This year marks the 200th anniversary of the poet Lord Byron’s death. His eventful life and times are well chronicled with hundreds of books and articles written about him.
However, relatively little has been recorded regarding his political beliefs and his contributions in the House of Lords chamber.
In this blog, I’ll cover the short period Byron attended debates as he sought to bring a modern idealism to proceedings. He also mixed in very different literary circles as his popularity grew, and his newly acquired fame offered plenty of distractions.
Here’s the man, the myth, the minor Parliamentarian.
BAD EGGS
There was a distinct lack of positive male role models for the young Lord Byron to draw upon from the hereditary line. His father, Captain John Byron, was a feckless Coldstream Guard, renowned for romancing heiresses on the London social circuit. In 1785 he married Catherine Gordon from Aberdeenshire gentry and started delving into the family coffers. A rare joy for his underappreciated wife was the birth of a son they called George. Byron’s roving instincts couldn’t be curtailed, and he joined his sister in Paris. Eventually paying the price for his robust lifestyle with an unrecoverable bout of tuberculosis.
If Captain John seemed a bad egg than Great Uncle William was rotten to the core. Known as ‘The Wicked Lord’ this Master of the Royal Staghounds had a reputation to be avoided at all costs. Highlighted by an incident at the Star and Garter on Pall Mall that saw him charged for murder resulting from a duel. Standing trial at Westminster Hall Byron was found guilty of manslaughter and ordered to pay a fine, benefitting from a peer’s privilege. Passing away in 1798 his title and estates were inherited by his nearest descendant, the ten-year-old George Gordon Byron.
WHIG ENAMOURED
George became the sixth Baron Byron and went from Harrow to Cambridge University where his studies nosedived as the diversions of drunkenness and Newmarket racing took precedence. On the suggestion of friend and fellow dilletante William John Bankes, he began frequenting John Hobhouse’s recently founded Whig Club. Like many of his contemporaries upon leaving education Byron decided to go on a tour of Europe with Hobhouse as his companion. In Greece, he was horrified to learn the full extent of Lord Elgin’s procuring of the ancient Parthenon marbles. Sadly, on Byron’s return, he was told his beloved mother had died.
Leading Whig politician Lord Henry Holland targeted Byron as a potential youthful flagbearer to strengthen the Upper House Whigs. Holland’s overtures notwithstanding, Byron mainly prioritised receiving boxing lessons from bare-knuckle pugilist John ‘Gentleman’ Jackson and attending the Hampstead parties of libertarian pamphleteer Leigh Hunt. Coming of age at twenty-one in 1809 he was formally introduced in the Lord’s, disappointingly noting that ‘our house is not animating like the hounds of the Commons’. The anti-climactic nature of its formalities left Byron somewhat cold, and he soon again embarked on his travels hoping the overall experience would inspire his burgeoning writing ambitions.
ODE TO THE FRAMERS
Near to Byron’s Newstead Estate discontent was evident in Nottinghamshire over mass unemployment within the local weaving industry after the introduction of new machinery into the production process. At this juncture his connections to the working classes usually involved dalliances with Newstead’s female domestic staff. Yet the actions of the Luddite movement rang true with Byron who saw their tactic of industrial sabotage as justified. Riots broke out in the winter of 1811 prompting the military to enter the fray. This cavalry response was coupled by the Home Office tabling a bill to recognise the destruction of the mechanised loom or frame as a capital offence.
Despite the misgivings of mentor Lord Henry Holland, Byron was determined to address the issue at the bill’s second reading stage. Though meticulously drafted and memorized his maiden speech in February 1812, failed to live up to the hype. He wasn’t helped by the indifference of the peers present ambivalent to Byron’s observational protestations. The Press Gallery deemed his oratory as shrill and lacking sincerity. Not deterred, he promptly responded by sending to the Morning Chronicle a poem titled ‘An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill’ that caused a publicity storm, still the proposed legislation got Royal Assent.
