EARL OF EGMONT

Hokitika Guardian, 20 May 1929, Page 5

EARL OF EGMONT

TITLE DISPUTED. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright). (Received this dav at 9. a.m.) LONDON, May 19. Legal proceedings are being instituted by James William Percival, aged 66, a north of London baker, claiming Egmont Earldom, at present held by Frederick Percival, a distant kinsman of the ninth Earl’s, who died in January. Frederick, for twenty-five years, was a Canadian rancher and returned to England in March, as the heir. James Perceval states he is the son of Augustus Perceval, a son of the sixth Earl and has been legally advised that if this is proveable he should be the eighth earl and ought to have succeeded to the title in 1897, 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 his father, Augustus, who was the first son of Aithur 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, who was bom in December, 1863, over to him. His ‘mother died in 1873 and his father married the other woman at St. lmllins Sydney, in 1875', and then returned to England. The claimant’s father died at Hove in 1896. Egmont estate is worth Ll-J/ln sterling. _____