ROMANTIC STORIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 319, 18 January 1908, Page 3

ROMANTIC STORIES.

AN" JiAlilj'S KSTATK (LAI.MED BY ~~"" an IMI'I i When .losceline, eleventh Earl of | Northumberland, caught a chili and died ill Turin in the llower of young manhood, the world thought that with him had perished the glory and honours of the long line of Percys, who since the Conqueror's day had held their heads highest in the land. Of the last six Kails, though one of them had hail ei"ht sons to perpetuate his name, there was not known to be a single living male descendant, Josccline's son, the hope of the l'ercvs, had died in his cradle, and his oulv surviving child was a baby girl. Thus lchabod seemed to lie writ large over the proud edifice ol the great house of IVrcy. JJut a few mouth*, however, had elapsed after the Henrietta yacht brought to Portsmouth the body of Joseeliue to be laid with his glorious ancestors at l'etwortli, when a claimant to his honours and vast estates appeared 011 the scene in -the form of .lames l'ercy, an obscure and half-illiteiute Dublin tradesman; and strange was the tale lie had to tell. The mail who professed to be the representative of the most powerful of l-'n.riish noble houses was the son of one llenrv l'ercy, -vho had tilled some minor nost in the household of wJi'd Bacon, and who, 011 his masters tall, had found hiinsilf a penniless Jujjilive. In his straits lie had taken his wne and young family, the future claimant among them, to a Lincolnshire village, and there had basel; deserted them to run away with lus wife's " serving wench, one Mary V arnum." After a childhood of dire poverty and struggle James l'ercy found his way to Ireland, where his uncle, of the same name, was eking out a scanty livelihood by manual labour; and in process of time he started business as a trunk- ■ maker. Such were the obscure origin and did early life of thq man who startled 1 the world by claiming to be the heir to : the high titles and large possesions ol i the noble l'ercvs, and without a shred of actual claim, lie did not even know the name of his creat-grandfather. lie had heard, however, that liis grandfather, Henry . l'ercy, had been on ultimate terms with the ninth Karl of Northumberland, who owned him as a .kinsman; that the tenth Karl hail made an allowance to his uncle James, and had acknowledged him as the next heir to the l'ercy honors after himself and his brother iienry, Lord l'ercy; and he said that the last deathbed at Turin that ••.lames l'ercy, tho irunkimikiT in Ireland, wus the next heir male, if he were now living, ami bad cried out with almost his last breath, "Oh, that he were here now!" Such was the slender chain of evidence on which .lames l'ercy's claim hung at tut' time lie made it. To the lleriiUU' College be promptly went in search ol ancestors, all the archives of the house 01 l'ercy being d»S«d to him. 'A volume dealing with the Earls of Northumberland was discovered; but, alas, one leaf was missing, ■and, of course, that page was vital to his claim, The tirst line of the succeed- ' ing page, however, opened with this I enlrv: "... ard l'ercy, who married . and "had issue"; and this nebulous "... ard l'ercy" the truukmakcr at once fixed 011 as his ancestor. ho could he b#'< . . None other, lie concluded in his ignorance, than Sir ltiehard l'ercy, tilth son of the eighth Earl, who must have been his great-grandfather; and, thus equipped with the missing link, he proceeded to make good his claim, which he formally lodged at the Signet Ollice, Whitehall. Petitions and counter-petitions followed; agents on both sides were sent over England to ransack records and registers; James l'ercy brought forty witnesses to champion his cause, and the result of it all was that tile petition was dismissed by the Lords with only one dissentient. The folly of this precipitate claim is clear when we find that Sir Richard, the trunkuiaker's alleged ancestor, died a bachelor; and that, to support James Percy's view, lie must have been a grandfather at the immature age of sixteen! However, the trunkniaker was nothing daunted by his tirst fall. He came up smiling and resolved to try again .this time with a more plausible ancestry. .Meanwhile he brought an action for slander against one of Lady Northumberland':, agents who had called liiiu an "imposter," the result of which was that •Sir Edward Hales, who tried the case, declared that the plaintiff was "a true Percy— cousin and next heir to Josceline, eleventh Karl of Northumberland, only lie was a little too low." Sir Edward was further satisfied that the claimant's statements as to the recognition of the heirship of liis branch of the Percys by the last tliree Earls were true. This was a great feather in the trunkuiaker's cap, and it was with a light heart that James prosecuted his search for the missing links in his decent. At last he found one that seemed to answer every purpose in Sir lngelgram Percy, a son of the fifth Earl, whom lie adopted as liis great-grandfather, and who had died a good century before his discarded great-grandfather, Sir Hiehard. The fact that Sir lngelgram's w ill mentions no other offspring than a daughter does not seem to have been known to the claimant; nor was lie at all disconcerted by the fact that Sir lngelgram must have been at least sev-enty-five years old when his alleged sou, James's grandfather, was married. The indomitable trunkniaker, thus armed, now brought a second action for slander again John Blackeston, Esquire, with fourteen counsel and sixty-five witnesses at liis back, but all to no purpose, fur he was nonsuited on technical grounds; and another action against Sir .iolin Coplestone for the recovery of certain Percy lands proved still more disastrous, lor the verdict went against him. Thus did misfortune after misfortune dog the stops of the claimant to the l'ercy honors. At this stage Sir Percy revived a family tradition to the effect that his grandfather, with three brothers and sisters why were of near kin to the Earls of Northuinlierland, had been smuggled away from the North of England to escape the persecution of Catholics which Queen Elizabeth's reign inaugurated, and to grow up, as was the case with other children of noble Catholic families, in obscurity; and lie was able to discover several witnesses prepared to t swear to the truth of this romantic ; ntory. -More than this, no less a person- . age than Anne Countess of Pembroke and .Montgomery openly stated in court during one of James Percy's many suits | I hat "if the trunkniaker really came ironi Pavenhain, he must be one of the lour Percy children that in the time of the troubles j,ii 1559 were sent out of the. North 'in hampers to old Dame Vaux at llanaden, in Northamptonshire.'' So alarmed was the Dowager Countess at the new and threatening aspect matters thus assumed that she took the extreme step #!' finding and supporting a rival claimant, in order to throw obstacles in the detested trunkuiaker's way. This tool she found in Williauf Percy, a glover, natural son of James's 'ather bv Mary Varnum, the servingmaid, who was induced by bribes to put forward his claim to the earldom, alleging that he was the son of Henry, Lord Percy of Alnwick, brother of the tenth Earl. But the imposter played lus part -.0 badly that he broke down liopcessly in examination, and finally admitted that lie "spoke as the agents told 1 him, for lie kneiv nothing but what tliey i'nose to tell."

