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The fact that Byron's great-uncle, from whom he had inherited his title, had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic tinge to the matter the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong devotion that he will bestow.
In his neighborhood lived his kinsman and friend, Mr. Chaworth, proprietor of Annesley Hall. Being together in London in 1765, in a chamber of the Star and Garter tavern in Pall Mall, a quarrel rose between them. Byron insisted upon settling it upon the spot by single combat. They fought without seconds, by the dim light of a candle, and Mr.
Nettled by this opposition, Mr. Chaworth ejaculated that he had more game on five acres than Lord Byron had on all his manors. Retorts were bandied to and fro, until finally Mr. Chaworth clenched matters by words which were tantamount to a challenge to a duel. Nothing more was said, however, and the company was separating when Mr. Chaworth and Lord Byron happened to meet on a landing.
Chaworth, although the most expert swordsman, received a mortal wound. With his dying breath he related such particulars the contest as induced the coroner's jury to return a verdict of wilful murder. Lord Byron was sent to the Tower, and subsequently tried before the House of Peers, where an ultimate verdict was given of manslaughter.
Unluckily, "the lame boy" was in the next room and heard the remark. He rushed from the house with a something gripping at his heart. Straightway he would go back to Harrow, which he had left in wrath only a few months before. So he went to Harrow. When he next returned home, his mother met him with the remark, "I have news for you; get out your handkerchief Miss Chaworth is married."
The father of Miss Chaworth was dead, and she resided with her mother at the old Hall of Annesley. During Byron's minority, the estate of Newstead was let to Lord Grey de Ruthen, but its youthful Lord was always a welcome guest at the Abbey. He would pass days at a time there, and make frequent visits thence to Annesley Hall.
Thence he shortly returned from the rougher school of life to his haunts and tasks at Harrow. A year later the pair again met to take farewell, on the hill of Annesley an incident he has commemorated in two short stanzas, that have the sound of a wind moaning over a moor. "I suppose," he said, "the next time I see you, you will be Mrs. Chaworth?"
A famous duel was fought in 1765 between Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth. The dispute arose at a club-dinner, and was relative to which of the two had the largest quantity of game on his estates. Infuriated by wine and passion, they retired instantly into an adjoining room, and fought with swords across a table, by the feeble glimmer of a tallow-candle. Mr.
The attention drawn to it by the poet, and the romantic manner in which he had associated it with his early passion for Mary Chaworth, had nettled the irritable feelings of her husband, who but ill brooked the poetic celebrity conferred on his wife by the enamored verses of another. The celebrated grove stood on his estate, and in a fit of spleen he ordered it to be levelled with the dust.
It was planted by "The Wicked Lord Byron," during the early part of his residence at the Abbey, before his fatal duel with Mr. Chaworth. Having something of a foreign and classical taste, he set up leaden statues of satyrs or fauns at each end of the grove.
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