CLAIMS TO TITLES.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 311, 24 October 1929, Page 5

CLAIMS TO TITLES.

QUEER STORIES TOLD. Romances of the Peerage. Searches of Records. The claim by a baker to the title at present, held by the “ rancher ” Earl of Egmont is one of the many romances connected with the peerage. Belated claims to peerages are not uncommon. One of the most remarkable was made to the earldom of Huntingdon. Long after the title had become extinct, and a collateral of the family, failing other claimants, had taken possession of the estate, a solicitor heard a rumour that a storekeeper named Hastings, living at Enniskillen, had a right to the dormant peerage. The solicitor undertook to investigate the claim on the basis of “ no results, no pay.” It involved much more research than he had bargained for, but in the end he was successful, and Hastings took his seat in the House of Lords as Earl of Huntingdon.

Another belated claim —to the dukedom of Roxburghe—brought to light a tragedy. After the right of Sir James Noreliffe had been established it was discovered that a better right had been possessed by Robert Hepburn Ker, who had died four years previously at Kingston, Jamaica, and had been buried at the public expense. This poor man, who was literally penniless, was entitled to the dukedom, as well as £IOO,OOO.

A good many claims hinge on whether a son who ran away with a housemaid really and truly married her. To those unacquainted with these matters such difficulties may seem comparatively trifling, but actually they involve an immense amount of trouble. This was shown in the claim, ultimately upheld, of Brigadier-General Sir Edward Hamilton Seymour to be Duke of Somerset. Great Search of Records. It was necessary to prove that his ancestor, Colonel Francis Compton Seymour, was married to Leonora Hudson, before the birth, 1788, of Francis Edward Seymour. Leonora was believed to be the widow of John Hudson, a seaman, who, it was stated, died at Calcutta in 1786.

Against this it was said that Hudson did not die at Calcutta, but deserted his ship, returned to London, was tenant of a house in Paddington street, Marylebone, and died in Middlesex Hospital in 1792. To clear up the question records were searched in no fewer than 12,000 parishes.

A few years ago a gardener' came forward and claimed to be heir to the fifth Marquess of Waterford. His case was that, though officially dead, he was very much alive. A child of Lady Waterford, according to the family history, was buried i'n Brompton cemetery, exhumed, and reinterred at Waterford. The gardener stated that he was that child, and that the body of another child had been smuggled into the marquess’ house. Unfortunately for him it was shown that he was the son .of a cook and was born in a London workhouse, where his mother died. There had never been any connection between him and any member of the Waterford family.

To another Irish peerage, the earldom of Wicklow, there was an equally-remarkable claim. Soon after the death of the fourth earl, William George Howard, a minor appeared as his successor. The sole issue was whether this boy a bright, curlyheaded little chap, who looked wonderingly at the members of the Committee for Privileges empowered to decide whether he was peer or commoner—was the son of his alleged parents, or a changeling.

Much of the evidence was of the usual kind. Ultimately, however, there was a sharp conflict of testimony. Three witnesses swore that a woman visited a Liverpool workhouse and took a child from its mother, Mary Best, a pauper, then an occupant of one of the lying-in wards. Two of these witnesses, moreover, positively identified Mrs. Howard, said to be the claimant’s mother, as the woman to whom the child was given. Claim Not Established. i On the other hand, Mary Best stated that she left the workhouse with a baby which she passed off as her own, though it had actually been given to her while she was in the institution. She had, she further said, taken it with her to her father’s house -in Yorkshire, and though she had never received any payment for it she fed and clothed it, represented it as her own to her family, and paid the costs of its burial when it died. After Mary Best came a num-

her of her friends and relatives who corroborated her statements. But Mrs. Howard herself refused to be sworn.

No less strange, but for another reason, was a claim to the earldom of Poulett. It was made by William Tumour, otherwise “ Viscount Hinton,” who alleged that he was the legitimate son of the sixth Earl of Poulett by his marriage to Elizabeth Lavina Newman, daughter of a Portsmouth pilot. The earl was married three times, first, according to a story which he never denied, in consequence of a wager. When he was a subaltern in an infantry regiment, with no prospect of succeeding to the title, because five lives intervened, he made a bet that he would walk out into the street and marry the first woman he met. This chanced to be Miss Newman, and he married her. Her son, whom he refused to acknowledge, became the claimant, “ Viscount Hinton.”

His hopes were dashed to the ground by the House of Lords, whereupon he turned organ-grinder. For some years he was a familiar figure in the West End of London. Wearing a silk hat and frock coat, he stood behind an organ, on the front of which appeared the legend, “ Viscount Hinton, eldest son of the late Earl Poulett, disinherited by his father and the peers.” He died in the Holborn Union Workhouse.

Story Told Round Recluse. Perhaps the most amazing claim to a peerage was that to the dukedom of Portland, Briefly, the eccentric fifth duke, who constructed the wonderful underground buildings at Welbeck, was said to be identical with Thomas Charles Druee, the proprietor of a bazaar in Baker street, London.

The duke, so the story went, eventually grew tired of “ doubling ” and decided to divest himself of his character of Druce by means of a bogus death and a bogus funeral. So a coffin purporting to contain the body of Druce, but actually holding nothing except a lump of lead, was buried at Highgate. For this reason Druce’s living representatives claimed the Portland peerage.

Now, manifestly, the grave would prove or disprove the story of a sham funeral. For a long time a proposal to open it was opposed, but at last the necessary faculties and licenses were obtained, and • the coffin was raised and opened, exposing to view, not lead, but the shrouded mortal remains of an aged, bearded man, undoubtedly Thomas Charles Druce. Shattered on the instant was the elaborate fabric or fiction that had been built round the Welbeck recluse.. And so ended a case affording, as a London magistrate said, “ one more striking proof of the unfathomable depths of human credulity.”