It has been said of Lord Byron, "that he was prouder of being a
descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the
Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of Childe
Harold and Manfred." This remark is not altogether unfounded in truth.
In the character of the noble poet, the pride of ancestry was
undoubtedly one of the most decided features; and, as far as antiquity
alone gives lustre to descent, he had every reason to boast of the
claims of his race. In Doomsday-book, the name of Ralph de Burun ranks
high among the tenants of land in Nottinghamshire; and in the
succeeding reigns, under the title of Lords of Horestan Castle,[6] we
find his descendants holding considerable possessions in Derbyshire;
to which, afterwards, in the time of Edward I., were added the lands
of Rochdale in Lancashire. So extensive, indeed, in those early times,
was the landed wealth of the family, that the partition of their
property, in Nottinghamshire alone, has been sufficient to establish
some of the first families of the county.
Its antiquity, however, was not the only distinction by which the name
of Byron came recommended to its inheritor; those personal merits and
accomplishments, which form the best ornament of a genealogy, seem to
have been displayed in no ordinary degree by some of his ancestors. In
one of his own early poems, alluding to the achievements of his race,
he commemorates, with much satisfaction, those "mail-covered barons"
among them,
who proudly to battle
Led their vassals from Europe to Palestine's plain.
Adding,
Near Askalon's towers John of Horiston slumbers,
Unnerved is the hand of his minstrel by death.
As there is no record, however, as far as I can discover, of any of
his ancestors having been engaged in the Holy Wars, it is possible
that he may have had no other authority for this notion than the
tradition which he found connected with certain strange groups of
heads, which are represented on the old panel-work, in some of the
chambers at Newstead. In one of these groups, consisting of three
heads, strongly carved and projecting from the panel, the centre
figure evidently represents a Saracen or Moor, with an European female
on one side of him, and a Christian soldier on the other. In a second
group, which is in one of the bed-rooms, the female occupies the
centre, while on each side is the head of a Saracen, with the eyes
fixed earnestly upon her. Of the exact meaning of these figures there
is nothing certain known; but the tradition is, I understand, that
they refer to some love-adventure, in which one of those crusaders, of
whom the young poet speaks, was engaged.
Of the more certain, or, at least, better known exploits of the
family, it is sufficient, perhaps, to say, that, at the siege of
Calais under Edward III., and on the fields, memorable in their
respective eras, of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor, the name of
the Byrons reaped honours both of rank and fame, of which their young
descendant has, in the verses just cited, shown himself proudly
conscious.
It was in the reign of Henry VIII., on the dissolution of the
monasteries, that, by a royal grant, the church and priory of
Newstead, with the lands adjoining, were added to the other
possessions of the Byron family.[7] The favourite upon whom these
spoils of the ancient religion were conferred, was the grand-nephew
of the gallant soldier who fought by the side of Richmond at Bosworth,
and is distinguished from the other knights of the same Christian name
in the family, by the title of "Sir John Byron the Little, with the
great beard." A portrait of this personage was one of the few family
pictures with which the walls of the abbey, while in the possession of
the noble poet, were decorated.
At the coronation of James I. we find another representative of the
family selected as an object of royal favour,--the grandson of Sir
John Byron the Little, being, on this occasion, made a knight of the
Bath. There is a letter to this personage, preserved in Lodge's
Illustrations, from which it appears, that notwithstanding all these
apparent indications of prosperity, the inroads of pecuniary
embarrassment had already begun to be experienced by this ancient
house. After counselling the new heir as to the best mode of getting
free of his debts, "I do therefore advise you," continues the
writer,[8] "that so soon as you have, in such sort as shall be fit,
finished your father's funerals, to dispose and disperse that great
household, reducing them to the number of forty or fifty, at the most,
of all sorts; and, in my opinion, it will be far better for you to
live for a time in Lancashire rather than in Notts, for many good
reasons that I can tell you when we meet, fitter for words than
writing."
