Footnotes

• This Christmas Eve free-front is an example of Byron exercising his parliamentary privilege, as a member of the House of Lords, to enjoy free postage; with the place and date being written out in full as a header as a precaution against forgery, while the Clerk of the House maintained a book of facsimiles against which he could check signatures. This is a privilege which peers and MPs, strictly against the letter of the law, very often extended as a favour to others; indeed, it was considered somewhat infra dig among certain circles to send a letter that had not been franked. No Glaswegian Browns show up in Byron's correspondence, so it seems that in this case it is not one of his own letters he is franking.

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Category: Books / Books, Maps and Manuscripts

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