Lord Worplesdon

Percival "Percy" Craye, later Earl of Worplesdon, is a recurring fictional character from the Jeeves stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being Agatha Gregson's second husband, who would have been her first but for Agatha's discovering that he had behaved shamefully at a ball at Covent Garden, whereupon she broke their engagement and married Spenser Gregson instead. Craye, who by the time Spenser is dead has become Earl of Worplesdon, is a distinguished member of the aristocracy, and a landowner in various parts of the kingdom.

Overview

Lord Worplesdon is Bertie Wooster's uncle by marriage, and once chased the fifteen-year old Bertie "for five miles across difficult terrain" with a hunting crop, after finding him smoking one of his special cigars. He is also the father, by his first wife, of Lady Florence Craye, to whom Bertie was engaged on a number of occasions, and of Edwin, a brattish child with a liking to playing practical jokes on guests.

Lord Worplesdon was first mentioned in the short story "Jeeves Takes Charge", in which it was said that he sat down to breakfast one morning, cried "Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!", and ran out of his house, "never again to return to the bosom of his family" – this incident was never again referred to, however, and has since been considered as a minor continuity error. When angered, Worplesdon has a tendency to start shouting "What? What? What? What?" repeatedly until someone interrupts him.