Lord Byron was descended from the Byrons of Normandy who accompanied William the Conqueror in his invasion of England, of which illustrious lineage the poet was prouder than of his poetry.  In the reign of Henry VIII., on the dissolution of the monasteries, a Byron came into possession of the old mediaeval abbey of Newstead.  In the reign of James I., Sir John Byron was made a knight of the Order of the Bath.  In 1784 the father of the poet, a dissipated captain of the Guards, being in embarrassed circumstances, married a rich Scotch heiress of the name of Gordon.  Handsome and reckless, “Mad Jack Byron” speedily spent his wife’s fortune; and when he died, his widow, being reduced to a pittance of L150 a year, retired to Scotland to live, with her infant son who had been born in London.  She was plain Mrs. Byron, widow of a “younger son,” with but little expectation of future rank.  She was a woman of caprices and eccentricities, and not at all fitted to superintend the education of her wayward boy.

Hence the childhood and youth of Byron were sad and unfortunate.  His temper was violent and passionate.  A malformation of his foot made him peculiarly sensitive, and the unwise treatment of his mother, fond and harsh by turns, destroyed maternal authority.  At five years of age, he was sent to a day-school in Aberdeen, where he made but slim attainments.  Though excitable and ill-disciplined, he is said to have been affectionate and generous, and perfectly fearless.  A fit of sickness rendered his removal from this school necessary, and he was sent to a summer resort among the Highlands.  His early impressions were therefore favorable to the development of the imagination, coming as they did from mountains and valleys, rivulets and lakes, near the sources of the Dee.  At the age of eight, he wrote verses and fell in love, like Dante at the age of nine.

On the death of the grandson of the old Lord Byron in 1794, this unpromising youth became the heir-apparent to the barony.  Nor did he have to wait long; for soon after, his grand-uncle died, and the young Byron, whose mother was struggling with poverty, became a ward of Chancery; and the Earl of Carlisle—­one of the richest and most powerful noblemen of the realm, a nephew by marriage of the deceased peer—­was appointed his guardian.  This cold, formal, and politic nobleman took but little interest in his ward, leaving him to the mismanagement of his mother, who, with her boy, at the age of ten, now removed to Newstead, the seat of his ancestors,—­the government, meanwhile, for some reason which is not explained, having conferred on her a pension of L300 a year.