William Byron, 5th Baron Byron William Byron, 5th Baron Byron William Byron, 5th Baron Byron (5 November 1722 – 19 May 1798), was a British nobleman, peer, politician, and great uncle of the poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron who succeeded him . As a result of a number of stories that arose after a duel, and then because of his financial difficulties, he became known as "the Wicked Lord" and "the Devil Byron". Byron was the son of William Byron, 4th Baron Byron and his wife Hon. Frances Berkeley, a descendant of John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton. He inherited his title
Lord Byron or heterosexual: he seems rather to have been both, and either." Crompton states: "What was not understood in Byron's own century (except by a tiny circle of his associates) was that Byron was bisexual". Another biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, has posited that Byron's true sexual yearnings were for adolescent males. Byron notably used a code by which he communicated his homosexual Greek adventures to John Hobhouse in England: Bernhard Jackson recalls that "Byron's early code for sex with a boy" was "Plen(um). and optabil(em). -Coit(um)" Bullough summarizes: In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb