John Byron had been left with few means to earn a respectable living. He could enter the Church, as one of his younger brothers later did, but that was far too dull for his sensibilities. He could serve in the Army, which many gentlemen preferred, because they could frequently sit idly on a horse looking debonair. Then there was the Navy, in which you actually had to work and get your hands dirty. Samuel Pepys had tried to encourage young noblemen and gentlemen to think of going to sea as “honourable service.”
