World of Tiers question

A while back I found hardcover copies of The World of Tiers volumes 1
and 2 in a local antique store for a couple bucks each, so I grabbed
them.  I just finished reading them.  Can't say I was too thrilled
with the five novels that made up those two collections.  Interesting
world building, but the characters were cardboard cut-outs and the
plot of every book was basically: Good guy meets villain and fights,
outsmarts or kills him. Good guy meets some sort of monster cobbled
together from various Earthly predators and fights or kills it. Rinse
and repeat. Over and over. Plus the actual writing was shockingly bad.

I made it through all five books, although it was a slog.  I know
there were two more books written much later on, but despite the fact
that book five left so many threads dangling (including the
whereabouts and fate of the main character of books one and two!), I
have no plans to look for those last two books.  But I'm wondering if
one of them answers the following:

Who was the British man seen in the floating palace towards the end of
The Lavalite World?  Farmer never names him, and he never directly
appears in the story - he's just seen through a window, and later seen
helping one of the bad guys climb into the palace.  But the book keeps
mentioning him again and again.  I thought for sure he was going to
end up being important to the plot, but he just disappears out of the
story.  I got the impression that he was supposed to be a real
historical figure, but if the book gave any clues as to who he was
they must have gone right over my head.

Google's AI suggests that it was P.G. Wodehouse, but I have no idea
how it came up with that.  When I asked again just a couple hours
later, the same AI said it was McKay, another character in the book
who wasn't British and definitely wasn't the person in question.

So...anyone know? I'm wondering if it was supposed to be William
Blake, who Farmer lifted many of the names in the saga from.

  -- Bob