Celebrated Claimants, From Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton

PREFACE.

This book is intended much less to gratify a temporary curiosity than to fill an empty page in our literature. In our own and in other countries Claimants have been by no means rare. Wandering heirs to great possessions have not unfrequently concealed themselves for many years until their friends have forgotten them, and have suddenly and inopportunely reappeared to demand restitution of their rights; and unscrupulous rogues have very often advanced pretensions to titles and estates which did not appertain to them, in the hope that they would be able to deceive the rightful possessors and the legal tribunals. When such cases have occurred they have created more or less excitement in proportion to the magnitude of the claim, the audacity of the imposture, or the romance which has surrounded them. But the interest which they have aroused has been evanescent, and the only records which remain of the vast majority are buried in ponderous legal tomes, which are rarely seen, and are still more rarely read, by non-professional men. The compiler of the present collection has endeavoured to disinter the most noteworthy claims which have been made either to honours or property, at home or abroad, and, while he has passed over those which present few remarkable features, has spared no research to render his work as perfect as possible, and to supply a reliable history of those which are entitled to rank as causes célèbres. The book must speak for itself. It is put forward in the hope that, while it may serve to amuse the hasty reader in a leisure hour, it may also be deemed worthy of a modest resting-place in the libraries of those who like to watch the march of events, and who have the prudent habit, when information is found, of preserving a note of it.


CONTENTS

1. Jack Cade—The Pretended Mortimer
2. Lambert Simnel—The False Earl Of Warwick
3. Perkin Warbeck—The Sham Duke Of York
4. Don Sebastian—The Lost King Of Portugal
5. Jemeljan Pugatscheff—The Sham Peter III.
6. Otrefief—The Sham Prince Dimitri
7. Padre Ottomano—The Supposed Heir Of Sultan Ibrahim
8. Mohammed Bey—The Counterfeit Viscount De Cigala
9. The Self-Styled Prince Of Modena
10. Joseph—The False Count Solar
11. John Lindsay Crawfurd—Claiming To Be Earl Of Crawfurd
12. John Nichols Thom—Alias Sir William Courtenay
13. James Annesley—Calling Himself Earl Of Anglesea
14. Captain Hans-Francis Hastings—Claiming To Be Earl Of Huntingdon
15. Rebok—The Counterfeit Voldemar, Elector Of Brandenburg
16. Arnold Du Tilh—The Pretended Martin Guerre
17. Pierre Mege—The Fictitious De Caille
18. Michael Feydy—The Sham Claude De Verre
19. The Banbury Peerage Case
20. James Percy—The So-Called Earl Of Northumberland
21. The Douglas Peerage Case
22. Alexander Humphreys—The Pretended Earl Of Stirling
23. The So-Called Heirs Of The Stuarts
24. John Hatfield—The Sham Honourable Alexander Hope
25. Hervagault—Soi-Disant Louis XVII. Of France
26. Maturin Bruneau—Soi-Disant Louis XVII. Of France
27. Naündorff—Soi-Disant Louis XVII. Of France
28. Augustus Meves—Soi-Disant Louis XVII. Of France
28. Richemont—Soi-Disant Louis XVII. Of France
30. The Rev. Eleazar Williams—Soi-Disant Louis XVII. Of France
31. Thomas Provis Calling Himself Sir Richard Hugh Smyth
32. Lavinia Jannetta Horton Ryves—The Pretended Princess Of Cumberland
33. William George Howard—The Pretended Earl Of Wicklow
34. Amelia Radcliffe—The So-Called Countess Of Derwentwater
35. Arthur Orton—Who Claimed To Be Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, Bart.


JACK CADE—
THE PRETENDED MORTIMER.

Henry VI. was one of the most unpopular of our English monarchs. During his reign the nobles were awed by his austerity towards some members of their own high estate, and divided between the claims of Lancaster and York; and the peasantry, who cared little for the claims of the rival Roses, were maddened by the extortions and indignities to which they were subjected. The feebleness and corruption of the Government, and the disasters in France, combined with the murder of the Duke of Suffolk, added to the general discontent; and the result was, that in the year 1450 the country was ripe for revolution. In June of that year, and immediately after the death of Suffolk, a body of 20,000 of the men of Kent; assembled on Blackheath, under the leadership of a reputed Irishman, calling himself John Cade, but who is said in reality to have been an English physician named Aylmere. This person, whatever his real cognomen, assumed the name of Mortimer (with manifest allusion to the claims of the House of...