THE SACKVILLE PEERAGE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2759, 7 February 1910, Page 5

THE SACKVILLE PEERAGE.

CABLE NEWS.

CLAIMANT CONDUCTS HIS OWN

CASE. United Press Association— Copyright LONDON, Feb. 4. The Sackville claimant is personally conducting his case.

POSTPONEMENT OF THE CASE REFUSED.

-(Received February 6, 5 p.m.) LONDON, Fob. 5. After the respondent’s case closed, the claimant aswed for a postponement to enable him to call members of the Oliva family from Spain. Justice Bingham refused the application, and will hear counsel on Tuesday.

THE CLAIMANT’S CASE. The two claimants are Mr. Lionel Edward Sackville-West, nephew of Lord Sackville, and Mr. Ernest Henri Joan Baptiste- West, the oldest son of Lord Sackville. and a Spanish. dancer. The points which the Court has to consider are, according to an English paper, as follow: — Lord Sackville lived for several years with -a pretty Spanish ballet-girl named Josephine Pepita Duran, who always passed as his lawful wife-, and by whom lie had three sons and three- daughters. These he recognised and declared legitimate. He died in September, 1908, in his 82nd year. The whole interest of the case resides in what purports to be a contract of marriage prior to the- cohabitation of Josephine Duran with Lord Sackville, according to which contract Josephine Duran was wedded to a Spanish dancer named Gabriel Oliva, which would render null and void the declaration of the legitimacy of the issue of Josephine Duran and Lord Sackville.

The contract, the evidence of which is pleaded by Mr. Lionel Edward Sack-ville-West, nephew of th e late Peer, as establishing his right to succeed to the title, was preserved in the Church of San Milan, formerly San Gayetano, in Madrid, where the alleged marriage of Josephine Duran and Gabriel Oliva took place on January 10, 1851. Copies of this marriage contract were delivered for the use of counsel in the case in 1896 and in 1900, but none of these- copies made any mention l of erasures and insertions which were subsequently, in 1901, discovered on the marriage registers in the course of an inquiry.

Last year the nephew, Mr. Lionel Sackville-West, who maintains that the marriage contract (Duran to Oliva) is authentic, accused three men, named llop'han, Sanchez, and Anton, of having made the erasures which throw doubt upon it. The men were charged in Madrid, and it was thought that the proceedings might settle the validitv of the Duran-Oliva marriage, and with it the question of Mr. Ernest West’s legitimacy.

But- the Court acquitted the men charged without- giving a decision as to the document itself. The judge informed the jury that they had simply to answer two questions: (1) Was Ropliou the. author of the erasures, and (2) Did Sanchez remove the marriage register from the Church of San Milan in order to falsify it? The jury replied to both questions in the negative, and tile men were at once released.

So the claim to the peerage and estates was no further forward or backward by the proceedings in Madrid. During prior proceedings in the English Courts, it was stated by counsel that the gross rent of the estates was over £7OOO a year, and that there were valuable heirlooms; and that tho Duko of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the Prince Con. sort’s brother, had 1 been the claimant's godfather.

It was also stated that the claimant was sent to school in France in 1877, and that in 1881 Lord Sackville entered him as his son at Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire.