Who is Sir Percival Clyde from The Woman in White and what is their importance?

Sir Percival Glyde, a Baronet, is forty-five-years old and engaged to a nineteen-year-old Laura Fairlie. He is described as having a hacking cough and a scar on his right hand. Born in 1804, Percival is the bastard child of Sir Felix Glyde and his companion, Cecilia Jane Elster. His father was deformed and reclusive.

After his parents' deaths, Percival visits the Old Welmingham church, where he forges his parent's marriage in the church registry by bribing Mrs. Catherick to give him the keys to the vestry. He then assumes both the title and property of his father, something that his illegitimate birth prohibited him from.

Percival befriends Philip Fairlie in London, and later becomes engaged to his daughter. The couple marries on December 22, 1849. After their marriage, Percival conspires with Count Fosco to steal Laura's inheritance of twenty-thousand pounds. Fosco's wife, Laura's aunt, profits with ten-thousand pounds when they fake Laura's death. In the end, Percival dies by fire when he accidentally locks himself in the vestry of the old church while trying to remove evidence of his fraud.