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.
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