From the following reign (Charles I.) the nobility of the family date
its origin. In the year 1643, Sir John Byron, great grandson of him
who succeeded to the rich domains of Newstead, was created Baron Byron
of Rochdale in the county of Lancaster; and seldom has a title been
bestowed for such high and honourable services as those by which this
nobleman deserved the gratitude of his royal master. Through almost
every page of the History of the Civil Wars, we trace his name in
connection with the varying fortunes of the king, and find him
faithful, persevering, and disinterested to the last. "Sir John
Biron," says the writer of Colonel Hutchinson's Memoirs, "afterwards
Lord Biron, and all his brothers, bred up in arms, and valiant men in
their own persons, were all passionately the king's." There is also,
in the answer which Colonel Hutchinson, when governor of Nottingham,
returned, on one occasion, to his cousin-german, Sir Richard Biron, a
noble tribute to the valour and fidelity of the family. Sir Richard
having sent to prevail on his relative to surrender the castle,
received for answer, that "except he found his own heart prone to such
treachery, he might consider there was, if nothing else, so much of a
Biron's blood in him, that he should very much scorn to betray or quit
a trust he had undertaken."
Such are a few of the gallant and distinguished personages, through
whom the name and honours of this noble house have been transmitted.
By the maternal side also Lord Byron had to pride himself on a line of
ancestry as illustrious as any that Scotland can boast,--his mother,
who was one of the Gordons of Gight, having been a descendant of that
Sir William Gordon who was the third son of the Earl of Huntley, by
the daughter of James I.
After the eventful period of the Civil Wars, when so many individuals
of the house of Byron distinguished themselves,--there having been no
less than seven brothers of that family on the field at Edgehill,--the
celebrity of the name appears to have died away for near a century. It
was about the year 1750, that the shipwreck and sufferings of Mr.
Byron[9] (the grandfather of the illustrious subject of these pages)
awakened, in no small degree, the attention and sympathy of the
public. Not long after, a less innocent sort of notoriety attached
itself to two other members of the family,--one, the grand-uncle of
the poet, and the other, his father. The former in the year 1765,
stood his trial before the House of Peers for killing, in a duel, or
rather scuffle, his relation and neighbour Mr. Chaworth; and the
latter, having carried off to the Continent the wife of Lord
Carmarthen, on the noble marquis obtaining a divorce from the lady,
married her. Of this short union one daughter only was the issue, the
Honourable Augusta Byron, now the wife of Colonel Leigh.
In reviewing thus cursorily the ancestors, both near and remote, of
Lord Byron, it cannot fail to be remarked how strikingly he combined
in his own nature some of the best and, perhaps, worst qualities that
lie scattered through the various characters of his predecessors,--the
generosity, the love of enterprise, the high-mindedness of some of the
better spirits of his race, with the irregular passions, the
eccentricity, and daring recklessness of the world's opinion, that so
much characterised others.
The first wife of the father of the poet having died in 1784, he, in
the following year, married Miss Catherine Gordon, only child and
heiress of George Gordon, Esq. of Gight. In addition to the estate of
Gight, which had, however, in former times, been much more extensive,
this lady possessed, in ready money, bank shares, &c. no
inconsiderable property; and it was known to be solely with a view of
relieving himself from his debts, that Mr. Byron paid his addresses to
her. A circumstance related, as having taken place before the marriage
of this lady, not only shows the extreme quickness and vehemence of
her feelings, but, if it be true that she had never at the time seen
Captain Byron, is not a little striking. Being at the Edinburgh
theatre one night when the character of Isabella was performed by Mrs.
Siddons, so affected was she by the powers of this great actress,
that, towards the conclusion of the play, she fell into violent fits,
and was carried out of the theatre, screaming loudly, "Oh, my Biron,
my Biron!"
On the occasion of her marriage there appeared a ballad by some Scotch
rhymer, which has been lately reprinted in a collection of the
"Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland;" and as it bears
testimony both to the reputation of the lady for wealth, and that of
her husband for rakery and extravagance, it may be worth extracting:--