SEAFIELD PEERAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 133, 2 December 1926, Page 5

SEAFIELD PEERAGE

GRANT CLAIM ABANDONED

ALLEGED SHIPBOAED ROMANCE,

(From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, 6th October. Lord Moncrieff, in the Vacation Court of the Court of Sessions, at Edinburgh, on 29th September, heard counsel on ;i motion to abandon the action in which the plaintiff raised a, claim to the Seafield peerage. Leave to abandon was given, and the defendants were granted a decree of absolution, with expenses.. j The action was brought by Alexander C4rant, a retired tutor, of Cromwell road, London, against the Countess of Seafield, of Castle Grant, Morayshire, and the nearest heirs to the Countess of Seafield. He asked the Court to find facts and eirI cumstances proven relative to infer a lawful marriage on Ist November, ISiC, between. John Charles Grant Ogilvie, then Viscount Keidhaven, afterwards the seventh Earl of Seafield, and first Baron Strathspey, now deceased, and the then Hon. Caroline Stuart, youngest daughter of the eleventh Baron Blantyre, and afterwards, by a marriage celebrated in London on 12th August, 1850, the publicly acknowledged spouse of Viscount .Reidhaven, and also now deceased. The plaintiff asked the Court to find and declare them to have been married persons accordingly, and, further, to declare that he was the eldest and lawful and legitimate child of Viscount Eeidhaven and his spouse Caroline, and was entitled to all the rights and privileges of a child born in lawful wedlock as regards inheritance, succession, or otherwise. The romantic story set forth by Mr. Grant stated that Caroline, who was born in 1830, met Viscount Reidhaven in 1845, or 1846, at Doehfour, or at Beaufort Castle. At the end of October or the beginning of November, 1846, Caroline secretly went on board a sailiug vessel, from the Clyde or the West of Scotland, which arrived at Cullen Head during a storm. The vessel tried but failed to make Cullen Harbour, and continued its voyage to Banff. Viscount Reidhaven and other persons of title were on board. Mr. Grant stated that Caroline and Viscount Eeidhaven, prior to the attempt to effect a landing at Cullen, entered into a marriage uy verbal declaration before witnesses. Caroline gave birth to a child at Banff, and Mr. Grant declared that he was that child. . Steps were taken, the plaintiff asserted, to dispose of the child and t6 conceal his parentage about a week after he was born. The plaintiff said that he was taken by night to Pochabers and handed over to the charge of Mrs. Annie Grant, wife of a gardener at Gordon Castle, and that his foster-parents received a liberal allowance for his maintenance and education, from Viscount Reidhaven. In August, 1850, Viscount- Keidhaven and Caroline went through, a public ceremony of marriage, which the plaintiff believed to bo a second marriage, but which was, in any event, valid and sufficient to render him their legitimate son. The defendants denied that Mr. Grant was the son. of Viscount Keidhaven and of the Countess of Seafield, or of either of them. They denied the statements made as to the visits of Caroline to the North of -Scotland in 1845 or 1846, and stated that Viscount Eeidhaven did not meet his wife until after 1846. They said that the plaintiff was born at Tain, or elsewhere, in Koss-shire. Mr. Mackay, K.C., for the plaintiff, asked his lordship to sustain the minute of abandonment which had been lodged, to discharge the debt of proof, and todismiss the action. Mr. Carment, K.C., for the defendants, submitted that the plaintiff had no right to abandon an action at that stage and obtain a decree of dismissal which would entitle him to bring another -action at a future date. He maintained that the appropriate decree was one of absolution. His motion was that the minute should be refused, with the consequence that the proof should stand. This was one which, fifteen years after the death of Lady Seafield, cast serious aspersions on her character. He looked forward to showing that the plaintiff's claim that he was the son of the Countess of Seafield and Viscount Reidhaven, born ■ four years before their marriage, was not only untrue, but, indeed, impossible in respect that Viscount Reidhaven did not meet his future wife until some years after the plaintiff was born. The record contained not one particle of truth in any of the material averments so far as the plaintiff's case was concerned. The claim cast on a muchhonoured lady an aspersion of moral turpitude which had caused pain to her family and many friends. Lord Moncrieff granted leave to abandon the action, with a. decree of absolvitor and expenses to the defenders. He said that he thought that the plaintiff, when he left the conditions to the Court, was entitled to abandon his action even a^t that late stage. The question arose then as to the conditions on which the right of abandonment should be accorded. In pronouncing a decree of absolution his lordship said that a reason for his doing so was that it might be recognised by those having an interest in the story that the Court desired to treat as final this withdrawal by the plaintiff from its further presentation.