The stability of steep gravity–capillary solitary waves in deep water is numerically investigated using the full nonlinear water-wave equations with surface tension. Out of the two solution branches that bifurcate at the minimum gravity–capillary phase speed, solitary waves of depression are found to be stable both in the small-amplitude limit when they are in the form of wavepackets and at finite steepness when they consist of a single trough, consistent with observations. The elevation-wave solution branch, on the other hand, is unstable close to the bifurcation point but becomes stable at finite steepness as a limit point is passed and the wave profile features two well-separated troughs. Motivated by the experiments of Longuet-Higgins & Zhang (1997), we also consider the forced problem of a localized pressure distribution applied to the free surface of a stream with speed below the minimum gravity–capillary phase speed. We find that the finite-amplitude forced solitary-wave solution branch computed by Vanden-Broeck & Dias (1992) is unstable but the branch corresponding to Rayleigh’s linearized solution is stable, in agreement also with a weakly nonlinear analysis based on a forced nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The significance of viscous effects is assessed using the approach proposed by Longuet-Higgins (1997): while for free elevation waves the instability predicted on the basis of potential-flow theory is relatively weak compared with viscous damping, the opposite turns out to be the case in the forced problem when the forcing is strong. In this régime, which is relevant to the experiments of Longuet-Higgins & Zhang (1997), the effects of instability can easily dominate viscous effects, and the results of the stability analysis are used to propose a theoretical explanation for the persistent unsteadiness of the forced wave profiles observed in the experiments.