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Pretender   /pritˈɛndər/   Listen
Pretender

noun
1.
A claimant to the throne or to the office of ruler (usually without just title).
2.
A person who makes deceitful pretenses.  Synonyms: fake, faker, fraud, imposter, impostor, pseud, pseudo, role player, sham, shammer.
3.
A person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives.  Synonyms: dissembler, dissimulator, hypocrite, phoney, phony.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pretender" Quotes from Famous Books



... sons of David, Adonijah, the son of Haggith, must be mentioned particularly, the pretender to the throne. The fifty men whom he prepared to run before him had fitted themselves for the place of heralds by cutting out their spleen and the flesh of the soles of their feet. That Adonijah was not designated for the royal dignity, was made manifest by the fact ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... withdrew its subscription, (ib. 185.) The old Jacobites maintained that the power did not descend to Mary, William, or Anne. It was for this reason that Boswell said that Johnson should have been taken to Rome; though indeed it was not till some years after he was 'touched' by Queen Anne that the Pretender dwelt there. The Hanoverian kings never 'touched.' The service for the ceremony was printed in the Book of Common Prayer as late as 1719. (Penny Cyclo. xxi. 113.) 'It appears by the newspapers of the time,' says Mr. Wright, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... Original Letter respecting Cibber's Apology Ancient Tapestry, by J.R. Planche Travelling in England Prison Discipline and Execution of Justice Medal of the Pretender, by Edw. Hawkins John Aubrey, by J. Britton Inedited Song by Suckling White Gloves at Maiden Assizes, by William J. Thomas Adversaria—Don Quixote—Dr. Dove Inscription on Church Plate Anecdotes of Books, by Joseph Hunter Queries answered, ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various

