Baron Byron Baron, killed his cousin and neighbour William Chaworth in a duel on 26 January 1765. He was brought before his peers in the House of Lords but under the statute of Edward VI he was found guilty only of manslaughter and forced to pay a small fine. Byron henceforth became known as "the Wicked Lord" and "the Devil Byron". He was succeeded by his great-nephew, George Gordon Byron, the sixth Baron, the famous Romantic poet. He was the son of John "Mad Jack" Byron, son of Vice-Admiral the Hon. John "Foulweather Jack" Byron, second son of the fourth Baron and
Lord Byron Byron first welcomed fame, he later turned from it by going into voluntary exile from Britain. The burning of Byron's memoir in the offices of his publisher John Murray a month after his death, and the suppression of details of Byron's bisexuality by subsequent heads of the firm (which held the richest Byron archive), distorted biographies. As late as the 1950s, scholar Leslie Marchard was expressly forbidden by the Murray company to reveal details of Byron's same-sex passions. The re-founding of the Byron Society in 1971 reflected the fascination that many people had with Byron and his work. This society