One holy Henry reared the Gothic walls
And bade the pious inmates rest in peace;
Another Henry the kind gift recalls
And bids devotion's hallowed echoes cease;
for it shared the general fate of monasteries
under Henry the Eighth. How transitory does
Newstead in its whole duration as a religious
house appear when compared with the steadfast
and enduring oaks amidst which it rose, and
which were still vigorous when it fell! Still
more transitory was its ownership by ancestors
of Lord Byron's, and twice, since he succeeded
to it, has Newstead passed to strangers.

On the dissolution, the priory and all its
possessions in lands and tithes were bestowed
on Sir John Byron, Lieutenant of Sherwood
Forest, grand-nephew of the knightly " Byron
with the Iong beard," who fought beside
Richmond at Bosworth. There is an anecdote
relating to the sons of the first lay owner of
Newstead (it is recorded by Burke on the faith of
its tradition in the Byron family), which affords
an example of the strange fatality supposed by
the noble poet, even in his time, to attend
the Byrons. Each of the sons married, and
their wives are described as models of female
excellence; but the elder son, having married
beneath his own rank, John, the younger son,
became the object of his father's preference.
The elder son, when going out to hunt one day,
fell from his horse in a fit, and died immediately.
The younger son ultimately succeeded
to the inheritance, out only to experience a life
of sorrow. His beautiful wife, whom he dearly
loved, was deprived of reason at the birth of
her daughter (Margaret, who afterwards
became the wife of Colonel Hutchinson, the
regicide), and within a few minutes of her
death, Sir John, who is said to have become
conscious of the event by some mysterious
spiritual sympathy, also expired. A chivalrous
loyalty seems to have distinguished the race;
and the family, as well as their newly acquired
house of Newstead suffered greatly in the stern
contests of the Rebellion, in. the course of
which Richard, who became second Lord Byron
on the death, in 1052, of his brother (Sir John,
created Baron Byron of Rochdale in 1643),
defended Newark for King Charles.

Yet, if we may trust Horace Walpole, who
("with great delight," as he says) visited
Newstead a century ago (1760), the domestic
buildings of the monastery, which seem to have been
incorporated with the dwelling of the lay owners,
were not then in ruin. "It is," he says, "the
very abbey . . . . the hall entire, the refectory
entire, the cloister untouched . . . . The park,
which is still charming, has not been so much
unprofaned : the present lord has lost large sums,
and paid part in old oaks ; five thousand pounds'
worth of which have been cut near the house. . . .
The refectory, now the great drawing-room, is
full of Byrons, and the vaulted roof* remains."

* The room here referred to appears to have been
the dormitory, the refectory of the monkshaving been
converted by Colonel Wildman into the dining-hall;
and the fine roof is not vaulted, but is of oak, in
which stucco ornaments of seventeenth-century style
have been inserted between the timbers. "The
Byrons" have vanished.

But the owner mentioned by Walpole as "the
present lord"— namely William, fifth lord, who had
succeeded, in 1736, and was the grand-uncle and
immediate predecessor of the noble poet —suffered
the buildings as well as the estate to fall into
deplorable decay. The refectory was full of hay,
and there was hardly a chamber of which the
roof did not admit the rain. He not only
cut down the oaks (the noble and spreading
tree which stands alone before the entrance
to the park from the Nottingham and Mansfield
road is almost a solitary relic), but sold
all the deer of the park, which is said to have
sheltered two thousand seven hundred head.
This was probably the topic upon which his
fatal duel with Mr. Chaworth arose. A club of
Nottinghamshire gentlemen had dined at the Star
and Garter Tavern, in Pall-mall. " There had
been," says Horace Walpole, "a dispute whether
Lord Byron, who took no care of his game,
or Mr. Chaworth, who was active in the
association, had most game on their manor. The
company, however, had apprehended no
consequences, and parted at eight o'clock; but
Lord Byron, stepping into an empty chamber,
and sending the drawer for Mr. Chaworth, or
calling him thither himself, took the candle
from the waiter, and bidding Mr. Chaworth
defend himself, drew his sword. Mr. Chaworth,
who was an excellent fencer, ran Lord
Byron through the sleeve of his coat, and
then received a wound fourteen inches deep
into his body. He was carried to his house in
Berkeley-street, made his will with the greatest
composure, and dictated a paper which, they
say, allows it was a fair duel, and died at nine
this morning."*

* January 27, 1765.

Lord Byron was tried by his peers, and found
guilty of manslaughter. He passed the latter years
of his strange life in austere and almost savage
seclusion, dreaded and unpopular; surrounded
nevertheless by a colony of crickets, which on
the day of his death, says tradition, were seen
to leave the bouse in such numbers that a
person could not cross the hall without treading
on them, as if they chose that time to leave a
falling dynasty, as the rats escape before the
fall of a house or the sinking of a ship. This
old lord died at Newstead without issue, on the
19th of May, 1798, when the youthful heir of
his title and estates was roaming like a young
Highlander in Scotland.

In the following autumn, when George Noel
Gordon Byron was in his eleventh year, his
mother brought him from Aberdeen to take
possession of Newstead, and he then, for the
first time, saw " its woods stretching out to
receive him." Of the state in which he found
mansion, some idea is given by his college
friend, Mr. Charles Skinner Matthews, who
in describing (in 1809) his recent visit, says:
the abbey church only one end remains;
and the old kitchen with a long range