Early life of Lord Byron Early life of Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, better known as the poet Lord Byron, was born 22 January 1788 in Holles Street, London, England, and raised by his mother in Aberdeen, Scotland. His life was complicated by his father, who died deep in debt when he was a child. He was able to work his way through school, and his life advanced after he inherited both his great-uncle's title in 1798 and the Newstead Abbey estate. Byron was the son of Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon,
Lord Byron demands. It was one of these importunate loans that allowed him to travel to Valenciennes, France, where he died in 1791. When Byron's great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, the 10-year-old boy became the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited the ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire. His mother proudly took him to England, but the Abbey was in an embarrassing state of disrepair and, rather than living there, she decided to lease it to Lord Grey de Ruthyn, among others, during Byron's adolescence. Described as "a woman without judgment or self-command," Catherine either spoiled