NEW CLAIMANT TO EARLDOM.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19624, 21 May 1929, Page 9

NEW CLAIMANT TO EARLDOM.

NORTH LONDON BAKER. EGMONT TITLE IN DISPUTE. (UNITED PB£SS ASSOCIATION—BT ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH—COPYRIGHT.) LONDON, May 19. Legal proceedings are being instituted by James William Perceval, aged 66, a North London baker, claiming the title of Earl of Egmont, at present held by Frederick Perceval, a distant kinsman of the ninth Earl, who died in January. Frederick for 25 years was a Canadian rancher, and returned to England in March as heir to the title and estates. The new claimant, James Perceval, states that he is a son of Augustus George Perceval, son of the sixth Earl. He has been advised by legal men that if he can produce proof of this it will show that he should have been the eighth Earl and ought to have succeeded to the title in 1897, but everything depends on the production of James's birth certificate, for which, according to the "Daily Mail," a widespread search already is being made in Australia. . , The claimant states that his father, Augustus, who was the first son of Arthur Phillip, a brother of the Earl of that time, went to New Zealand in 1852, and married a New Zealand woman, whom he deserted for another woman in Australia. James's mother eventually found Augustus and handed the present claimant, who was born in December, 1863, over to him. James's mother died in 1873, and his father married the other woman at St. Phillip's Church, Sydney, in 1875. He then returned to England. The claimant's father died at Hove, in 1896. The Egmont estate is worth £122,417. —Unite! Service.

[On the death of the ninth Earl the title went to Frederick Joseph Perceval, a distant kinsman, who for years had worked as a rancher in Alberta, Canada. The Earl, a widower, aged 55, and his 14-year-old son, Viscount Perceval, reached England in March and proceeded to the historic Avon Castle, Ringwood, the Hampshire seat of the family. He was reported in the "Daily Mail" as being undecided whether he could afford to maintain the castle. The ninth Earl was born in New Zealand. Mount Egmont was named by Cook after the second Earl, a prominent politician in the time of George 11., and First Lord of the Admiralty 1761-66.]