"
A coroner's inquest was held, and he was committed to the Tower on a
charge of murder. The interest in the trial which subsequently took place
in Westminster Hall, was so great that tickets of admission were sold for
six guineas. The peers, after two days' discussion, unanimously returned a
verdict of manslaughter. Byron, pleading his privileges, and paying his
fees, was set at liberty; but he appears henceforth as a spectre-haunted
man, roaming about under false names, or shut up in the Abbey like a
baited savage, shunned by his fellows high and low, and the centre of the
wildest stories. That he shot a coachman, and flung the body into the
carriage beside his wife, who very sensibly left him; that he tried to
drown her; that he had devils to attend him--were among the many weird
legends of "the wicked lord." The poet himself says that his ancestor's
only companions were the crickets that used to crawl over him, receive
stripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodus
in procession from the house. When at home he spent his time in
pistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeries
of the lake, and building ugly turrets on the battlements.
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