Byron" or "Foul-weather Jack"--by his marriage (1748) with Sophia
Trevanion of Carhais, in Cornwall. The admiral, next brother to William,
fifth Lord Byron, was a distinguished naval officer, whose 'Narrative'
of his shipwreck in the 'Wager' was published in 1768, and whose 'Voyage
round the World' in the 'Dolphin' was described by "an officer in the
said ship" in 1767. His eldest son, John Byron, educated at Westminster
and a French Military Academy, entered the Guards and served in America.
A gambler, a spendthrift, a profligate scamp, disowned by his father, he
in 1778 ran away with, and in 1779 married, Lady Carmarthen, wife of
Francis, afterwards fifth Duke of Leeds, nee Lady Amelia d'Arcy, only
child and heiress of the last Earl of Holderness, and Baroness Conyers
in her own right.

Captain Byron and his wife lived in Paris, where were born to them a son
and a daughter, both of whom died in infancy, and Augusta, born 1783,
the poet's half-sister, who subsequently married her first cousin,
Colonel George Leigh. In 1784 Lady Conyers died, and Captain Byron
returned to England, a widower, over head and ears in debt, and in
search of an heiress.

It was a rhyme in Aberdeenshire--

"When the heron leaves the tree,
The laird of Gight shall landless be."

Tradition has it that, at the marriage of Catherine Gordon with "mad
Jack Byron," the heronry at Gight passed over to Kelly or Haddo, the
property of the Earl of Aberdeen. "The land itself will not be long in
following," said his lordship, and so it proved. For a few months Mrs.
Byron Gordon--for her husband assumed the name, and by this title her