My great-grandfather's great-grandfather was a young Jacobite rebel. Perhaps because of his youth, he was transported to America, after having been imprisoned for a year, rather than executed. On the anniversary of my father's birth and death, I recite the names through the generations and offer a toast. I wonder what it must have been like - not with any notion of romanticism, but at the horror of it all. Also, I consider the domino effect of history - If Henry VIII hadn't wanted to remarry, I never would have been born.