In April 1816 Byron's plans to leave England were well under way. He had commissioned the Napoleonic carriage which would carry him across Europe and on 21 April the deed of separation from Lady Byron was completed. Byron signed-off from his marriage with an epigram which ‘the lawyers objected to … as superfluous’:

This bitter full stop is a textual manifestation of the experience of severance, but Byron's disengagement from the English public was not quite so terminal. Hidden among the well-known details of his departure – the selling of his library and the histrionic claims that his friends had forsaken him – is the record in the House of Lords Proxy Book for 1816 which states that from 3 April 1816 ‘George Earl of Essex hath the proxy of George Lord Byron.’ In other words, while flaunting his intention to shake the dust of England from his shoes, Byron was also preparing to re-engage with English politics via a different route. One abrupt change of direction is shadowed by an alternative and, in this case, opposite course of action. This discontinuously continuous relationship with England colours Byron's life history and also his poetics.