemy retreated. General Blakeney said that boats might have passed between the garrison and the fleet, and that if the troops ordered for his relief had been landed he could have held out until the arrival of Sir Edward Hawke. Captain Gardiner, of the flagship, deposed that he advised the Admiral to bear down on the enemy, but without effect, and that the Admiral took command of the _Ramillies_ entirely upon himself on the day of the action. The court found that he had not done his utmost to destroy the ships of the enemy that it was his duty to engage, but that this did not proceed from want of courage or disaffection. Lord Anson, the First Lord of the Admiralty, resigned, and was succeeded by Lord Temple, who had to discuss the sentence with George II. He drew a parallel between Byng’s conduct at Minorca and George’s own conduct at Oudenarde in 1708; leaving the King to draw the necessary inference that if Byng deserved to be shot, George deserved to be hanged. The King said afterwards: ‘Temple is so disagreeable a fellow that there is no bearing him.’ Admiral West, when he found that it was in tended to shoot Byng, resigned his seat at the Admiralty. His evidence against Byng had been damning, but he would not be a party to his execution. Nor would he serve afloat under such a Ministry, saying that ‘he was determined to forego anything rather than serve on terms which subject an officer to the treatment shown Admiral Byng. He was not convicted of cowardice nor of disaffection, but of misconduct, an offence never till now thought capital.’ Admiral West was of opinion that the word ‘negligence’ in the Article of War was only intended to refer to one of those two crimes, cowardice or disaffection--‘that is, _negligence proceeding from cowardice or disaffection_.’ He said that was the opinion of the House of Commons when the Bill was before them. Admiral Forbes, another Lord of the Admiralty, who held similar views, resigned at the same time.