Day Fourteen

In 1835, Lt Colonel Fitzmaurice Creighton, son of Abraham Creighton,  father of John Henry David Creighton, grandfather of John Leslie Fitzmaurice Creighton and great grandfather of John Michael Creighton  was born in Lymington, Southampton.

Day Thirteen

In 1801 Colonel John Creighton,  the second son of John, first Earl of Erne and  younger brother of Abraham, the second Earl,  was made Governor of Hurst Castle, Lymington, Southampton. 

His son, John Creighton, became the third Earl of Erne upon the death of  the second Earl, Abraham Creighton in 1848.  The official records show that Abraham Creighton , having been declared insane by his father in October 1798, died without issue.

The third Earl of Erne changed the spelling of the family name to Crichton and his son, John Henry Crichton,  became the fourth Earl of Erne in 1885.

Day Twelve

John Leslie Fitzmaurice Creighton photographed with his elder sister Molly in 1903 at the Vicarage in Kings Somborne, in the Diocese of Winchester.

In his memoirs he wrote  "Although my father (John Henry David Creighton) officially received only a Vicar's small stipend we managed in those days  to maintain a surprisingly substantial household and staff."

These household costs were apparently met by the fourth Earl of Erne.  Why?

Day Eleven

Edward Stuart Talbot was Bishop of Winchester during the period when John Henry David Creighton was Vicar at Kings Somborne 

Talbot's  grandmother was Caroline Creighton,  daughter of John Creighton, First Earl of Erne and Mary Hervey, daughter of Frederick Augustus Hervey, fourth Earl of Bristol.

Talbot maintained a close relationship with John Henry David Creighton.

Day Ten

John Leslie Fitzmaurice Creighton was born in The Vicarage of Kings Somborne, Hampshire on January 11, 1900.

His father John Henry David Creighton was Vicar of Kings Somborne, Hampstead in diocese of Winchester.

Day Nine

John Creighton, 1st Earl Erne,  was born 1731. He married twice and Abraham Creighton, his eldest son by his first wife, Catherine Howard,  became second Earl of Erne on his death in 1828.

Day Eight

Lady Elizabeth Hervey, "Bess", was the sister of Mary Hervey, who married John Creighton, the First Earl of Erne'.  Bess became notorious as the live-in companion of both Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and also of Georgiana's husband the Duke of Devonshire after leaving her husband John Vere Foster in 1781.  

In that  same year Mary Hervey left John Creighton and the two sisters lived for a  short period  in Bath with an aunt. It was in Bath that Bess and Mary became acquainted with Georgiana.

Day Seven

Captain Fitzmaurice de Vere Creighton,  ADC to Chulalongkorn, King of Siam,  and head of the Siamese Military College until 1891, was the elder son of Colonel Fitzmaurice Creighton

Day Six

Caroline Creighton, daughter of John Creighton  first Earl of Erne and his second, considerably younger wife, Mary Hervey,  became an accomplished artist.

This work by Caroline Creighton is held in the Tate Gallery and is assumed to be a self portrait

Who is the half-concealed male figure in the background? Does the answer to the family mystery lie in this portrait?

Day Five

Mary Hervey, daughter of  Frederick Augustus Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, became the second wife of John Creighton, first Earl of Erne in 1778

Mary was 23, John 53.  John had two sons by his first wife, Abraham and John. Mary bore him a daughter, Caroline

The marriage did not last and Mary left Crom in 1781 taking her child with her.

Day Four

John Leslie Fitzmaurice Creighton flew with the Royal Flying Corp in the First World War.

After the war he continued in the Royal Air Force, pioneering the London-Cairo Aerial Route#1 until 1921. His flying partner in these years was Michael Coombs

Thirty years later John would name his only son after Michael

Day Three

The spelling of the family name has changed over time.

The original spelling used by the Earls of Erne, including Abraham the second Earl, was Creighton.  

Upon the death of Abraham his nephew, John,  became the Third Earl and the family changed the spelling from Creighton to Crichton around about 1872. What precipitated the change?

