30-year feud is over as millionaire QC pays up for love child

Ever since an eminent QC scandalised the legal profession by having an affair with his pupil barrister, the pair have been locked in a fierce dispute over their love child.

But yesterday the feud between David Cocks and Felicity Hammerton came to an end after the millionaire barrister agreed to pay a lump sum of £100,000 to the son he rejected at birth.

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Mr Cocks, 72, whose £800,000-a-year salary makes him the sixth-highest earning barrister in the country, had gone to court to stop paying £15,000 a year for the education of his 32-year-old son, also called David.

But the former Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association yesterday settled out of court, making the one- off maintenance payment in return for an agreement with Miss Hammerton that the matter would never come to court again.

Mr Cocks, whose thick black hair earned him the nickname "Prince of Darkness", also agreed to pay her £4,000 legal costs and said he would see the son he tried to cut off.

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His decision marks an extraordinary victory for Miss Hammerton, 14 years his junior, who has struggled alone to raise their son on incapacity benefit in a dingy two-bedroom flat in Camden in North London.

Outside court, Miss Hammerbecometon said: "I have been fighting for David's human rights all his life and it has taken its toll on my health, but I had to see justice for my son.

"The victory is David's. Mr Cocks has neglected his son and I have brought him up all these years, whilst his father has refused to see him.

"The biggest victory for me is that Mr Cocks is prepared to meet his son. I only hope that now he gives him the respect and recognition he deserves.

"This is just nickels and dimes for one of the richest barristers in England but it is money that will enable my son to become an archaeologist and do great things.

"At the age of 72, I just hope Mr Cocks can find it in his heart now to give his son the respect and recognition he deserves."2

The lump sum will pay for the rest of their son's archaeology degree and allow him to do a PhD in the subject. The agreement was drawn up in a private hearing at Wells Street Magistrates Court in London in front of district judge Nicholas Crichton.

Mr Cocks, who was educated at Rugby and Oxford, embarked on his affair with Miss Hammerton in 1973. The married QC invited her to his pupil barrister and they quickly became lovers.

After sharing dinners, weekends away, and a holiday in Wales, Miss Hammerton discovered she was pregnant.

She claims she was thrown out of his chambers in the aftermath of their fling because she refused to have an abortion.

In July 1975, she gave birth to their son in a London hospital while, less than a mile away, Cocks threw a summer champagne party for his chambers.

A year later she launched legal proceedings for maintenance when the QC appalled colleagues by denying paternity.

For ten years, her son received just £16.24 a week in maintenance, despite Mr Cocks's flourishing career, while Miss Hammerton worked night and day to make ends meet as a barrister.

In the early 1980s, she applied to the court for the maintenance to be increased to £ 15,000 a year, which allowed David to attend private school.

Since then, Mr Cocks has made numerous legal attempts to reduce the payments.

Mr Cocks has three grown up children by his first wife and lives on his 173-acre country estate in Rackenford, Devon.

For the past decade, Miss Hammerton has survived in the same dilapidated flat on incapacity benefit, after suffering a thrombosis which travelled to her brain.

She says that rejection from his father has left her son with deep emotional scars.

For years David slept with a model horse under his pillow, a link, he believed, to his father, who is a fine horseman.

Then, when David was around 14, and for reasons that remain a mystery, Mr Cocks sent a note inviting his son to play squash with him.

Father and son came face to face for the first time when David junior climbed into his father's car to drive to a sports centre, where Mr Cocks easily beat the teenager, according to his mother.

From then on, every third week, Mr Cocks would drive his son to school one morning and every ninth Sunday they played squash.

Contact lasted only a matter of months, however, before it petered out.

David, who has suffered anorexia and depression, took refuge in academia and is in his second year studying to be an archaeologist at a London university.