genealogical tree-some members of the family are said to have taken part in the Crusades, a fact to which the poet in his lines On leaving Newstead Abbey,' and elsewhere, refers with pride.' Probably, however, this tradition owed its origin to an old wood-carving at Newstead representing a Saracen between a Christian knight and a Western maiden. Not to mention that Newstead came into the possession of the family only in the reign of Henry VIII., this carving belonged undoubtedly to a later period than that of the Crusades, and had a Biblical meaning, referring probably to the history of Susannah.

At a later period the family possessions passed to an illegitimate scion, John Byron, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1559 and who continued the race. His descendants were among the most faithful and devoted adherents of the Stuarts, and a second Sir John Byron, the eldest of seven brothers, was raised, October 24, 1643, to the peerage as Baron Byron of Rochdale in the county palatine of Lancaster; and as Governor of the Tower and commander of a part of the royal forces, this first baron naturally incurred the enmity of the Parliament. His second wife was a daughter of Lord Kilmorey and the widow of Peter Warburton. Of her Pepys in his journal relates, that she was the seventeenth mistress of Charles II. when abroad, and did not leave him, till she had extorted from him an assignment of silver plate to the value of 4000l., but by delays, thanks be to God, she died before she had it.' In default of sons the

nouncing Byron very broadly with the long y. But England, and with England the world, follows the Countess, while Byron's own pronunciation has fallen into forgetfulness as an aristocratic whim. Leigh Hunt's Byron, i. 179. Medwin's Conversations, p. 37.

1 One of the poems in the Hours of Idleness. Compare 'Elegy on Newstead Abbey,' in the same collection.

2 Pepys' Diary, p. 434.

London, Alex. Murray, 1870.

peerage devolved on this Lord Byron's brother, Richard (1605-1679), whose epitaph in the vault at HucknallTorkard Church proclaims, that, though like his brothers he lost his property and possessions through his faithful service to Charles I., he yet succeeded in repurchasing a portion of the family inheritance.'

Richard's eldest son William, the third Lord, married Elizabeth, daughter of Viscount Chaworth, after whose death, 1683, he married a second time; and died November 13, 1695, and was also buried in the church of HucknallTorkard. He had formed an intimate friendship with Thomas Shipman, a very inferior poet, who frequently sang the praises of his Lordship's family, and, indeed, in Shipman's Carolina or Loyal Poems' (1683), there is a poem written by this nobleman, from which it appears that he was himself a verse-maker, and wherein he thus expresses his supreme desire : —

My whole ambition only does extend

To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend."

These verses, whatever else they may be, are certainly not Byronic. Shipman is now mentioned only because of

The following is the epitaph in extenso: 'Beneath in a vault is interred the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of his family, being seven brothers, faithfully served King Charles I. in the Civil War, who suffered much for their loyalty, and lost all their present fortune; yet it pleased God so to bless the honest endeavours of the said Richard Lord Byron that he repurchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to his posterity with a laudable memory for his great piety and charity; he departed this life on the 4th day of October, A.D. 1679, in the 74th year of his age. In the same vault is interred the Lady Elizabeth his first wife, daughter of Geo. Rossel, Esq., by whom he had ten children, and the Lady Elizabeth his second wife, daughter to Sir George Booth, Knight and Baronet, who appointed this monument to be erected to the memory of her dear husband, and for her great piety and goodness acquired a name better than that of sons and daughters.'

2 See the Essay, 'Another poetic Lord Byron,' by Thomas Watts in the Athenæum, March 27, 1858, p. 401.

his intimacy with this Lord Byron, who, again, is remembered solely on account of his great descendant.

