The Abbey was by no means benefited by these roystering
inmates, who sometimes played off monkish mummeries about the
cloisters, at other times turned the state chambers into schools for
boxing and single-stick, and shot pistols in the great hall. The
country people of the neighborhood were as much puzzled by these madcap
vagaries of the new incumbent, as by the gloomier habits of the "old
lord," and began to think that madness was inherent in the Byron race,
or that some wayward star ruled over the Abbey.
It is needless to enter into a detail of the circumstances which led
his Lordship to sell his ancestral estate, notwithstanding the partial
predilections and hereditary feeling which he had so eloquently
expressed. Fortunately, it fell into the hands of a man who possessed
something of a poetical temperament, and who cherished an enthusiastic
admiration for Lord Byron. Colonel (at that time Major) Wildman had
been a schoolmate of the poet, and sat with him on the same form at
Harrow. He had subsequently distinguished himself in the war of the
Peninsula, and at the battle of Waterloo, and it was a great
consolation to Lord Byron, in parting with his family estate, to know
that it would be held by one capable of restoring its faded glories,
and who would respect and preserve all the monuments and memorials of
his line.
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