Aristocracy open to DNA challenge after accountant wins baronetcy
A RETIRED accountant from Buckinghamshire is to be made a baronet in a landmark ruling that opens hereditary titles to challenge through DNA tests.
Centuries of upper class sexual indiscretions are likely to come under intense scrutiny in a search for historic “cuckoos in the nest” after the judgment by the Queen’s top constitutional advisers.
The ruling by the Judicial Commit- tee of the Privy Council, sitting at the Supreme Court, raises the prospect of long-established official lineages being torn up.
In a case heard on the personal request of the Queen, they ruled that Murray Pringle, 75, from High Wycombe, is the rightful heir to the Baronetcy of Stichill, a village near Kelso, in the Scottish Borders, instead of his cousin-once-removed, Simon Pringle. Simon Pringle, 57, had been due to inherit the title following the death of his father, Sir Steuart Pringle, the 10th Baronet, a decorated Royal Marines commander, three years ago.
But his claim was challenged after a DNA sample given by Sir Steuart before his death for a genealogy project showed that his own father, Sir Norman Hamilton Pringle, the 9th Baronet, had been illegitimate.
The disclosure confirmed suspicions long-held in at least some parts of the family that Sir Norman was the secret love child of his mother, Lady Florence Pringle, and another man, weeks before her wedding in 1902.
His younger brother, Ronald Pringle – Murray Pringle’s father – is said have believed that he was the rightful heir.
He died in 1968 and matters lay unresolved until 2009 when Murray Pringle set up a research project with a view to reviving the lost chieftainship of the clan Pringle – a title last used in 1738.
He contacted Sir Steuart and persuaded him to provide a DNA sample. The tests showed conclusively that Sir Steuart was not in the male line of succession of the family at all.
It led to a lengthy legal battle, under both Scottish and English law, which carried on after Sir Steuart’s death.
It hinged on who counted as the next in line to a title granted in 1683 by Charles II to the First Baronet, Robert Pringle and the “male heirs from his body”.
Simon Pringle’s lawyers did not challenge the DNA but argued that it was inadmissible because of the passage of time. However, the judges ruled time was no barrier to such a claim.
They concluded: “In the past, the absence of scientific evidence meant that the presumption of legitimacy could rarely be rebutted and claims based on assertions that irregular procreations had occurred in the distant past were particularly difficult to establish. Not so now.”
The decision means Murray’s son Alastair S Pringle also stands to inherit the title. The surname Pringle – or Hoppringill – is among the oldest in the Scottish borders, dating at least to the 13th Century. Among the earliest an- cestors in the clear line of succession was William Pringle, the 15th-century constable of Cessford Castle. The first Baronet’s grandfather, another Robert Pringle, bought lands around the village of Stichill nearby in the 1620s.
An elderly brother and sister came to blows during a battle over their dead father’s £2 million fortune, the High Court in London was told yesterday. Edward Lindsay Townsend, 67, claimed his sister Fay Elizabeth Crabbe, 74, struck him “across the face” after they met to discuss the division of the Oxfordshire assets of their father Ted Townsend, who died in 2004. The hearing continues.