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The History of Popular Delusions might well have contained another chapter, and that one not calculated to have been the least interesting, devoted to a record of aspirants to the names and titles of deceased persons. The list of claimants to the thrones of defunct monarchs is a lengthy one, the chronicles of nearly every civilized country affording more or less numerous instances of the appearance of these pretenders to royalty. Human credulity has afforded a tempting bait for such impostors: le public, as Petrus Borel says, qui veut être dupé à tous prix, en était fort satisfait, for the discontented and ambitious have always been numerous enough and willing enough to accept, either as a leader or as a tool, any one sufficiently daring to assert his identity with that of the dead prince.

The subject of this volume should, indeed, possess sufficient attraction in itself, without needing the adventitious aid of any recent causes célèbres to give it additional interest. The mystery which envelopes the histories of such men as the supposititious Voldemar of Brandenburg, Perkin Warbeck, the soi-disant Sebastian of Portugal, and other renowned claimants to royalty, invests their romantic adventures with a glamour surpassing that of acknowledged fiction. Whether impostors, or the persons they alleged themselves to be, the record of their lives and fate forms one of the most fascinating chapters of historic biography. In many instances the materials procurable are too scanty to admit of lengthy memoirs, whilst even in cases where that is not so, only the most remarkable features of a claimant's story have been selected, in order to render this work as inclusive as possible. In instances of suspicious evidence (and, it must be premised, many of the incidents herein recorded are based upon dubious testimony), only a bare recapitulation of an authority's account is given, all expression of personal opinion being suppressed, and the reader left to form his own theory as to the truth or falsity of the aspirant's claim.

The numerous cases of claimants to royalty herein recorded constitute, it is true, but a portion of those to be met with in history, yet it is believed they include the most interesting. In several instances the evidence preserved of these adventurers' careers is too scanty for separate mention, nevertheless passing allusion may be made to the pseudo Perseus of Macedon, to the false Ariarathes of Cappadocia, and to the remarkable case of Agrippa's slave, who concealed his master's death and assumed his master's position, until the inevitable detection and execution overtook him. In the first and second centuries of the Christian era many of these pretenders sprang up in different portions of the Latin empire, and gave the Romans a great amount of trouble. One of the most noteworthy, considering the long continuance of his success, was a man claiming to be Achelaus, son of Mithridates, King of Pontus. According to the account given by Latin writers, so skilfully did he play his part that the King of Egypt, one of the Ptolemys, actually gave him his daughter in marriage, and appointed him heir and successor to the kingdom of Egypt. This claimant, however, like so many of his class, met with an untimely end, being finally defeated and slain on the battlefield by the Romans, under the Consul Gabrinus.

In the middle ages some curious but not very clearly chronicled instances of these troublesome personages appear. A mysterious case occurred in Sicily in the twelfth century. Roger the Third, dying in 1149, was succeeded by his brother, William the Fourth; and when he expired, in 1186, a man came forward and claimed the crown, under the pretext that he was son of the former monarch. Eventually he was overthrown, and the throne left to the possession of Tancred, the legitimate heir.

In 1570 there was an insurrection against the existing imperial rule in Russia that nearly met with success, and in which one of these pretenders to royalty played an important part. The rebels were led by Stenko, a Cossack chief, and at one time gained such advantages that the entire overthrow of the Romanoff dynasty appeared probable. Alexis, the reigning Czar, had recently lost his eldest son, the heir-apparent, towards whom his feelings were believed to have been anything but paternal. Availing himself of these circumstances, Stenko proclaimed that the Czarewitch was not dead, but had fled to his camp in order to seek refuge from his father's cruelty. A young Circassian, so it is alleged, was employed to personate the prince, whilst another representative was found to personify Nikon, the late patriarch of the Russian Church, who had been deposed and imprisoned by the Czar. The imposture was immensely successful for a time, as multitudes of the High Church party joined the rebels, whose numbers ultimately exceeded one hundred thousand men. Their triumph, however, was but transient, as they were entirely routed by the Imperial troops, whose taste for blood was gratified by the massacre of several thousands of the rebels, among whom, it is presumed, was the personator of the deceased Czarewitch.

The nearer we approach our own time the fewer, it might be anticipated, would be these claimants; but that they have not become an extinct class our pages will show. Not only has there been a numerous and apparently inexhaustible supply of candidates for the name and title of the so-called "Louis the Seventeenth" of France, the little Dauphin who is believed to have perished in the first French revolution, but even quite recently instances have occurred in England of persons claiming to be the hereditary representatives of the royal houses of Stuart and Brunswick. A perusal of the following sketches will prove, however, that only those pretenders have obtained any strong hold upon national feeling who have appeared in times of general dissatisfaction or public calamity, and when the people have been only too willing to swear allegiance to any one having the slightest shadow of authority, and who, at the same time, appeared disposed to rectify their grievances. This will account, to some extent, for a curious phenomenon connected with these claimants, and that is the fact that at certain epochs in history they appear in clusters. In Henry the Seventh's reign it was thus in England; Portugal beheld four Sebastians appear successively; whilst Russia has been quite a hotbed for these mushroom monarchs, having produced, among others, four false Demetriuses and six pseudo Peters.

But enough has been said to prove the richness of the ground now broken, and in leaving this book in the reader's hands, it may be remarked that it is the result of several years' research amid "quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore;" amid, in some instances, old tomes of considerable rarity. A small portion of this work it should, moreover, be added, was published in the pages of a magazine about ten years ago, but that portion has been thoroughly revised for the present publication.

JOHN H. INGRAM.