William Jennings Capell, Date of Birth

William Jennings Capell

Heir presumptive to the Earldom of Essex

Date of Birth: 09-Aug-1952

Zodiac Sign: Leo

William Jennings "Bill" Capell (born 9 August 1952), a retired grocery clerk from Yuba City, California, is the heir presumptive to the Earldom of Essex.
He will be the 12th Earl if the current earl, Paul Capell, 11th Earl of Essex (currently 75 and unmarried), dies without legitimate male issue.
He had considered renouncing the earldom if it would require him to give up his United States citizenship.
(Under the United Kingdom's Peerage Act 1963, a person may disclaim a hereditary peerage.) United States law requires only government officeholders without Congressional authorization and persons wishing to become naturalized citizens, however, to renounce titles of nobility.
As Mr.
Capell is in neither category, there would be no legal impediment to his use of the title as a U.S.
citizen; indeed there is precedent in the case of the Earl of Wharncliffe, currently a Maine construction worker. Like the sixth and later Earls of Essex, William Capell is descended from the younger son of the fourth Earl.
His father Bladen Horace Capell claimed the title after the ninth Earl died in 1981, but Robert de Vere Capell (1920–2005) eventually proved that his ancestor Algernon was older than Bladen's ancestor Adolphus and thus took his seat in the House of Lords in 1989.