CLAIM TO PEERAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20595, 20 June 1930, Page 11

CLAIM TO PEERAGE.

EARLDOM OF EGMONT. LOST BIRTH CERTIFICATE. LONDON, June- 9. Mr. James Perceval, commenting on the failure of his claim to the earldom of Eginont, said .it was disallowed because he could not find his birth certificate. Mrs. Lottie Campion, of Richmond, Melbourne, an old friend of his parents, had writton to him saying she once received a letter from Perceval's father, dated from Glebe Point, Sydney, saying that his wife Emma had given birth to a boy, whom they had called James William. Mrs. Campion adds that Perceval was born on December 10 or 13, 1862. "My father and mother quarrelled and separated," declared Perceval, " and I was placed under tho care of Mrs. Offley, a widow. My opponents maintain that I am Offley's son, but my father again took me under his charge when he was editor of the Port Denison Times, Bowen, Queensland."

Legal proceedings wero instituted by James William Perceval, aged 66, a North London baker, who claimed the Eginont earldom, at present held by Frederick Perceval, a distant kinsman of the ninth earl, who died in January, 1929. Tho present carl was for 25 years on a ranch in Canada. He returned to England in March, 1929, as tho new peer.

Tho claimant, James Perceval, said lie was a son of Augustus George Perceval. He had been legally advised that if this could bo proved lie should have been the eighth earl, and ought to have succeeded to the titlo in 1897. But everything depended on the production of. James' birth certificate, for which widespread search was inado in Australia.

The claimant said his father, Augustus, who was the eldest son of Arthur Phillip Perceval, a brother of the then carl, camo to New Zealand in 1852 and married a New Zealand woman, whom he deserted for another woman in Australia. His mother eventually found liini and handed the claimant, who was born in December, 1863, over to lain. His mother died in 1873, and his father married the other woman at St. Philips'j Sydney, in 1875. He then returned to England. The claimant's father died at Hove in 1896. The Egniont estate is worth £122,417.