Through almost 14 years of intermittent research, writing and rewriting a 'tetralogy' of family history I have unearthed uncountable cousins and ten family lines. The shortest family line commencing in the mid-1700s, with the longest going back into the 11th century. Antecedents from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England, as well as from Germany, Normandy, Huguenot France, the Channel Islands and Dutch New York. Royalty, nobility, establishment clergy and fundamentalist hill preachers, military men from generals to cashiered troopers, admirals and privateers, a Lord Chief Justice and a probationary constable drummed out of the Metropolitan Police for petty theft have all played their part. This particular volume covers a family that can trace its ancestry from Aberdeenshire yeomanry, from middle ranking English nobility of Norman descent as well as from Katherine Swynford - the mistress and ultimately wife of John of Gaunt 1st Duke of Lancaster and fourth son of King Edward III.