all their present fortunes by their loyalty, adding, "yet it pleased God
so to bless the humble endeavours of the said Richard, Lord Byron, that he
repurchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to his
posterity, with a laudable memory for his great piety and charity." His
eldest son, William, the third Lord (died 1695), is worth remembering on
two accounts. He married Elizabeth, the daughter of Viscount Chaworth, and
so wove the first link in a strange association of tragedy and romance: he
was a patron of one of those poets who, approved by neither gods nor
columns, are remembered by the accident of an accident, and was himself a
poetaster, capable of the couplet,--

My whole ambition only does extend
To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend,--

an ambition which, considering its moderate scope, may be granted to have
attained its desire.

His successor, the fourth lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber to
Prince George of Denmark, himself living a quiet life, became, by his
third wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley, the progenitor of a
strange group of eccentric, adventurous, and passionate spirits. The
eldest son, the fifth lord, and immediate predecessor in the peerage of
the poet, was born in 1722, entered the naval service, left his ship, the
"Victory," just before she was lost on the rocks of Alderney, and
subsequently became master of the stag-hounds. In 1765, the year of the
passing of the American Stamp Act, an event occurred which coloured the
whole of his after-life, and is curiously illustrative of the manners of
the time. On January 26th or 29th (accounts vary) ten members of an
aristocratic social club sat down to dinner in Pall-mall. Lord Byron and
Mr. Chaworth, his neighbour and kinsman, were of the party. In the course