From the following reign (Charles I.) the nobility of the family date
its origin. In the year 1643, Sir John Byron, great grandson of him
who succeeded to the rich domains of Newstead, was created Baron Byron
of Rochdale in the county of Lancaster; and seldom has a title been
bestowed for such high and honourable services as those by which this
nobleman deserved the gratitude of his royal master. Through almost
every page of the History of the Civil Wars, we trace his name in
connection with the varying fortunes of the king, and find him
faithful, persevering, and disinterested to the last. "Sir John
Biron," says the writer of Colonel Hutchinson's Memoirs, "afterwards
Lord Biron, and all his brothers, bred up in arms, and valiant men in
their own persons, were all passionately the king's." There is also,
in the answer which Colonel Hutchinson, when governor of Nottingham,
returned, on one occasion, to his cousin-german, Sir Richard Biron, a
noble tribute to the valour and fidelity of the family. Sir Richard
having sent to prevail on his relative to surrender the castle,
received for answer, that "except he found his own heart prone to such
treachery, he might consider there was, if nothing else, so much of a
Biron's blood in him, that he should very much scorn to betray or quit
a trust he had undertaken."

Such are a few of the gallant and distinguished personages, through
whom the name and honours of this noble house have been transmitted.
By the maternal side also Lord Byron had to pride himself on a line of
ancestry as illustrious as any that Scotland can boast,--his mother,
who was one of the Gordons of Gight, having been a descendant of that
Sir William Gordon who was the third son of the Earl of Huntley, by
the daughter of James I.

After the eventful period of the Civil Wars, when so many individuals