Day Thirty One

The details regarding the birth of my great-great grandfather Abraham Creighton have long been shrouded in secrecy and controversy.  One of those secrets has been the identity of his mother; yet another scandal wiped from the official records, yet another story that dared not reveal itself.

In the early 1980's I spent some periods of time with my much-loved aunt Joey in London and she told me of what she knew about these events.  She told me also of a visit she had herself made to  the National Portrait Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. She had gone there to find a portrait of some personal significance.  But before she had located the portrait an elderly attendant walked up to her, smiling and stated emphatically  "You'd be from Erne then".  My aunt apparently had replied that in a way, "Yes, you could say that."  My aunt Joey  then inquired why had he asked.  The attendant said nothing and lead my aunt to a room containing the very portrait she had come to Dublin to see, the portrait of "Mary, Countess of Erne". The attendant winked saying, "There would be no mistaking you, would there then?  It's those eyes, I'd be thinking."

Mary, Countess of Erne, was born Mary Hervey, daughter of Frederick Augustus Hervey,  Earl of Bristol and became the second wife of the much older John Creighton, the first Earl of Erne in 1778.  It was not a happy marriage.  The couple did officially  produce one daughter,  Caroline Creighton, but in 1781 Mary left her husband never to return to Ireland.   My aunt's great grandfather, Abraham Creighton, whose portrait she had been given by her father and which now is here with me in Australia,  was born later that year, most likely in Bath. And the cover-ups began.  

Did John Creighton, the old Earl, suspect that his beautiful young wife Mary had given birth to a son, and that the father of her child was none other than his own young son from his first marriage, Abraham? We will never know.  All that we do know is that before too long John Creighton would declare his son Abraham insane, that Abraham would be incarcerated for forty years in Brooke House, London, and that the official records would show that Abraham Creighton, second Earl of Erne, died without offspring.

Midwinter's Night

Michael Creighton circa 1971

It is the longest night of the year,  midwinter in Australia and I wait for the sun to rise, far from the land of my ancestors.  It snowed today as I was driven up here from Sydney,  determined to be back home on my mountain to see this dawn.

It is midwinter's night in Australia but far from here it is midsummer's day.  Forty years ago for me too on this day it was midsummer.  On another mountain top, in another time and another place. It was June 21, 1971 and I was on the Spanish island of Ibiza.   Not yet twenty years old I danced on that day with the last of the hippies at the end of their long trail, dancing in the dawn amongst the ruins of a temple to a god whose name I never knew.

And I thought on that day of another midsummer's day; a day of which my father had spoken often - June 21, 1921. The day on which the man whose name I bear had died, his plane smashed into the sands of the Egyptian desert as the sun rose above the pyramids. They buried him at Heliopolis, ancient city of the sun.  Each year for many years now on this day I have thought for a moment about that young man, Michael Coombs; and I, like my father before me, have shed a tear or two.  And then the sun rises and the seasons roll on.

Day Twenty Nine

Tonight I went on the hunt for information about Fitzmaurice Creighton, my great grandfather.  I discovered a United Kingdom Census record on Ancestry.com showing that in 1901 he is living in All Saints Hampshire, with his second wife Hilda.   But where is All Saints, Hampshire ? It is not a town that I could find.  However there is a church near Winchester of that name, not far from Kings Somborne where my grandfather John Henry David Creighton was Vicar.  That sounded promising, so I dived online again,  google searching.

I discovered that All Saints church is in the estate village of East Stratton. The East Stratton state is the property of the Baring family, one of the most influential banking families in the history of banking. I discovered that in 1901 the head of the Baring family was Thomas George Baring, Earl of Northcliffe.  And then came the "A-ha" moment, that now-familiar blast of cold air that comes barreling out the past and smacks you in the face when another moment of your own history reveals itself.  I saw that Baring's  daughter, Emma Jane,  had married Henry George Louis Crichton, younger brother of the fourth Earl of Erne, John Crichton.  And I had been told many years ago by my aunt in London that the fourth Earl of Erne was at that time supporting my grandfather and his family in a manner which a mere Vicar's stipend could never do.

