William, 5th Baron Byron, British nobleman, peer, politician and great-uncle of the famous poet, went down in history as the Wicked Lord or the Devil Byron: a dreadful scoundrel who beat his wife, killed his own cousin, stabbing him in a dark…

William, 5th Baron Byron, British nobleman, peer, politician and great-uncle of the famous poet, went down in history as the Wicked Lord or the Devil Byron: a dreadful scoundrel who beat his wife; the killer of his own cousin, whom he stabbed in a dark room and was convicted only of manslaughter, getting off in the end with a fine; an adulterer who drove his wife out of the house and seduced a maidservant; a devil-worshipper, villain, eccentric, owner of a collection of pickled animals, recluse, merry fellow and lover of orgies, who staged cannon battles between ships on his estate and felled hundreds of ancient trees and killed thousands of deer in order to ruin the property and diminish the inheritance he would leave to his unruly son, who had refused a marriage of convenience in favour of eloping with a cousin. The line of the sinful lord ended with his grandson, whom he outlived by 4 years, and the title passed to a distant relative, George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron, whose biographers popularised the image of the sinister old Byron and preserved for history the details of his exploits. In our own day William Byron would of course have had excellent chances of leading the Tory party, but for now he remains in his own time, three centuries ago, and the BBC might make a rather gripping mini-series about his life.