Byron was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge , before he travelled extensively in Europe. He lived for seven years in Italy, in Venice , Ravenna , and Pisa after he was forced to flee England due to threats of lynching. His one child conceived within marriage, Ada Lovelace , was a founding figure in the field of computer programming based on her notes for Charles Babbage 's Analytical Engine.
George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January , on Holles Street in London; [ 1 ] his birthplace is now supposedly occupied by a branch of the department store John Lewis.
After he became embroiled in a tempestuous voyage during the American War of Independence , he became nicknamed 'Foul-Weather Jack' Byron by the press. Byron's father had previously been somewhat scandalously married to Amelia Osborne, Marchioness of Carmarthen , with whom he was having an affair β the wedding took place just weeks after her divorce from her husband, and she was around eight months pregnant.
Much later, 19th-century sources blamed Jack's own "brutal and vicious" treatment of her. Jack would then marry Catherine Gordon of Gight on 13 May , by all accounts only for her fortune. Byron's mother moved back to Aberdeenshire in , and Byron spent part of his childhood there.
Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy, [ 26 ] which could be partly explained by her husband's continuously borrowing money from her. As a result, she fell even further into debt to support his demands. When Byron's great-uncle, who was posthumously labelled the "wicked" Lord Byron , died on 21 May , the year-old became the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited the ancestral home, Newstead Abbey , in Nottinghamshire.
