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 in Italy he frequently visited his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted in Missolonghi. Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in his life for his aristocratic excesses, which included huge debts, numerous love affairs with both men and women, as well as rumours of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister. One