NOTICES OF THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 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 wholly 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, 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, be • "In the park of Horseley (says Thoroton) there was a castle, some of the ruins whereof are yet visible, called Horestan Castle, which was the chief mansion of his (Ralph de Burun's) successors." B commemorates, with much satisfaction, those "mail-cover'd 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, 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 bedrooms, the female occupies the centre, while on each side is the head of a SaOf the exact racen, with the eyes fixed earnestly upon her. meaning of these figures there is nothing certain known; but the tradition is, I understand, that they refer to some loveadventure, 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 The favourite, upon other possessions of the Byron family. 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 The priory of Newstead had been founded and dedicated to God and the Virgin by Henry II.: and its monks, who were canons regular of the order of St. Augustine, appear to have been peculiarly the objects of royal favour, no less in spiritual than in temporal concerns. During the lifetime of the fifth Lord Byron, there was found in the lake at Newstead,-where it is supposed to have been thrown for concealment by the monks, a large brass eagle, in the body of which, on its being sent to be cleaned, was discovered. a secret aperture, 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,† "that so soon as you have, in such sort as shall be fit, finished your father's funeral, 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 dates its origin. In the year 1843, 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 honorable services as those by which this nobleman deserved the gratitude of his royal master. Thro' almost every page of the History of the Civil Wars, we trace his name in connexion with the varying fortunes of the king, and find him faithful, persevering, and disinterested to the last. "Sir John concealing within it a number of old legal papers connected with the rights and privileges of the foundation. At the sale of the old lord's effects in 1776-7, this eagle, together with three candelabra, found at the same time, was purchased by a watchmaker of Nottingham (by whom the concealed manuscripts were discovered,) and having from his hands passed into those of Sir Richard Kaye, a prebendary of Southwell, forms at present a very remarkable ornament of the cathedral of that place. A curious document, said to have been among those found in the eagle, is now in the possession of Colonel Wildman, containing a grant of full pardon from Henry V. of every possible crime (and there is a tolerably long calalogue enumerated) which the monks might have committed previous to the 8th December preceding :-" murdris per ipsos post decimum nonum diem Novembris ultimo præteritum perpetratis, si quæ fuerint, exceptis." • The Earl of Shrewsbury. |