Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/329

Rh My great-grandfather, Alexander Creichton, of the house of Dumfries, in Scotland, in a feud between the Maxwells and the Johnstons (the chief of the Johnstons being the lord Johnston, ancestor of the present marquis of Annandale) siding with the latter, and having killed some of the former, was forced to fly into Ireland, where he settled near Kinard, then a woody country, and now called Calidon: but within a year or two, some friends and relations of those Maxwells who had been killed in the feud, coming over to Ireland to pursue their revenge, lay in wait for my great-grandfather in the wood, and shot him dead, as he was going to church. This accident happened about the time that James the Sixth of Scotland came to the crown of England.

Alexander, my great-grandfather, left two sons, and as many daughters; his eldest son John lived till a year or two after the rebellion in 1641. His house was the first in Ulster set upon by the Irish, who took and imprisoned him at Dungannon; bntbut [sic] fortunately making his escape, he went to sir Robert Stuart, who was then in arms for the king, and died in the service.

This John, who was my grandfather, left two sons, Alexander, my father, and a younger son, likewise named John; who being a child, but two or three years old at his father's death, was invited to Scotland by the lady Dumfries, there educated by her, and sent to sea: he made several voyages to and from Barbadoes, then settled in Scotland, where he died some time after the Restoration, leaving, beside a daughter, one son; who, at my charges, was bred up a physician, and proved so famous in his profession, that he was sent by her late majesty queen Anne. X.