Read Byron’s maiden speech on the Frame Work Bill - parliament.uk/historic-hansard
TALK OF THE TOWN
Following his Lords debut Byron’s latest long-form poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published to much fanfare. Initially produced for a 500-copy run, a further 15,000 further copies were printed by the end of the year to meet demand. All doors suddenly opened for the twenty-four-year-old, and he was accepted as a permanent fixture at Lady Oxford’s soirees. An aristocratic radical, she passed onto Byron her adoration of Napoleon and hoped he’d speak up for the slandered Princess Caroline of Brunswick in Parliament. The capital’s gossipmongers had a field day as he openly pursued socialite Lady Caroline Lamb.
Religion remained a highly contentious subject, especially Catholic emancipation. The Earl of Donoughmore tabled a motion in April 1812 for the matter to be discussed in the Lords. House administrators prepared for an all-night session which included a noteworthy cameo from Byron. Supporting another minority cause, his post-midnight deliberation stood out for its intelligent referencing and writerly nod to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Just weeks later Parliament and the country were shocked by Prime Minister Spencer Perceval’s assassination in the Commons by John Bellingham. Byron witnessed Bellingham’s hanging at Newgate Prison, hiring a room opposite to view the spectacle.
Read Byron’s speech on Roman Catholic emancipation - parliament.uk/historic-hansard
LAST HURRAH
Maintaining a celebrity status is expensive and Byron needed additional income, something the Lords was unable to provide. A last hurrah occurred in March 1813 when the petition of Major Cartwright was presented, calling for his release from incarceration on sedition charges. Joining veteran agitator Viscount Stanhope to reiterate Cartwright’s demands for electoral suffrage two decades before the first Reform Act entered the statute book. Facing an unsympathetic audience, Stanhope accused the Earl of Lauderdale of ‘laughing at the poor’. Byron paid tribute to Cartwright by quoting in Latin, ‘frangas non flectus’ meaning ‘you may break but not bend him’.
‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know’ as the infamous description goes. Byron felt restricted by what he dismissed as the ‘Parliamentary mummeries’ of a ‘den of dullness’. When loyal ally John Hobhouse moved into politics, he urged him to reconsider. Financial difficulties proved insurmountable, not eased by his marriage to Annabelle Millbanke and subsequent divorce. Yearning to escape, Byron journeyed to Geneva, meeting Percy Shelley. Briefly, the two poets considered producing a journal named The Liberal. European revolutionary activity enthralled him and in the aftermath of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre he contemplated returning to England to incite a homegrown revolution.
WESTMINSTER LEGACY
Since his death in 1824 Lord Byron could claim to be the original posthumous legend. This Byronic obsession is not exclusively taken up by creative types and a host of politicians have caught the Byron bug. Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli greatly identified with the cult surrounding Byron. He acquired the services of Byron’s servant Tita Falcieri to be steward at his Buckinghamshire country pile and at the height of his powers arranged for Annabelle Millbanke to receive an annual widow’s pension. Of Disraeli’s numerous books The Young Duke is classed as the one most influenced by his romantic hero.
Whig reformer Edward Bulwer-Lytton challenged Disraeli as the definitive Parliamentary Byronist. Taking his devotion to new levels by forming a close relationship with Lady Caroline Lamb and renting Byron’s former Piccadilly living quarters. Sir Harold Nicholson was the embodiment of an aesthete MP in the interwar years. The husband of celebrated author Vita Sackville-West in 1924 he wrote Byron: The Last Journey detailing the conclusion of Byron’s fateful Greek odyssey. That same decade Lloyd George petitioned for the placement of a plaque to honour Byron in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. Lord Robert Boothby finally prevailed overseeing the 1969 ceremonial induction.
SOURCES
Byron: Life and Legend by Fiona McCarthy
The Politics of Paradise: A Vindication of Byron by Michael Foot
Political Ideas of the English Romanticists by Crane Brinton
Byron: The Flawed Angel – Phyllis Grosskurth
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – George Gordon Byron entry written by Jerome McGann
Times Digital Archive
Hansard Parliamentary Debates
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