Lot 96
BYRON (GEORGE GORDON NOEL, LORD) Autograph note signed to Elizabeth Pigot, 9 February 1807
Ending from 19 November 2025, 12:00 GMT
Online, London, Knightsbridge£1,000 - £1,500
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BYRON (GEORGE GORDON NOEL, LORD)
Autograph note signed ("Byron") to Elizabeth Pigot ("Dear Eliza"), informing her that "...we have gained the Rochdale Cause a 2nd time, by which I am £60,000 plus...", docketted "Miss E.P." on reverse, one page torn from a larger sheet, light dust-staining, creased at folds and around salutation, one vertical cut after salutation, not affecting text, mounted, oblong 8vo (70 x 180mm.), overall 134 x 242mm., [n.p. but Burgage Manor], 9 February 1807
Footnotes
'I AM £60,000 PLUS': In this hurried note, Byron expresses what would prove to be false hopes for progress in a long running legal dispute over mining rights and title to his Rochdale estates. He had '...attended with success in some trial of the case at Lancaster. The following note to one of his Southwell friends, announcing a second triumph of the cause, shows how sanguinely and, as it turned out, erroneously, he calculated on the results...'. (Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, 1830, Vol.I, pp.108-109). The unfinished business had been going on since Byron was a boy and, on the death of his uncle 'Wicked' Lord Byron in 1798, he inherited the title of sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale along with the parlous family finances, neglected properties at Newstead and Rochdale, and a longstanding legal battle worthy of Dickens. In 1809 he wrote to his mother that he would be ruined unless Rochdale was sold but it was not until 1823, after thirty years of legal wrangling, that he finally sold Rochdale Manor to James Dearden.
The recipient of our note is likely to be Elizabeth Bridget Pigot (1783-1866), friend and correspondent of Byron since he and his mother moved into Burgage Manor, opposite her family home in Southwell, when he was sixteen and she twenty-one. She corresponded with him until 1811 and on Byron's death she recalled her friendship him for Thomas Moore's Life. There was no romantic entanglement, and although her own feelings may have been '...more than a dispassionate friend...' (Annette Peach, ODNB), their correspondence reveals an affectionate friendship. She is the dedicatee of several poems including To Eliza and A Woman's Hair.
Provenance: Collection of Geoffrey Bond.