Until 1806, when the claim was renewed, the pretenders to the Banbury honours had not only styled themselves earls in all legal documents, but they had been so described in the proceedings which had taken place, and in the commissions which they had held; and while their wives had been styled Countesses of Banbury, their children had borne those collateral titles which would have been given by courtesy to the sons and daughters of the Earls of Banbury.  But, although there had thus been an uninterrupted usage of the title for upwards of 180 years, when William Knollys succeeded his father a new system was practised.  His father, the deceased earl, had held a commission in the third regiment of foot, and during his father’s lifetime he had been styled in his own major-general’s commission, “William Knollys, commonly called Viscount Wallingford.”  But on his father’s decease, and the consequent descent of his father’s claims, the title of earl was refused to him, and therefore it was that he presented his petition.

The case remained in the House of Lords for nearly six years.  On the 30th of May 1808 it was brought on for hearing before the Committee for Privileges, when Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr. Gaselee, and Mr. Hargrave, appeared for the petitioner, and the Crown was represented by the Attorney-General and a junior counsel.  A great mass of documentary and genealogical evidence was produced; but after a most painstaking investigation, Lords Erskine, Ellenborough, Eldon, and Redesdale came to the conclusion that Nicholas Vaux, the petitioner, had not made out his claim to the Earldom of Banbury, and the House of Lords, on the 11th of March 1813, endorsed their decision.

JAMES PERCY—­THE SO-CALLED EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

In 1670 Jocelyn Percy, the eleventh Earl of Northumberland, died without male issue.  Up to his time, throughout the six hundred years, the noble family of Percy had never been without a male representative, and the successive earls had almost invariably been soldiers, and had added to the lustre of their descent by their own valiant deeds.  But when Earl Jocelyn died, in 1670, he left behind him a solitary daughter—­whose life was in itself eventful enough, and who became the wife of Charles Somerset, the proud Duke of Somerset—­but who could not wear the title, although she inherited much of the wealth of the Percys.

Jocelyn Percy was, however, scarcely cold in his grave when a claimant appeared, who sought the family honours and the entailed lands which their possession implied.  This was James Percy, a poor Dublin trunkmaker, who came over to England and at once assumed the title.  His pretensions aroused the ire of the dowager-countess, the mother of Earl Jocelyn, who, on the 18th of February 1672, presented a petition to the House of Lords on behalf of herself and Lady Elizabeth Percy, her grand-daughter, setting forth that “one who called himself James