Field Marshal Julian Hedworth George Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy (11 September 1862 – 6 June 1935), was a British Army officer who served as Governor General of Canada, the 12th since the Canadian Confederation.
Known to friends as "Bungo", Byng was born to a noble family at Wrotham Park in Hertfordshire, England and educated at Eton College, along with his brothers. Upon graduation, he received a commission as a militia officer and saw service in Egypt and Sudan before enrolling in the Staff College, Camberley. There, he befriended individuals who would be his contemporaries when he attained senior rank in France. Following distinguished service during the First World War—specifically, with the British Expeditionary Force in France, in the Battle of Gallipoli, as commander of the Canadian Corps at Vimy Ridge, and as commander of the British Third Army—Byng was elevated to the peerage in 1919. In 1921, King George V, on the recommendation of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, appointed him to replace Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire as Canada's governor general, a post he occupied until Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Viscount Willingdon succeeded him in 1926. Byng proved to be popular with Canadians due to his war leadership, though his stepping directly into political affairs became the catalyst for widespread changes to the role of the Crown in all of the British Dominions.
After his viceregal tenure, Byng returned to the UK to be appointed Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and was promoted within the peerage to become Viscount Byng of Vimy. Three years after attaining the rank of field marshal, he died at his home, Thorpe Hall, on 6 June 1935.
Early life
Byng was born at the family seat of Wrotham Park, in Hertfordshire, as the seventh son and 13th and youngest child of George Byng, 2nd Earl of Strafford (who, due to the size of his family, ran a relatively frugal household) and Harriet Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of Charles Cavendish, 1st Baron Chesham. Until the age of 17, Byng was enrolled at Eton College, although he did not enter the sixth form. At Eton Byng first received the nickname "Bungo"—to distinguish him from his elder brothers "Byngo" and "Bango"—but his time at the college was undistinguished, and he received poor reports; indicative of his attitude towards academics, he once traded his Latin grammar book and his brother Lionel's best trousers to a hawker for a pair of ferrets and a pineapple. Byng later claimed that he had been the school's worst "Scug", the colloquial term for an undistinguished boy.
Early military career
Byng was from a military family, his grandfather having served with Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. With three brothers already in the army and another already put up for the 7th Queen's Own Hussars, Byng's father did not think he could afford a regular army commission for his youngest son. Thus, at the age of 17, Byng was instead sent into the militia and on 12 December 1879 commissioned as a second lieutenant into the 2nd (Edmonton) Royal Middlesex Rifles (later the 7th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps).