CHAPTER I.

Genealogical History.-Grant of Newstead Abbey. Sir John Byron created a Peer by Charles the First. His Descendants.-Trial of William Lord Byron, for murder.-Memoir of Admiral Byron.-Account of his Son, John Byron.

THE family of Buron or Byron, for the orthography continued unsettled till the reign of Henry the Second, ascends to the Conquest, at which period there were two potent barons of this name, Erneis and Ralph ; but what relation they bore to each other, antiquaries and genealogists cannot determine. The first of these lords, Erneis, who appears to have been the most considerable of the two, held numerous manors in the counties of York and Lincoln; as Ralph, the direct ancestor of the present lord, did in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, in which last county he had his seat,

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GENEALOGICAL HISTORY.

called Horestan Castle, from whence he took his title. To this Ralph succeeded Hugh de Buron, Lord of Horestan, who with his son Hugh, in the ninth year of the reign of King Stephen, gave to the monastery of Lenton in Nottinghamshire, the church of Ossington, to which grant was afterwards added that of Horsley, being the parochial church of Horestan. This last-mentioned Hugh de Buron retired from secular affairs, and professed himself a monk in the hermitage of Kersale, belonging to the priory of Lenton. He was succeeded in his estates by Sir Roger de Buron, who gave some lands to the monastery of Swinsted in the reign of Henry the Second. His son Robert de Byron, as the name now began to be spelt, increased the possessions and consequence of his family by marrying Cecilia, the daughter and sole heir of Sir Richard Clayton, of Clayton in Lancashire, at which seat the Byrons fixed their seat, till the reign of Henry the Eighth. This Sir Robert was succeeded by a son of the same name, whose two sons distinguished themselves with great glory, in the military service, under Edward the First. Sir John de Byron, the elder of these warriors, became governor of the city of York; and from him descended Sir John, who served in the

GENEALOGICAL HISTORY.

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wars of France, under Edward the Third, by whom he was knighted at the memorable siege of Calais. He was succeeded by his brother, Sir Richard de Byron; whose widow, in 1397, made a vow of perpetual chastity before the Archbishop of York. Her son John, who received the honour of knighthood in the third year of Henry the Fifth, was succeeded in his estates by his second son Nicholas, whose son and heir, Sir John, joined Henry Earl of Richmond, on his landing at Milford, and was knighted by him at that place. He fought gallantly at the battle of Bosworth, for which he was afterwards made Constable of Nottingham Castle, and Steward and Warden of Sherwood Forest. At his death, in 1480, he left his lands to Nicholas his brother, who was made one of the knights of the Bath, at the marriage of Arthur Prince of Wales, in 1502. This Sir Nicholas had only one son, Sir John Byron, who was made by Henry the Eighth Steward of Manchester and Rochdale, and Lieutenant of the Forest of Sherwood. On the dissolution of the monasteries, he came in for no small portion of the spoils, being rewarded with the grant of the church and priory of Newstead, in the County of Nottingham, together with the ..anor of Papel

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ROYAL GRANTS.

wick, the rectory of the same, and the lands thereunto

adjoining.

The

This religious house, called Newstead, that is Novus Locus, or New Place, was a monastery of canons regular of St. Augustine, dedicated to God and the Virgin Mary, by the founder, Henry the Second, who endowed it with the church and town of Papelwick, as well as other considerable appurtenances. same king afterwards gave to the monks of Newstead, long and large wastes lying about the monastery, within the Forest, also a park of ten acres to be enclosed as they pleased, out of the run of the Verdurers, and a field of arable land, for a grange. Other grants of considerable value were made to this royal foundation, from time to time, by different benefactors; so that at the spoliation of the works of piety, and the alienation of them from the charitable objects for which they were set apart, the yearly revenues of Newstead Abbey, were estimated at somewhat more than two hundred pounds, a rate, considering all the circumstances, equivalent to a modern income of four thousand a year.

NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

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The Abbey now became the family seat of its new possessors, and so it has continued till the present time, though shorn of its honours, and exhibiting, in its dilapidated state, a melancholy relique of ancient splendour and hospitality. The worthy Evelyn, in his account of a tour through England, in the summer of 1654, has the following note: "We passed through Sherwood Forest, accounted the most extensive in England; then Papelwick, an incomparable vista, with the pretty castle near it. Thence we saw Newstead Abbey, belonging to the Lord Byron, situate much like Fontainebleau in France; capable of being made a noble seat, accommodated as it is with brave woods and streams: it has yet remaining the front of a glorious Abbey Church."

To this venerable mansion, its present noble owner consecrated the first effusion of his muse, when only fifteen years of age, in the following stanzas:

Through thy battlements, Newstead, hollow winds whistle, Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay;

In thy once-smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle

Have choak'd up the rose, which late bloom'd in the way.