In June 1678 two young men fought a duel near Sheerness. One of them was a Navy lieutenant in the garrison there; the other worked in the adjoining royal dockyard. The lieutenant was fatally stabbed; his opponent survived, prospered, and many years later became a Navy Commissioner. He was befriended by a younger colleague who married the dead man's daughter. Nearly fifty years after the duel, the survivor - perhaps as an act of atonement - left his mansion-house to the younger man, whose "best friend" was a Regimental Agent turned Jacobite supporter heavily involved in attempts to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty and whose activities that younger man and his brother helped to finance. The plot of a work of historical fiction? No, all true, and documented in publicly-available records to an often astonishing extent. From 1662 to 1753 four inter-related families successively owned that mansion: Hall Place, overlooking Dulwich Common, five miles south of London. The last of those owners was the Navy lieutenant's daughter, and her husband was Francis Lynn, who from 1720 until his death was Secretary to the Royal African Company, trading in ivory, gold, and slaves. Francis and his younger brother Samuel financially aided their friend Captain William Morgan, who amongst other exploits assisted Lord Bolingbroke, formerly one of Queen Anne's Chief Ministers, in his escape to France in 1715. 'Ties of Blood and Friendship' tells the story of Francis Lynn (1671-1731). Using his hitherto largely unpublished 'diary', correspondence, and many public sources, it details his relationships with his benefactor Samuel Hunter, his own brother Samuel, and Capt. Morgan. Each had his own circle of friends, relatives, acquaintances and adversaries - often the same people in different guises - to complicate the story. It takes the reader on a journey through - amongst other places - Westminster, Cambridge, Dulwich, Sheerness, Chiswick, Tidmarsh (Berkshire), Bacton and Cotton (Suffolk), Nova Scotia, Paris, Madrid, and west Africa. The book also touches on the civil service in Queen Anne's reign, the 1722 Atterbury Plot, and 17th/18th-century inheritance law, including everything you will ever need to know (and more) about 'copyhold'.