Day Two

The portrait above was long held in London by my father's sister, my much loved aunt Joey,  and is now here with me in Australia.  On the back is an inscription "Abraham Creighton, Earl of Erne".  True or false?

The question of exactly who this particular Abraham Creighton was and who his father was lies at the heart of the family mystery. Or rather it is one of the family mysteries,  for there are many.

I was told by my father's sister Joey in London that this portrait was of her great grandfather, Abraham.  My father, Joey's brother, John Leslie Fitzmaurice Creighton was born on January 11, 1900.  My grandfather was John Henry David Creighton, born in 1870. My great grandfather was Fitzmaurice Creighton, born in 1835. The portrait is of Fitzmaurice's father so Joey told me.  This would mean therefore that my great-great grandfather was this Abraham Creighton. But I do not yet know exactly when or where he was born.

Day One

I no longer know what this story is about.

This family history began simply enough as an attempt to discover why my father, John  Leslie Fitzmaurice Creighton, and his elder sister were made to swear by their father never to return to Crom Castle, the ancestral seat of their family,  the Earls of Erne,  nor attempt to discover the truth of the thing that had happened there.

For many years I have carried  from place to place a number of  old leather cases filled with family papers. Within these were the usual collection of faded  family photographs and newspaper cuttings; albums, scrapbooks, files of official documents and personal letters and those odd little mementos of lives richly lived and fondly remembered.

Also here were the genealogies of the Earls of Erne, some of these copied from the official peerages of Great Britain and Ireland; others, differing in their details, carefully handwritten by aging aunts and cousins eager to pass on to me their knowledge of our family's past. Amongst this collection is also a small golden seal , with the Creighton crest engraved upon it.  This was given to me by my father and came, so I was told, from Crom Castle many years ago.

I had looked through those leather cases only occasionally, amused, only half interested.  Sometimes I added some new snippet of information that I had come across. In recent years I began using the internet to fill in gaps, but for the most part these things had remained untouched, ignored. Their secrets lay sleeping and the seductions of the present outweighed the mysteries of the past.  Once I had  attempted a telling of the family story.  I started a book. I  named it The Sons of Abraham for it seemed that the central mystery concerned a Creighton of that name, possibly the second Earl of Erne, who had been declared insane  and incarcerated for forty years by his father John Creighton, the First Earl. But again, more immediate concerns drew me away.

Tonight,  it seems those voices from the past call once more.  I have decided to go back, although time has swept so much away, memories are gone,  facts  are covered over or forgotten or retold,  records lost or destroyed.  In the twenty first century the historical narrative is dead.  There are only glimpses left now.  Therefore each day I shall make a record of one of those glimpses. 

So this now is a chronicle of glimpses, of mere fragments, of disconnected moments recorded in no particular order then flung out into the social networks of this age.  There will be resonances, associations, interpretations, myths, patterns, coincidences, breakthroughs, dead ends and even perhaps some facts.

But there will be no story, for that would conceal the truth.

Let's start with the easy stuff. I was born on 1 November, 1951, the son of John Leslie Fitzmaurice Creighton and his second wife, Jean Cordingley, in St Luke's Hospital, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney.

I was christened John Michael Windsor Creighton at St Marks Anglican Church, Darling Point , where this photo was taken.


I was named John after my father and after his father and after many John Creightons over many, many years.  I was named Michael in memory of Michael Coombs with whom my father had flown in the Royal Flying Corp during the First World War.  And I was named Windsor after my mother's mother's mother who was the the sister of Thomas Other Windsor who inherited the title Earl of Plymouth in 1903,  This Other Windsor  family I knew very little bout  though not for want of my mother trying to impart her knowledge.  I had always felt I was a Creighton first and foremost and that I had little need of knowledge of another ancestral line of blue bloods.  One mob of them quite enough, though there had much discussion around the family dining table about how the current English royal family had somehow "nicked" our  family name  in 1914 to hide their Hanoverian bloodline.  I thought it was a load of cobblers and totally ignored it.  I would compile The Creighton Chronicles,  my male bloodline stretching back one thousand years.