CLAIM TO SEAFIELD EARLDOM HAS NOW BEEN GIVEN UP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18011, 23 November 1926, Page 10

CLAIM TO SEAFIELD EARLDOM HAS NOW BEEN GIVEN UP.

(Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, September 29. The claim by Alexander Grant, retired tutor, of Cromwell Road, London, to the earldom of Seafield has been abandoned. The intimation was made to Lord Moncrieff at a vacation sitting of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, when Mr Mackay, K.C., for the petitioner, asked his Lordship to sustain the minute of abandonment and dis miss the action. The action was brought against the Countess of Seafield, Castle Grant, Morayshire, and others, the nearest and lawful heirs of Caroline, DowagerCountess of Seafield, and against her trustees and executors. The petitioner asked the Court to find facts and circumstances proved to infer a lawful marriage on November 1, 1846, between Viscount Reidhaven, afterwards seventh Earl of Seafield, and Caroline Stuart, youngest daughter of the eleventh Baron Blantyre, afterwards by a marriage celebrated in London on August 12, 1850, publicly acknowledged spouse of Viscount Reidhaven, and to declare that he was the eldest and lawful and legitimate child of that marriage and was entitled to all the rights and privileges of a child born in lawful wedloc.k The petitioner said he was entrusted to foster-parents, who received a liberal allowance for his maintenance and education from Lord Reidhaven. The defendants denied all those pleas. Mr Carmonlf, Iv.C., for the defendants, said the petitioner 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. Fie maintained that the appropriate decree was one of absolvitor. Mr Carmont’s motion was that the minute should be refused and that the date fixed for the hearing of evidence should stand. Thfe case was one which fifteen years after the death of Lady Seafield cast serious aspersions oil her character. He looked forward to showing that the petitioner’s claim that he was the son of Lady Seafield and Lord Reidhaven, born four years before their marriage, was not only untrue, but indeed impossible in that the Lord Reidhaven did not meet his future wife until some years after the claimant in this case was born. With the utmost responsibility counsel said that the record contained not one particle of truth in any of the material averments so far as the petitioner’s case was concerned. Lord Moncrieff granted leave to abandon the action \yith decree of absolvitor and expenses to the defendants. His Lordship thought that the petitioner when he left the conditions to the Court was entitled to abandon his action even at that stage. lie pronounced absolvitor so that it might be recognised by those having interest in the story that the Court desired to treat as final this withdrawal by the petitioner from its further presentation.