Lovelace, Ralph Milbanke, Earl of, 1839-1906

Grandson of Byron.

English autghor, grandson of Lord Byron.

Lord Lovelace was the grandson of the poet Byron.

Ralph Milbanke, second Earl of Lovelace. The third and youngest child of William King, first Earl of Lovelace, and Ada Byron King, the computer pioneer, he was baptized Ralph Gordon Noel King. In 1861, he adopted the surname Milbanke, as directed by the will of his grandmother, Lady Byron. After the death of his older brother in 1862, he inherited the Wentworth barony; he was known as Lord Wentworth until his father's death in 1893, when he became the second Earl of Lovelace. In 1905 he published his book Astarte, which paints a very negative portrait of his grandfather, Lord Byron, the poet.

Ralph Gordon Noel Milbanke was the second Earl of Lovelace and a mountaineer.

The second Earl of Lovelace was born on July 2, 1839, to the second son of William King-Noel, first earl of Lovelace, and Augusta Ada, née Byron, who was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron. After a year at University College, Oxford (1859-1860), he left Oxford and traveled abroad. In 1861, as directed in his grandmother Lady Byron's will, he adopted the Milbanke surname. When his older brother Byron Noel, died in 1862, Ralph Milbanke succeeded, in May 1864, as thirteenth Baron Wentworth, the ancient barony inherited through Lady Byron.

After investigation of the relationship between his grandmother and Lord Byron, in 1905 the Earl of Lovelace privately published Astarte: a Fragment of Truth Concerning Lord Byron, giving some of the 200 copies to a variety of friends including military historian John Fortescue, Swinburne, Lady Gregory, William de Morgan, and Henry James.

1871, the Earl of Lovelace again traveled abroad, mostly among the mountains of Europe and Asia. Though never a member of the Alpine Club, he was an inspired climber, conquering the Matterhorn, on August 30, 1872. Lovelace died suddenly on August 28, 1906 at his home in England.

Ralph Lloyd-Jones. "Milbanke, Ralph Gordon Noel King, second earl of Lovelace (1839–1906)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35018 (accessed November 2011).

Clare Euphemia Stuart-Wortley was the Earl of Lovelace's niece. Born on October 16, 1889, to Charles Beilby, Baron Stuart of Wortley and Alice Sophia Caroline Millais, Clare Stuart-Wortley became a noted British art historian. Clare's father was the brother of Ralph Milbanke's second wife Mary Caroline Stuart-Wortley. "Hon. Clare Euphemia Stuart-Wortley." ThePeerage.com. http://www.thepeerage.com/p47079.htm (accessed November 2011).