But the exhilarating moment of revelation fractured into yet more questions and doubt.  What the hell was going on here as the Victorian era was drawing to a close, a new century was dawning and the old feudal order was about to fade forever.  Why was the Earl of Erne supporting my grandfather, the Vicar of King Somborne?  Why was my great-grandfather, a retired Colonel in the Royal Marines now in his late-sixties, living on the estate of the Earl of Erne's brother-in-law with his new young wife, still in her early twenties and with a daughter aged five.  And why did my grandfather, then in his forties, living only twenty miles from East Stratton have absolutely no idea of his father's young wife nor of the daughter she had born?   Will we ever know what was going on within the complexities of these lives, lives that I felt even more strongly now were still somehow bound together by those events in Ireland that had lead to Fitzmaurice Creighton's grandfather Abraham Creighton, the second Earl of Erne,  being locked away for forty years in Brooke House Asylum? Lives somehow bound together by those events that lead the Earls of Erne to change the spelling of the name from Creighton to Crichton? Events that had lead my grandfather to make his children swear never to return to Crom Castle, as his father had made him swear?

Day Twenty Eight

The popular website Ancestry.com is proving to be quite an adventure, as I dive down increasingly unexpected rabbit-holes of my family history and usually end up resurfacing somewhere on Wikipedia where I find another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that leaves me wide-eyed in wonder at the perils of researching too deeply into the past.

A recent online adventure started with searching the records for Fitzmaurice Creighton,  my great grandfather, a colonel in the Royal Marines, born in Lymington, Hampshire in 1834, an outstanding horseman and with an eye for women that would eventually lead, so I had been told, to yet another scandal in the family.  The records on Ancestry.com at first sight seemed unexceptional.  Then I noticed something intriguing.  The Census Records of 1851 and 1881  show that he was born in 1834 or 1835, nothing too odd in that discrepancy, I thought.  But the Record for 1901 shows that he has mysteriously lost seven years and was born in 1841.  They also show that he now has a wife called Hilda B Hyde and one child, Vera.   In fact Fitzmaurice had another wife, Jane, who is not mentioned in that record and a number of children from that marriage including my grandfather John Henry David Creighton.

Fitzmaurice had married Hilda B. Hyde in 1895, at the age of sixty and had fathered Vera shortly after.  Hilda was only twenty-two.  It appears that Fitzmaurice may have conveniently shed a few years, perhaps telling the young Hilda that he was in his early fifties.  He was apparently very fit, very handsome and quite capable of getting away with this minor deception.  Quite endearing really.  The problem was that he had neglected to tell Hilda of his first wife Jane, who of course is my great grandmother and of the seven children he had fathered with her. Fitzmaurice was in fact a bigamist. And that was to have repercussions when the truth came out upon his death in 1913.  But that story is for another day.  In the meantime I decided to research further into Fitzmaurice's activities in Hampshire and the New Forest at the turn of the century.

Day Twenty Seven

Brooke House Asylum, London where  Abraham Creighton,  the second Earl of Erne was incarcerated for forty years.

The committal for insanity of Abraham Creighton by his father John, the First Earl of Erne, and his subsequent lifelong incarceration in Brooke House, London,  had ramifications for the title and the Crom Estates, including Crom Castle.  Abraham assumed the title in 1828 upon the death of his father, but the terms of his committal specified that neither the title nor the Crom estate would pass to his offspring. Both were passed to his nephew,John Creighton in 1842.  Abraham officially died without offspring.

In 1799 when the Stuart-Wortley family enquired as to the causes of Abraham Creighton's insanity, concerned that their son, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, 1st Baron Wharncliffe, was to marry Caroline Creighton, daughter of John Creighton first Earl of Erne and Mary Hervey, daughter of the Frederick Augustus Hervey, Earl of Bristol , they were told by the Creighton family that Abraham's  insanity was not of the hereditary kind but had been caused "by immersion in a bath of mercury".

The Public Records Office of Ireland in The Erne Papers notes that  "Since the insanity was apparently not of an hereditary kind, it had the advantage to the Creighton family that, during the period 1828-1842 when the 2nd Earl held the title, his financial requirements were extremely modest (a maintenance allowance of c. £780 per annum in the 1830s), as indeed the 1st Earl's must also have been in the period 1785-1828. Because of the 2nd Earl's incapacity, a whole generation of marriage settlement charges was skipped. The money saved was used for purchases of land which were made from 1810 onwards and, eventually, for the building of the new Crom Castle. Somewhat surprisingly, the 2nd Earl died worth over £52,500 and was allowed to dispose of this large sum of money by will, which he did by leaving almost all of it to junior branches of his family. Earlier, his heir, the future 3rd Earl, had tried unsuccessfully to apply it to Crom Castle."

http://www.proni.gov.uk/introduction_erne_d1939.pdf  refer page 19

Day Twenty Six

In October 1798 committal papers  declaring  Abraham Creighton to be insane were signed by his father John Creighton, 1st Earl of Erne. 


