BYRON, John 'Mad Jack', Captain ^{1 2}

   Cause of his death was suicide?.²

   User ID: J2.

John married Amelia DARCY Marchioness of Carmarthen, Baroness Conyers in June 1779.¹ (Amelia DARCY Marchioness of Carmarthen, Baroness Conyers was born on 12 October 1754 ³ and died 26 (27) January 1784 ^{1 3}.)

  Marriage Notes:

"Captain John Byron was the eldest son of Admiral the Hon. John Byron (who was in turn the second son of the fourth Lord Byron), by Sophia Trevanion of Carhays, Cornwall (whose pedigree will be found in Burke's History of the Commoners, 1833, i., 253-5). The Byrons had become a bye-word. The fifth Lord (who was in Aberdeen as a captain in the Duke of Kingston's Horse, March 20, 1745-6) made himself notorious by reason of his killing his kinsman, William Chaworth, in a duel, fought in a tavern in Pall Mall, in 1765. The Admiral (1723-1786) started life by being wrecked on the coast of Chili, in 1741 (he wrote a book about it) ; and, as a Don Juan of fifty summers, he again found himself on a dangerous coast, for he set up an establishment in London for his wife's exmaid (Town and Country Magazine, Dec., 1773).

His handsome son, Captain John Byron, regarded him as an excellent model, for he ran away, in December, 1778, with the beautiful, but bored, Marchioness of Carmarthen, Baroness Conyers in her own right, and daughter-in-law of the 5th Duke of Leeds. The town rang with the scandal (see ibid., Jan., 1779, and Bon-Accord, August 19, 1898). Byron had the temerity to marry the lady, June, 1779. She bore him one child, the famous Augusta. She kept him in pocket-money, and departed this life, in France, Jan. 27, 1784, the victim of 'consumption and his ill-usage'."

from Gight ¹

John next married Katharine GORDON 13th and last of Gight, daughter of George GORDON 12th of Gight and Catharine INNES, on 13 May 1785 in Bath, Somerset, England.¹ (Katharine GORDON 13th and last of Gight was baptised on 22 April 1764 in Banff parish, Banffshire, Scotland,⁴ died on 1 August 1811 in Newstead, Nottinghamshire, England ¹ and was buried in 1811 in Hucknall Torkard Church, Nottinghamshire, England ¹.)

  Marriage Notes:

"Catherine Gordon was the last of her line, and ended the first of the two branches of the Gordons who have held the lands of Gight. She became mistress of the estates on attaining her majority, for she was served heir to her father in September, 1785, by which date she had taken the very step to lose everything by marrying John Byron. Her whole life up to this point had been that of loss after loss. Her mother had died while she was a mere child. One sister died in 1777 ; her father died in 1779 ; her only other sister died in 1780. Her mother's trustees, General Abercromby and Thomas Innes, died respectively in 1781 and 1784. Her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Innes, died in 1784, so that, by 1785, the Gight family had reduced itself to the young heiress, her paternal grandmother (nee Duff), and her aunt, Margaret Davidson." [....]

"Bath proved her ruin, for it was there she met and married Captain Byron. The marriage register (as quoted in Peach's Historic Houses of Bath, 1886) runs as follows (although Cordy Jeaffreson, in the Real Lord Byron, 1883, declares that the marriage, which he describes as a sham elopement, took place in Scotland) :

'John Byron, Esquire, of the parish of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the city of Bath, a widower, and Catherine Gordon, of the parish of St. Michael, in the same city, spinster, were married in this church [St. Michael's, Bath] this thirteenth day of May, in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty-five [May 13, 1785], me, John Chapman, Rector. This marriage was solemnized between us. [Signed] John Byron. Catherine Gordon In the presence of Sarah Hay [and Dr.] Alexander Hay'." [....]

"The Byron mating was almost incredible from every point of view, and, of course, it turned out impossible. Byron was notorious ; Catherine Gordon was a nonentity. Byron was handsome ; she was very plain. Byron was bankrupt ; she had a good balance at her bankers doubtless exaggerated by herself (unconsciously) and by the people of Bath (through ignorance). This, and this alone, may be taken as the reason of the marriage. Byron had borne down on Bath with the view of getting an heiress, for the £4,000 a year which he had enjoyed for five years lapsed in 1784 on the death of his first wife, the former Marchioness of Carmarthen. He found himself up to the ears in debt within a few months." [....]

"There was great difficulty in selling the estate ; Alexander Gordon of Letterfourie, who had married Alexander Russell's daughter Helen (by his first wife), was anxious to buy it. The estate was at last put up for sale on December 12, 1786, but was withdrawn. Mr. J. Buchan, W.S., offered £16,000. Gight was at last bought in 1787 for £17,850, by the third Earl of Aberdeen, for his son, Lord Haddo"

from Gight ¹