It was the grandson of this poetic Byron, William, the fifth Lord (1722-1798), who attained so sad a celebrity by the duel with his kinsman and neighbour, Mr. Chaworth. At a dinner at the Star and Garter Hotel, Pall Mall, January 29, 1765, this peer, a licentious, quarrelsome, vindictive man, fell into a dispute with Mr. Chaworth on the quantity of game in their respective parks—according to another account, on the mode of preserving game-and became at last so heated, that he insisted on settling the quarrel on the spot. Forcing Chaworth into another room, he closed the door, and there by the feeble light of a single candle, without seconds or witnesses, the so-called duel took place, in which Chaworth, although a better swordsman than his antagonist, was mortally wounded. On the ground of the testimony of the dying man, the coroner's jury had no other course than to give a verdict of Wilful murder,' and Lord Byron was consequently imprisoned in the Tower, and in due course tried in Westminster Hall. The interest excited by the event was prodigious; peers' tickets of admission sold for six guineas each; and after a trial, which lasted for two days, the accused was unanimously declared 'guilty of manslaughter.' Pleading, however, his privilege as a peer, he was accordingly set at liberty without further punishment. But no privilege could protect him from the punishment whose sources are within; henceforward he secluded himself entirely from the world, or, to speak more correctly, he was excluded by the world. When compelled by business to go to London, he travelled under the name of Mr. Waters. By all the world he was called the mad, or the wicked, Lord Byron. His neighbours hated him, his inferiors avoided him, his wife separated

near.

from him. The populace, always inclined to fantastic exaggerations, told the most incredible stories of him. Thus he was said, while taking a drive, to have shot his coachman for some small offence, to have then thrown his body inside to his wife, and, mounting the box, to have driven off himself. On another occasion he was said to have pushed his wife into the lake at Newstead, whence she was rescued by the gardener, who happened to be From hatred to his son and heir, whose marriage he disapproved, he not only allowed Newstead to fall into decay, but cut down the trees on the estate to such an extent, that at his death it was almost entirely without timber. He sold also illegally the property of Rochdale. His son, however, died before him, in the same year in which the poet was born. He found his only amusement on the lake in front of the Abbey; on its banks he built those tasteless miniature citadels, which are still standing, and the further to ornament it he had a small vessel conveyed thither on wheels from the Eastern coast. His only companions were, according to the account of the poet himself,1 the crickets, which he used to feed with his own hand and had so tamned that they crawled over him. If they misbehaved he beat them with a wisp of straw; and at his death they are said to have left the house in a body.

The brother of this, the fifth Lord Byron, was the celebrated Admiral John Byron (1733-1786), the grandfather of the poet, who found in his life at sea a sphere suited to bring forth the better sides of the family character, and who enjoyed universal respect in the Navy. His courage and endurance in extraordinary dangers and adventures gained for him the honourable epithet of 'hardy Byron,'

1 Moore's Life, i. 31. Medwin's Conversations, p. 75.

while his proverbial ill-luck with regard to stormy weather was the origin among the sailors of his nickname of foul weather Jack.' He never made a voyage without encountering dreadful storms; and in allusion to this, his grandson, after his separation from his wife, says, that his grandsire's fate had been reversed in him he had no " : rest at sea, nor I on shore. '1 He served as a midshipman while a youth of seventeen, in the squadron under Commodore Anson sent against the Spanish settlements in the Pacific. Every vessel of the fleet, one after the other, was wrecked, his own ship, the 'Wager,' May 15, 1740, on the west coast of America. The crew were saved and took refuge on a desolate island, to which they gave the name of Mount Misery,' and whence they ventured, after some months, to attempt the voyage home in the cutter and long-boat through the Magellan Straits. The cutter was lost in the attempt, while Byron in the long-boat succeeded in reaching the Portuguese settlements in the Brazils, whence, 1746, he returned to Europe, and twenty years afterwards astonished the world by the description of his voyage. He subsequently distinguished himself in the war against France: from 1764 to 1766 in command of two ships he made a voyage of discovery in the South Sea, during which he sailed round the world. He was

2

1 Epistle to Augusta.

*'A Narrative of the Hon. John Byron (Commodore in a late Expedition round the World), containing an Account of the great distresses suffered by himself and his companions on the coast of Patagonia, from the year 1740 till their arrival in England 1746; written by himself. London, 1768.' Byron made use of his grand-dad's' narrative in the description of the shipwreck in the second Canto of Don Juan.'

A Voyage round the World in His Majesty's ship the Dolphin,' commanded by the Hon. Commodore Byron. By an Officer on board the said ship. London, 1767; reprinted in Hawkesworth's Account of the Voyages of Byron, Wallis, Cartaret, and Cook, 3 vols. 4to. London, 1773, and in Callander's Terra Australis cognita.