Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/315

 ship mounting 18 guns, was left alone. The Mahratta fleet numbered some forty or fifty, many of them quite as large as the Revenge, and crowded with men. Keigwin in writing to the council says that he reserved his fire till the enemy's boats came within pistol shot, when he opened upon them so smartly that ‘in half an hour we beat them from their guns and muskets and brought them by the lee. Some was seen to go down to the bottom.’ The rest fled.

Before the news of this affair had reached England orders arrived at Bombay to reduce the garrison, to disband the troop of horse, and to send Keigwin home. Keigwin accordingly went to England, to come out again in the course of 1681 with the rank of captain-lieutenant, and third in the council. But the following year this seat in the council was taken from him and his pay and allowances were reduced. A similar measure of economy applied to the garrison produced very great discontent, which finally in December 1683 broke into open revolt. Keigwin felt that he had been scurvily treated and that the whole settlement was endangered by the hesitating policy of the company. He threw in his lot with the troops, seized Ward, the deputy-governor and brother-in-law of John (afterwards Sir John) Child [q. v.], and such members of council as adhered to him, and declared the island subject only to the king. Keigwin was elected governor; he took possession of the company's ships and money, and wrote to the king explaining the causes of his action, and his intention of holding the island for his majesty, till his pleasure should be known. Meantime he exercised the government with energy and discretion. He repressed the insolence of the native belligerents, and induced Sambhajee to pay compensation for the losses inflicted by the Mahrattas. In England the king referred the matter to the directors of the company, and on their report sent out orders (August 1684) to Keigwin to deliver up the island. Child was named admiral and captain-general of the company's forces, and the Phœnix frigate was sent to support him. But Sir Thomas Grantham [q. v.] arrived at Surat in October 1684, and at Child's request undertook to bring Keigwin to reason, ‘either by hostile means or otherways.’ He came to Bombay on 3 Nov., Keigwin readily gave in his submission on a general pardon being signed, and on the 19th the garrison returned to its obedience. From first to last there had been no bloodshed, and little beyond the threat of violence. Keigwin was taken home by Grantham, and arrived in England in July 1685. In May 1689 he was appointed captain of the Reserve frigate, from which he was soon after moved into the Assistance, and early in 1690 was sent to the West Indies under the orders of Commodore Lawrence Wright [q. v.] At the attack on St. Christopher's on 21 June, he was landed in command of the ‘marine regiment,’ or, as it would now be called, the ‘naval brigade,’ and fell at the head of his men as he was leading them on to the assault of Basseterre. The order from Charles II to Keigwin commanding the restoration of Bombay is Rawlinson MS. (Bodl. Libr.) A. 257, fol. 75, and a letter from Keigwin to the king in 1684 is ib. fol. 102.

[Charnock's Biog. Nav. i. 337; O'Callaghan, in Illustrated Nav. and Mil. Mag. (October 1884), i. 254; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. iii. 1251; Brooke's History of the Island of St. Helena, pp. 57–63; Anderson's English in Western India, 2nd edit. pp. 122–3, 174, 222–6; Bruce's Annals of the East India Company, ii. 512–17, 522–8, 536–42; Yule's Diary of Hedges (Hakluyt Society), ii. 168–84.]  KEILL, JAMES (1673–1719), physician, born in Scotland on 27 March 1673, was the younger brother of John Keill [q. v.] the mathematician. He was educated partly at home, partly on the continent. He applied himself especially to anatomy, and coming to England acquired much reputation by lecturing on that subject at Oxford and Cambridge. The latter university conferred upon him the degree of M.D. With this degree, and without belonging to the College of Physicians, he settled in 1703 as a physician at Northampton, where he continued for the rest of his life. He died unmarried on 16 July 1719 of a painful cancer of the mouth, and was buried in St. Giles's Church, Northampton, where a monument, with a Latin inscription, was erected to his memory by his brother John.

Keill was an able mathematician and competent anatomist. He was an active supporter of the mechanical or ‘Iatro-mathematical’ school of medicine. Some of his ideas he acknowledges to have been derived from his brother, the mathematician. He discussed by mathematical methods, combined with experiment, several physiological problems, such as secretion, the amount of blood in the body, muscular motion, and the force of the heart. On the latter point he corrected the exaggerated estimate of Borelli; but his own results were not satisfactory, and were criticised by Dr. Jurin in the ‘Philosophical Transactions.’ Keill's reply was written from his deathbed on 23 June 1719, and Jurin, in his rejoinder, paid a warm tribute to his departed 