On the death, in 1794, of the grandson of the old lord, little George stood in immediate succession to the peerage; in May, 1798, the fifth Lord Byron died at Newstead Abbey, and the boy’s name was called in school with the title “Dominus.”  The Earl of Carlisle was appointed his guardian in chancery, and in the same summer, Lord Byron, in his eleventh year, took possession, with his mother, of the seat of his ancestors.  The next year Mrs. Byron was placed on the Civil List for a pension of L300 a year.  Removing to London, she placed George at school with Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, but thwarted the progress of his education with her fondness and self-will, until Lord Carlisle gave up all hope of ruling her.  It was at this period that a boyish love for Margaret Parker, his cousin, who died shortly after, led Byron into the practice of verse.

From 1801 to 1805, from thirteen years of age to seventeen, George was at Harrow, where he sat beside Peel, the future statesman.  This period of ardent friendship with his fellows includes also the romantic affection, in 1803, for Miss Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, near Newstead, who looked on her admirer as the mere schoolboy that he was.  Leaving Harrow with the reputation of an idler who would never learn, Byron was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October, 1805.  His vacations were spent with his mother at Southwell, and her explosions of temper, in which she would throw poker and tongs, alienated him increasingly.  In vacation and in term alike he read with extraordinary avidity and variety, wrote a great deal of verse, and in November, 1806, printed a small volume of poems for private circulation.

He was a frank and vivid correspondent; his letters to Miss Pigot, of Southwell, and others, are full of the liveliest descriptions of the Cambridge days.  At this time Byron was painfully shy of new faces, and perpetually mortified on account of his poverty.  He rose, and retired to rest, very late.  He was very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding, shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted in music, and was known as remarkably superstitious.  Of his charity and kindheartedness there was no end.  Always conscious of his deformity, and terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful of his person and dress.

“Hours of Idleness,” Byron’s first published volume, came out while he was at the university, and was received by the “Edinburgh Review” with a contempt which stung him to the quick.  With intervals of dissipation in London and at Brighton, Byron threw himself, at Newstead, into the preparation of a satirical revenge, training himself for it by a deep study of the writings of Pope.  After his coming of age, in 1809, he went up to London with his satire, and on March 13 took his seat in the House of Lords.  A few days later “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” was the talk of the town.  Wild festivities at Newstead followed its publication, and on July 2 Byron sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet.