Baker Seeks Earldom

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 667, 20 May 1929, Page 9

Baker Seeks Earldom

CLAIMS THE EGMONT TITLE Mother a New Zealander (United P.A.—By Telegraph—Copyright ' (United Service) Received 9 a.in. LONDON, Sunday. LEGAL proceedings are being instituted by James William Perceval, aged 66, a North London baker, claiming the Eginont earldom at present held by Frederick > Perceval, a distant kinsman of the ninth earl who died in Januarv.

Frederick for 25 years was a Canadian rancher. He returned to England in March as the heir. James Perceval states that he is a son of Augustus George Perceval, sou of the sixth earl. He has been legally advised that if this is proveabie he should have been the eighth earl, and ought to have succeeded to the title in 1597.

But everything depends on the production of James’s birth certificate, for which, according to the “Daily Mail,” a widespread search is already being made in Australia. The claimant states that his father. Augustus, who was the first son of Arthur Phillip, brother of the then earl, went to New Zealand in 1852 and married a New Zealand woman, whom he deserted for another woman in Australia. The mother eventually ! found him, and handed the claimant, I who was born in December, 1563, over to him. His mother died in 1573. Claimant’s father married the other woman at St. Phillip’s, Sydney, in 1875, and then returned to England. He died at Hove in 1896. The Egmont estate is worth £122,417. RANCHER EARL SAID HE DIDN’T WANT TO “CROWD IN” 15-YEAR-OLD VISCOUNT According to the “Who's Who,’ Charles John Perceval, the ninth earl, was born in New Zealand on June 29, 1858, son of Charles John Perceval and Eleanor, daughter of John Matthew. He married in 1890 Florence, the daughter of Dr. G. Gibs.on. He succeeded his brother in 1910. The Egmont earldom carries with it the following titles: Baronet, 1661; Baron Perceval, 1715; Viscount Perceval, 1722; Baron Lovell and Holland (Great Britain), 1762; Baron Arden, 1770; Baron Arden (United Kingdom) 1802. The arrival in England in March of the present earl is very freshly described in the American magazine, “Time”: “The train down from London stopped at Ringwood, Plants, and Fred Perceval and his boy, and Harry Trimmer and his wife, all of Priddes, Alberta, Canada, got out. _ Harry Trimmer is postmaster at Priddis and runs the general store. Fred Perceval lias had a cattle ranch there for a good many years, but he had to give it up. A dozen deaths among distant relatives made him tenth Earl of Egmont, Baron Lovell and Holland, Baron Arden. He was going to CastleAvon at Ringwood to take possession of his ancestral home. It was not easy for the new earl, either. Pie had taken, the Trimmers along to help him out, but at that there was no car at the station to meet them, and the crowd on the platform, did not seem to like the checked caps that he and his boy, now Viscount Perceval, wore. Also, the Dowager Countess of Egmont was sitting in the home that had been hers for so many years and would, so reporters told Fred Perceval, refuse to move out. “So the old lady don’t want to move, don’t she?” said Earl Fred to Harry Trimmer. “Well, courtesy don’t cost nothing.’ He turned to the assembled newspaper men. “Do you boys know where me and the boy can get a plate of

ham and eggs? I certainly don’t want to crowd in on nobody?” Viscount Perceval said nothing. The next morning everything was arranged. The Dowager Countess agreed to meet “those terrible Canadians.” The new earl drove to his castle in the village hack amidst exploding railway torpedoes set off by the tenants, and there at the castle door stood a mournful butler in livery with a little black box in his hand. Diffidently, Earl Fred took the little

box from the butler and the patient Trimmers sighed with relief. Their friend was officially installed Lord of the Manor. The 15-year-old viscount slammed the door on reporters and cameramen. “Now perhaps you guys will leave my pop alone,” he jeered. •’From appearance and actions/’ wired the English reporters, “Viscount Perceval is one of the toughest kids that ever came but of the American continent.”