George Gordon Byron

Lord Byron is famous as a poet, aristocrat and radical activist in the Regency era.  He was a talented man, but had a wild streak which led him into self indulgent behaviour and scandal and he ended up living in exile… His father, Jack Byron was a naval officer who also led a scandalous life. Jack Byron was married twice, once to a divorced aristocrat Amelia, Lady Camarthen. Amelia had an affair with Jack and was divorced by her husband because she became pregnant by her lover. A few weeks after the divorce, Jack married her and their first child was born shortly afterwards. However Amelia died a few years later leaving him with only one living child, a daughter Augusta. In 1785, he married again to a Scottish heiress Catherine Gordon probably for her money. She had inherited an estate but within a short time, the estate had to be sold to pay Jack's debts. Their son George Gordon Byron was born in London in January 1788, and the couple were now comparatively poor….Their marriage was far from happy and Jack died a few years later. Catherine was unhappy, had a difficult temperament and was struggling with poverty… and trying to pay off her husband’s debts. Jack was heir presumptive to a barony and so the young George had some prospects of inheriting a title and some property. However when the old Lord Byron (known as the wicked Lord Byron) died in 1798, Catherine took her son to the ancestral property, Newstead Abbey, only to find it was run down and uncomfortable. She leased it to various tenants, in order to find money to give her son the usual upper class education. She was a foolishly indulgent mother but Byron did not care much for her. He was embittered by the fact that he had been born with a damaged foot and was lame. He lacked discipline, and this probably led to his problems in later life. He went to Harrow in 1801 but in spite of being intelligent, he was a poor student.  Due to his lameness, he had difficulties with games but he threw himself into sports in an attempt to compensate for his disability He liked cricket, and was later to take up boxing.