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.
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