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Source: Reuters
A Hawke's Bay man has made a bold bid to prove his family are the rightful claimants to the multi-million dollar estate of one of Britain's most famous dynasties.
Napier antiques dealer Kevin Percy, 74, believes his family was cheated out of inheriting the Earl of Northumberland's estate, now conservatively valued at $685 million, according to the The Dominion Post.
He has asked British authorities, including the Queen, to exhume the bodies of two suspected relatives for DNA tests, which he says would prove or disprove his claim. The men died in 1560 and 1716.
His bid targets one of Britain's most celebrated noble families.
The earldom owns nearly 50,000 hectares of land in Britain, including the Alnwick Castle estate in northern England which has been used to film Hogwarts scenes for the Harry Potter movies.
Kevin Percy is a former New Zealand hockey representative and played at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
He and his family have spent 12 years and more than $30,000 on the project.
A professional British genealogist, Di Clements, was hired and Percy has taken her results and his investigations to London's College of Arms, the organisation that keeps official records of family trees not open to the public.
"I and my New Zealand family are not trying to cheat and deceive. In the end this claim will be decided one way or the other in a geneticist's laboratory," Percy says.
The search has narrowed to two men whose bloodline is thought to have ended in 1670 when the 11th Earl of Northumberland died with no male heir.
One skeleton that Percy wants exhumed is a descendant of Thomas Percy, a co-conspirator of Guy Fawkes.
The other was a younger brother of a previous earl.
Both bodies are buried in Cambridge.
Percy this month contacted current duke Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke of Northumberland, advising of his plans.
Told of the claim, a spokeswoman said: "It is not unusual to hear such claims, as they crop up every few years."
