GEORGE GORDON NOEL, 6TH BARON BYRON OF ROCHDALE1 “...WHO WOULD BE FREE, THEMSELVES MUST STRIKE THE BLOW?” “WHICH IS THE BEST AND QUICKEST POISON?” 1. 1st Baron Byron of Rochdale: On October 24, 1643, John Byron (circa 1600-1652) was created 1st Baron Byron of Rochdale by King Charles I. 2nd Baron Byron of Rochdale: Sir Richard Byron (1605-1679) - The 1st Lord Byron’s brother. 3rd Baron Byron of Rochdale: William Byron (1635-1695) - Son of the 2nd Lord Byron. 4th Baron Byron of Rochdale: William Byron (1668-1736) - Son of the 3rd Lord Byron. 5th Baron Byron of Rochdale: William Byron (1722-1798) - Son of the 4th Lord Byron. 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) - Grand-Nephew of the 5th Lord Byron. 7th Baron Byron of Rochdale: Cpt. George Anson Byron (1789-1868) - Cousin of the Poet. 8th Baron Byron of Rochdale: George Anson Byron (1818-1870) - Son of the 7th Lord Byron. 9th Baron Byron of Rochdale: George Frederick Byron (1855-1917) - Nephew of the 8th Lord Byron. 10th Baron Byron of Rochdale: Rev. Frederick Ernest Charles Byron (1861-1949) - Brother of the 9th Lord Byron. 11th Baron Byron of Rochdale: Rupert Frederick George Byron (1903-1983) - Cousin of the 10th Lord Byron. 12th Baron Byron of Rochdale: Lt. Col. Richard Geoffry Gordon Byron (1899-19?) - Distant relative of the 11th Lord Byron. 13th Baron Byron of Rochdale: Robert James Byron (b. 1950) - Son of the 12th Lord Byron. HDT WHAT? INDEX GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON 1086 CE During this year and the following one a general tax survey of England would be being carried out. This would be the Domesday Book’s description of the hundred of Uttlesforda, as translated from its Latin, Roman numerals, and many abbreviations:2 • Geoffrey holds [Saffron] Waldana in lordship, which Ansgar held before 1066 as a manor, for 19½ hides.3 Then and later 8 ploughs in lordship, now 10. Always 22 men’s ploughs. • Then and later 66 villagers, now 46; then and later 17 smallholders, now 40; then and later 16 slaves, now 20. • Woodland, then and later 1000 pigs, now 800; meadow, 80 acres; always 1 mill. • Attached to this manor before 1066 were 13 Freemen, now 14, who hold 6½ hides. • Then and later 8½ ploughs, now 8. • Then and later 10 smallholders, now 14. • Woodland, then and later 50 pigs, now 30; meadow, 20 acres: the third part of a mill. • Then 6 cobs, 11 cattle, 200 sheep, 110 pigs, 40 goats, 4 beehives; now 9 cobs, 10 cattle, 243 sheep, 100 pigs, 20 goats, 30 beehives. • Value then and later £36; value now £50. • Of this manor, Odo holds 1 hide and 1 vigate and Reginald (holds) 1 hide less 12 acres. 2 ploughs. • 13 smallholders. • Value 50s in the same assessment. 2. The Domesday Book mentions Ralph de Burun as holding extensive lands in Nottinghamshire, including manors in Ossington, Calum (Kelham), Costock, Ompton, Hucknall, Lamcote, and Cotgrove; thirteen knight’s houses in Nottingham, in one of which lived a merchant. In Derbyshire he was recorded as holding lands in Weston Underwood, Horsley, Denby, Kirk Hallam, and Herdebi (a long vanished part of the manor of Duffield). 3. A hide was an area of land, about 120 acres, and we fancy that a “hundred” may perhaps have been an area supporting one hundred families, or perhaps an area of one hundred taxable hides. HDT WHAT? INDEX GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON 1156 CE Walden Castle was restored to Geoffrey de Mandeville III. Hugh de Burun died. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH. Lord Byron “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON 1170 CE King Henry II founded Newstead Abbey for the Canons Regular of the Order of St. Augustine. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT: ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC, PARTICULAR. Lord Byron “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON 1270 Robert de Burun of Clayton would be changing the initial vowel in the family name from “u” to “y.” While the modern spelling of his family name, “Byron,” would not be standardized until several centuries later, the “u” is rarely seen after this date, generally being replaced by an “i.” GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON “HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE. August 22, Monday (Old Style): There had been another rebellion against the deformed monarch Richard III. On Bosworth Field in Leicestershire, England in what we now consider to have been the last medieval sort of battle engagement, Harri Tudur of the House of Lancaster defeated, with a smaller army, the forces of the House of York, by killing Richard on the field when on his white horse Richard attempted to lead a cavalry charge that would dispose once and for all of the main personage of his opposition. He had arrived within swords-length of Harri Tudur when his horse got onto a piece of marshy ground and he was surrounded, and then he was dispatched by a blow to the head with a halberd wielded by a Welshman. The blow took away the back portion of his skull. The royal corpse would be stripped of its armor, repeatedly desecrated, thrown over a horse with an arrow in the back and a dagger handle protruding up from between the ass cheeks (what is known technically as a “humiliation wound”), and then dumped without casket into a grave at Greyfriars in Leicester — a grave so short that even with the corpse’s feet hacked off, its chin was forced onto its chest with what remained of the skull wedged against the dirt. Since the first blow with the halberd had carried away the back portion of the skull, it would appear that the other head wounds would have been superfluous or symbolic, and if they were symbolic, what they would have symbolized was that this was not the head that should have been wearing England’s crown. However, since there never was any issue as to Richard’s Plantagenet lineage or entitlement, it could be suspected that the reason why this was not the head that should have been wearing England’s crown was merely that this was the head atop a deformed spine. “Only the upright shall rise above us.” The arrow positioned in the back of the corpse was distinctly symbolic. Normally a wound in the back would indicate that one had been killed while attempting to flee, which would be taken as an indication of Lord Byron “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON contemptible cowardice. “Return with your shield or upon it,” the Spartan mother instructed. Anal penetration of the corpse by dagger would also have been distinctly symbolic.4 The corpse would be depicted as performing the role of the willing passive partner (the “female” if you will) in an act of copulation, or as performing the role of the powerless victim of an act of homosexual rape. The message to be read in this final desecration of the corpse, clearly, was “Here was a man of contemptible weakness.” We were righteous because we were able to kill him and he unrighteous because he was unable to prevent us from killing him, QED. Now that he is dead we can proceed to tell lies about him. (The lies that we will have our poets and historians and playwrights tell will portray him, of course, as the culprit rather than as our victim in order to portray us, of course, as defenders of the realm rather than as regicides.) This nastiness ended the War of the Roses by destroying the dynasty (the sole surviving male Plantagenet would be executed in 1499 by the winner, Henry Tudor, as King Henry VII) and kick-starting the following dynasty — which as we all understand would be Tudor and vastly less nasty. Per William Shakespeare’s RICHARD III: CATESBY: Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue! The king enacts more wonders than a man, Daring an opposite to every danger: His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death. Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost! 4. In the case of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, we can see on the cellphone video that he was still being held standing as one of his captors rammed a bayonet or military knife up through his pants in the rear. HDT WHAT? INDEX GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON RICHARD: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! CATESBY: Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse. Henry Thoreau would reference the soliloquy with which Shakespeare began RICHARD III, “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York,” in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and elsewhere in his writings: WALDEN: Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went PEOPLE OF down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to WALDEN build my house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber.