ROMANTIC CLAIM

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 24, 28 December 1925, Page 8

ROMANTIC CLAIM

THE SEAFIELD PEERAGE.

AGED TUTOR’S CASE

LONDON, November 5. Twenty years more or less of tedious investigation have resulted in the commencement of what will probably be an equally tedious proceeding iu the Edinburgh Court of Session, where a claim to the famous Scottish peerage of Seafield is being argued. Yet, when once the story has been disentangled from the mass of quaint Scottish legal verbiage in which it is clothed, there is an element of romance in it. Its interest to New Zealanders lies in the fact that one of the defendants. Lord Strathspoy, the oldest chieftain in Scotland, and head of the Clan Grant, is well known in the southern hemisphere. He went to New Zealand as a boy, was educated there, worked for throe years in a lawyer’s office, and for oight as a civil servant. His wife’s father for many years resided in Christchurch. 'the present holder of tho Seafield title is the Countess of Seafield, a girl ol ID, the daughter of tho eleventh earl, who died in 1915 of wounds received at Ypres. Tho heir presumptive to the title is her undo, the Lord Strathspey mentioned above. These two are the principal defendants in the action in which Alexander Grant, of London, a retired tutor, seeks to have it declared that ho is tho Earl of Seafield, having been born in 1846, before the public marriago of tho seventh Earl of Seafield. He alleges that lie was legitimatised by the subsequent marriago of that peer to his mother. The peerage carries with it estates of 400,000 acres, together with the historic mansions of Castle Grant, Cullen House, and Balmacaan. A BARREN TITLE. Lord Strathspey, who came into the Barony of Strathspey on the death of his brother, the eleventh. Earl of Seafield, returned to England from New Zealand ill 1913. But the barony brought with it neither estates nor funds; and Lord Strathspey is Jiving in a small villa in Putney, his only means being the £7OO a year left him by the Dowager Countess Caroline of Seafield, widow of tho seventh Earl. “As an overseas man,” said Lord Strathspey, in a recent interview, “I find it difficult to obtain work in England. 1 seldom take my seat in tho House of Lords, because I cannot afford the money to keep it up. I came over to England steerage, and I find myself as poor as ever I was in my early days in New Zealand. I have to pay tor the education of my son, who is 13, and my daughter, who is 18. We cannot afford a cook, and so my wife does the cooking.” The story of the plaintiff, Alexander Grant, is tiiat he bora in Scotland, and was placed in the charge of foster parents. He was introduced to his father, the seventh Earl of Seafield, at tli eage of 12, but was not much impressed by tho incident, as it happened at a cricket match iu which he was much interested. The Earl and Countess Caroline paid for his education, and he had a liberal allowance. He was not then aware that they were, as ho afterwards claimed, his real parents. Ho further asserts that on November 1, 1846, while his father, Viscount iteidhaven, afterwards seventh Earl of Seafield, and his mother, then the Hon. Miss Caroline Stuart, youngest daughter of the eleventh Baron Blantyre, were at sea just before lie was born, they entered into a marriage by verbal declaration before witnesses. This is binding in Scottish law. Ho also alleges that his father and mother were publicly married in London in 1850, some time after he was born. UNDER STORMY SKIES. Reading between the lines of the dry legal pleadings, one can visualise a situation worthy to form an incident in a three-volume novel. Caroline was about to become a mother; and, under stormy skies, in a vessel whose fate was uncertain, the viscount entered into that plighting of his troth on which the defendant now relies for the establishment of his legitimacy. Eventually the vesesl arrived off Banff. An immediate landing had to be sought, and Caroline was carried ashore on the back of a sailor, being lodged in tho house of a Mrs Cormaclc, where, that night, she gave birth to a child. The plaintiff alleges that he is that child. Steps, it is alleged, were afterwards taken to conceal the child’s real parentage. When he was a week old he was taken by night to Fochabers, where he was handed over to the charge of Mrs Annie Grant, the wife of a gardener at Gordon Castle. She was given a considerable sum of money, and she and her husband became the child’s foster parents, a liberal allowance for his maintenance and educirtion being made by Viscount Reidhaven. In 1850, Viscount Reidhaven and Caroline went through tho public ceremony of marriage, which in any event was sufficient to render the plaintiff their legitimate son. They went to Banff in support of tho campaign of a parliamentary candidate in 1852, and are alleged to have been recognised as the lady and gentleman who had landed from the vessel in 1846, and to whom a son had been born.

The plaintiff asserts that he bears a noticeable family resemblance to Viscount Reidhaven in features, gait, and manerisms, and has oertain traits of resemblance to Caroline.

The defendants deny the plaintiff’s allegations. They plead that he is not the son of Viscount Reidhaven and of the Countess of Seafield, or of either of them ,and they also plead that he is barred by' “mora, taciturnity and acquiescence” from insisting in his claim.