16 Apr 2022
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16 April 2022 Cheryl

16 April 1816: Lord Byron dissolves his marriage

Lord and Lady Byron

Lord Byron left for Europe when his only legitimate daughter, Ada, was a tiny baby. Her mother worried that Ada was too imaginative, and decided that studying maths would keep her daughter’s mind away from poetry and other dangerous subjects. Ada became a brilliant mathematician and has often been described as ‘the mother of computers’. [1]

After a little over just one year, and at his wife’s request, Lord Byron signed a Deed of Separation dissolving his marriage with Lady Byron on 16 April 1816.

Infamous ladies’ man, Lord George Gordon Byron, married Anne Isabelle Milbanke by special license, on 2 January 1815. Byron was at the end of a scandalous affair with Lady Caroline Lamb and was urged into the marriage by Anne’s aunt (and Byron’s confidant) Lady Melbourne.

Anne Isabella, nicknamed Annabella, was born in May 1792. She grew to become a highly educated and strictly religious young woman, often described as cold and prim. In her first two seasons, Annabella had rejected several nice, eligible suitors. During her third London season in 1812, 20-year-old Annabella met poet Lord Byron at Lady Caroline Lamb’s morning waltzing party in London and began corresponding with him. She fell head over heels in love with mad, bad and dangerous Byron, and after rejecting his first proposal, accepted his second in 1814. They were married privately at Seaham Hall in County Durham on 2nd January 1815. On 10 December that year, Annabella gave birth to the couple’s only child, a daughter whom they named Ada.

Annabella was an unlikely match for the amoral and agnostic poet, and their marriage soon broke down. After just one year, at his wife’s request, Lord Byron signed a Deed of Separation dissolving his marriage with her on 16 April 1816. At the time Annabella and their daughter were staying at to her parents’ home until Byron settled their finances. The exact reasons for their separation remain unclear, but it is widely accepted that their marriage was troubled from the start and that a combination of personal, political, and social factors contributed to their eventual separation.

Byron never sought custody of Ada, though he sent for both of them shortly before his death in Greece on 19 April 1824. Lady Byron died of breast cancer on 16 May 1860, the day before her 68th birthday.

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