This attempted fraud, which was so

iguominiously exposed, roused James lVrcv to ire. "To put up a poor ignorant man, a journeyman, glover," lie exclaimed, '"and christen his children to deceive the world, aud to slight the true iioir because [ was a tTunkmaker! Moreover/' he said, "I cubic into the world bearing on mv liodv a mule like a halfmoon. as hath Wn Jike on sonic of the Percys formerly. <iod is my witness; tor He hath set thlis seal on my body, the crescent badge which lwlongs to the Percy family. fto\v search William Percy and see if God has marked him so."

Thus, year aftfcr year, the imhapjjy claimant was badgered "from pillar to post," presenting petitions, bringing actions, lighting for his "rights" before one tribunal and another, and encountering defeat and reverse at every stop. The powers arrayed against him were as remorselesw as they were powerful; he was even, ali their instigation, arrested on charges of fraud, and at least once an attenipE was made on 3ii« life. Kven the lawyer who fattened on the pool' man's folly (for such it. was) turned against him; for three years he harassed him in the courts, and further HtiiTed up his cousin, Fraiwis Percy, a stonecutter, to claim the earldom in opposition to him. lie had sunk into the direst poverty, dependent on the charity of his sons; but lie still, clung to that fanciful descent from Sir Ingelgram, who never had a son, and to the tradition of thtt youthful Percy' hejra smuggled : to

the South in hampers at an age, according to his chronology, when it would re quite hampers of abnormal size to con lain them.

Ilut the worst blow was still to fall oil' the unhappy tnmkniaker, now an old mail of seventy. .loseeline's daughter now had for her husband the proud Duke of Somerset, who determined to crush the importer, once for all, who had dared to call himself the true heir of Northumberland. A memorial was presented to Parliament complaining that James Percy ''continued falsely to assume the title of Karl of Northumberland," and praying for interference. The trunkmaker's petition* in answer were not even opened; and the House of after characterising his presumption ns "insolent and injurious,' resolved without debate that his pretensions were groundless, false, and scandalous." If was ordered that he should be brought before the Four Courts in Westminister Hall, wearing upon his breast a paper with the legend—"The False and Impudent Pretender to the Earldom of Northumberland."

This was the last blow. The old man's spirit., although the sefitence was never executed, was crashed at last by this nial collapse of all his hopes, 'what later betel! him is not known, but it is supposed Miat he retired to Dublin to spend the sad closing days of his romantic and unhappy life. His son Antony rose to be Lord Mayor of Dublin, anil died Sir Antony I'erey; and the trunkmakern blood Hows to-day in the veins of at least one peer, Ixml '<(ranmore and Jlrowne, and one baronet, Sir Thomas tierce Ilutler, of County Carlow.