Referring to the matter of the committal of Abraham Creighton The Lord Chancellor of Ireland, John Fitzgibbon later first Earl of Clare,  had written previously to King George 111  that noting  "all that remains now is for  the father to sign the papers of committal"  (cited in PRONI  Rhyss Williams unpublished papers).  It appears therefore that the declaration off Abraham's insanity may have been of some interest to George 111.  Is it of any significance that Abraham had previously disagreed with his father over the issue of Ireland being controlled from London by England and that, during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 seeking to end British control of Ireland,  in August of 1798 boats used by the revolutionaries had sailed from France and had landed on beaches in County Mayo and Donegal where the Earl of Erne had significant property holdings?  Following the failed rebellion the trial of several important supporters of the uprising took place in the Court House in Lifford.  Abraham Creighton  was MP for Lifford in the Irish parliament from 1790 to 1798.

Following the committal  Abraham Creighton spent the remainder of his life in Brooke House Asylum  London,until his death in 1842. Though incarcerated in Brooke House he assumed the title of Earl of Erne upon his father's death in 1828.

Day Twenty Five

 

Today whilst checking the Wikipedia entry on Abraham Creighton, the second Earl of Erne, I noticed that new information hasadded recently to the entry.  It now appears that Abraham was a prominent member of Kildare Street Club.

This Club, founded in 1782, eventually became a bastion of the Anglo Irish Protestant Ascendancy, but in its early days included many individuals, including members of the aristocracy, who were deeply opposed to the British rule of Ireland. 

Members of The Kildare Street Club included the MP Arthur O'Connor who embraced the Irish Republican movement, becoming a member of the Society of United Irishmen in 1796.   In the wake of the French Revolution and inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of the American Revolution O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald petitioned France for aid in support of an Irish revolution to end British monarchical rule.  Lord Fitzgerald was also a member of the Kildare Street Club and a close friend of Abraham Creighton having studied together as young men.  By the mid 1790's it seems clear that Abraham Creightons politics were moving in a direction that his father, the first Earl of Erne, a staunch supporter of the Hanoverian King George, a believer in the necessity of continued British rule and a pillar of the Protestant Ascendancy would have found deeply disturbing.  Ireland at this time is on the brink of armed revolution, British rule is under threat and a clash between father and son seems inevitable.

Day Twenty Four

Abraham is a common name in the Creighton family up until the death of the Abraham the second Earl and the subsequent change in spelling from Creighton to Crichton following Abraham's death in 1842.

The Wikipedia entry on Abraham the second Earl Erne clearly shows this.  At one time in the mid 1790s  there are two Abraham Creightons sitting as MP for Lifford. These are  

1. Abraham Creighton, elder son of John the first Earl of Erne. This Abraham , who  was declared insane in September 1798, was incarcerated in Brookes House Lunatic Asylum London until his death in June 1842.  Although inheriting the title Earl Erne and the Crom estate upon the death of his fathe in 1826, the pappers committing him to Lunacy ensured  that neither the title nor the estate could pass to his descendants , passing instead to the Earl's younger son, John, who was made Governor of Hurst Castle, Lymington in 1801, by Royal decree.
2. and his uncle Abraham, the first Earl's younger brother. 

Both of these  Abraham Creightons vigorously opposed the Earl's views on Irish unification with England and argued that Ireland should maintain its own parliament with increased rights given to Catholic Irish. Abraham believed that British insistence on unification  would result in bloodshed and tragedy for the Irish people.

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Day Twenty Three

Abraham Creighton, born in Ireland about 1782, died in Lymington in 1847.  This area adjoining the New Forest appears to have become a geographical focus for the family throughout the nineteenth century, commencing in 1801 when John Creighton the younger brother of Abraham Creighton second Earl of Erne  (1765-1842) was appointed governor of Hurst Castle.

This map shows four places which will be investigated as I attempt to catch glimpses of these long gone ancestors. 

• 1. Lymington, where my great -great-great grandfather Abraham Creighton dies in 1847

• 2. Milford-on-Sea where Abraham's son Fitzmaurice is born to his second wife Constance in 1835

• 3.Hurst Castle 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.

• Nettley Castle ;bought by Henry, the younger brother of the Third Earl of Erne

Day Twenty Two

This information from an online genealogy site might prove to be a small breakthrough in the quest to unravel the mysteries of the Creighton  family.

It shows two records neither of which I had been aware of.  One records the death of Abraham Creighton, father of Fitzmaurice Creighton , in Lymington in 1847.  This was no great surprise and is in accord with many other pieces of information I have.  Of more interest is his birth in Ireland about 1782.  

The question of who were Abraham Creighton's parents is the unanswered question.   And there are no records that have been found that provide an answer to this. Why?