SACKVILLE SUCCESSION.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13363, 3 March 1909, Page 7

SACKVILLE SUCCESSION.

TURNS ON A SPANISH CASE.

QUESTION OF A MARRIAGE RECORD.

United Press Association—By Electric Telc-raph—Copyright. (Received March 2nd, 9.50 p.m.) MADRID, March 2. The trial of three mcn —.Sanchez, Clerk of the Church of San Millan, Madrid, Rophou, and Anton—has commenced at Madrid, on a chaige of falsifying a record of marriage between a ballet dancer named Papita Duran and Gabriel Oliv-a in 1331. If the record is established Ernest SackvincWest, son of Duncan and the late Lord Sackville, was illegitimate, as Lionel Sackville-West, the other claimant, declares. The prosecution suggests that Rophon, the nephew of Duran, tampered with the church re_.i_.tor about 1900, after Ernests claim had been lodged, altering tho names and making tlie entry not refer to the late JLoie. Sackville. A hundred witnesses have been cited. Lord Sackville, who was a diplomatist of note, tiled last year. It was announced that his heir was Major Lionel Sackville-West, his nephew. Ernest Sackville-West took proceedings to secure the succession tor himself. He declared that Lord Sackvuio was ia 1864 oi 1865 niarr.isi to Josephine Duran de OTtega, eitlur in Spain oi France, that he (plaintiff) was t. c oldest child of the marriage, and that Lord Sackville acknowledged Josephine as hia wife and plaintiff as his heir. The other side contended that Lord Sackville was never married, that Josephine in 1851 was married to Gabriel Oiiva, and that that marriage was subsisting at the time of hor alleged marriage with Lord Sackville. It had' come out in previous proceedings that an erasure had been made in the registry of this marriage of 1851. Plaintiff alleged that the entry was a forgery, defendants that tno entry had been tampered with.