... what if I should do it in effigies? Is there never an old pope or pretender to hang up in my stead? We are not so unlike ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... observed at the approaching coronation, and the persons to be invited to assist at it, when they were suddenly interrupted by the intelligence that the Padshah Begum, the adoptive mother of the late King, with a large armed force, and the young pretender, Moonna Jan, were coming on to seize upon the throne, and might soon be expected at the principal entrance to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... when Captain Patterson first interviewed Lo Bengula, he was not at all well received by him. I must, by way of explanation, state that there exists a Pretender to his throne, Kruman by name, who, as far as I can make out, is the real heir to the kingdom. This man had, for some cause or other, fled the country, and for a time acted as gardener to Sir T. Shepstone in Natal. At the date of Messrs. Patterson and Sergeaunt's mission to Matabeleland ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... of the established Government, sometimes with argument, and sometimes with mirth. In argument he had many equals; but his humour was singular and matchless. Bigotry itself must be delighted with the "Tory Fox-hunter." There are, however, some strokes less elegant and less decent; such as the "Pretender's Journal," in which one topic of ridicule is his poverty. This mode of abuse had been employed by Milton ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... themselves at the expense of the Church, and were therefore deeply interested in the exclusion of Catholic principles. A Parliament composed of the nobles had already acknowledged Elizabeth to the exclusion of the Queen of Scots, and the former decision was reaffirmed as against a "female pretender" supported by a foreign ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... rather live in the midst of any civil war that we have had in England during the last two hundred years than in some parts of Ireland at the present moment. Rather, much rather, would I have lived on the line of march of the Pretender's army in 1745 than in Tipperary now. It is idle to threaten us with civil war; for we have it already; and it is because we are resolved to put an end to it that we are called base, and brutal, and bloody. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... instantly summoned. And as for the white man, let the presumptuous pretender be closely confined in his own hut until I can decide upon the nature of his punishment. Away with him at once; and if he is allowed to escape, the guards who have him in charge shall be nailed, head downward, to ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... sphere of knowledge, yet were willing to learn; relieved from the fear of criticism, he expanded, he glowed, he dogmatized. With Mrs. Lessingham he could not be entirely at his ease; her eye was occasionally disturbing to a pretender who did not lack discernment. But in walking about the museum with Mr. Bradshaw, he was the most brilliant of ciceroni. Jacob was not wholly credulous, for he had spoken of the young man with Mrs. Lessingham, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... from the eyes of men. Nay, he would seem to have bequeathed this useful accomplishment to certain of his descendants; for there is among the family documents a curious narrative, signed and witnessed, describing how a member of the family, in the time (I think) of the Second Pretender, did, being hard pressed by the minions of the German Prince, and pursued by them into the extreme eastern chamber of his house of Malmaison, suddenly and without warning render himself invisible, insomuch that ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... could see the green-grey roofs of Kensington Palace. At his left he could see a public-house which bore the name and stood upon the site of the hostelry where the Pretender's friends gathered on the morning when they expected to see Queen Anne succeeded by the heir to the House of Stuart. Looking from the one place to the other, he reflected upon the events of that morning when those gentlemen waited in vain for the ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... Maximilian endeavour to lure him into his intrigues against France. Philip established the most cordial relations with Charles VIII. Henry VII of England, who had alienated Maximilian's sympathies since his reconciliation with France (the archduke having even encouraged the pretender Perkin Warbeck against him), and who had retaliated by transferring the staple of English cloth from Antwerp to Calais and by forbidding all trade with the Low Countries, was also pacified by Philip after some negotiations. In 1496, the two ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... (1748) terminated one of the wars of England with Louis XIV. The renunciation by France of the cause of the Pretender was the most material advantage accruing to England from that treaty. But the ink was hardly dry with which it was written, before England took umbrage at France for efforts to rebuild her navy, which had been seriously reduced and crippled by the events of the previous war, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... the ring which she soon cleared out for public exhibition, she made us both fully sensible of the very equitable stations which she assigned to us in her regard. She was neither very brilliant, nor altogether a pretender, but might be described as a showy woman, of slight but popular accomplishments. Any woman, however has the advantage of possessing the ear of any company; and a woman of forty, with such tact and experience ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... could, and dance with her at all the balls, and a certain chum of mine—a Joe Atlee—of whom you may have heard—under-took, simply by a series of artful rumours as to my future prospects—now extolling me as a man of fortune and a fine estate, to-morrow exhibiting me as a mere pretender with a mock title and mock income—to determine how I should be treated in this family; and he would say to me, "Dick, you are going to be asked to dinner on Saturday next"; or, "I say, old fellow, they're going to leave you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... detained you so long," he said; "but I had more difficulty with the doctor than I expected, and for some time he refused to see you on any terms, because he has a violent antipathy to Doctor Hodges, whom he regards as a mere pretender, and whose patient ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... my aunt," continued the infuriate lady. "A pretty moralist, indeed! A bishop's widow, forsooth, and I should like to know whose widow before and afterwards. Why, Harry, she intrigue: with the Pretender, and with the Court of Hanover, and, I dare say, would with the Court of Rome and the Sultan of Turkey if she had had the means. Do you know who her second husband ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... many years were thine And joys in store—that thy elastic mind Might long have gladden'd life's monotony. Thine was a princely heart, a joyous soul, The charm of reason, and the sprightly wit Which kept dull letter'd ignorance in awe, Shook the pretender on his tinsel throne, And claim'd the glorious dignity ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... the next circulating library, he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume bears us whithersoever we will;—back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up the heights of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork school; or, better still, to the snug inn-parlor, or the jovial tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... all the royal family of England—even those of the House of Hanover—been notorious for their connection with celebrated women? Has he never heard of Mrs. Walkinshaw, ostensible mistress of Charles Edward the Pretender, of Lucy Barlow, mistress of Charles II, mother of the Duke of Monmouth? Of Arabella Churchill and Katherine Sedley, mistresses of James II? Of the Countess of Kendal, mistress of George II, who ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Henry's union with Elizabeth to name any pretender to the throne with even a plausible claim, Bosworth had been in effect a victory for the Lancastrian party, and many of the Yorkists were still prepared to seize any pretext for attempting to overthrow the new dynasty. Not long after the marriage, Henry started on ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... fun for my money. I'm not making any complaint at all. When a pretender invades a country to put the reigning queen out of business he has a license to expect a real warm welcome. Well, ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. If the dates be marked by corresponding political history, its rise may be placed as early as the reign of Charles I; its maturity in the period from the revolution of 1688 to the invasion of the Pretender in 1745; its decay in the close of the reign of George II, and the early part of that of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... of James, known afterwards as the 'Old Pretender,' or as James III. He was carried as an infant from the Palace (Dec. 1688) to Lambeth, where he was in great peril of discovery. The story is ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... that they, selfishly, had most to gain by supporting despots who in time of need might help them to confirm their own authority. With the same end in view, when the legitimate line of the Bentivogli was extinguished, Cosimo hunted out a bastard pretender of that family, presented him to the chiefs of the Bentivogli faction, and had him placed upon the seat of his supposed ancestors at Bologna. This young man, a certain Santi da Cascese, presumed to be the son of Ercole de' Bentivogli, was an artisan ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... pin representing a jockey at full gallop; cut-away coat, corduroy breeches, and boots with tops of a chalky white. Yet, withal, not the air and walk of a genuine born and bred sporting man, even of the vulgar order. Something about him which reveals the pretender. A would-be hawk with a pigeon's liver,—a would-be sportsman with ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... cigar, the other was a personage I had not yet encountered, a small pale youth in showy knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the glued points of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for something of a pretender: I scarcely know why, unless because of the motive I felt in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt to come away. He struck me a little as a young man practising the social art of "impertinence"; but it didn't matter, for Flora came away with alacrity, bringing all her ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... to say the least, come to years of discretion, and the Squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own disposal, Mr. Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the Parson's corollary remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every English pretender to the lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared ground, the Parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that, since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later, (and, indeed, that the Squire ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... patriots had declared for independence at Mecklenburg as early as May, 1775, a severe battle occurred at Moore's Creek Bridge, February 26, 1776, between the patriots, led by Colonel James Moore, and the loyalists or Tories, many of whom had fought for the Young Pretender in Scotland, but were now equally devoted to the House of Hanover. The Tories were completely routed, and the plans of the British to make North Carolina a centre of royalist ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... was his own great subject. Had he been an Olympian he could not have written The Egoist or Harry Richmond. He was an egoist and pretender, coming of a line of egoists and pretenders, and his novels are simply the confession and apology of such a person. Meredith concealed the truth about himself in his daily conversation; he revealed it in his novels. He made such a mystery ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... sons and daughters, and all the members of his family whom his successors had left under guard in the citadel. The siege had been pushed forward so rapidly that the king had not been able to make any attempt to relieve the defenders: besides this, a pretender had risen up against him, one Umbakhabua, who had been accepted as king by the important district of Bubilu. The fall of Bit-Imbi filled the two competitors with fear: they abandoned their homes and fled, the one to the mountains, the other to the lowlands ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... "Rapportons-nous-en sur ceci a quelqu'un qui fut bien plus Machiaveliste que Machiavel, a la republique de Venise." Before his day, and long after, down almost to the time when a price was set on the heads of the Pretender and of Pontiac, Venice employed assassins. And this was not the desperate resource of politicians at bay, but the avowed practice of decorous and religious magistrates. In 1569 Soto hazards an impersonal doubt whether the morality of the thing was sound: "Non omnibus satis ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... twenty-three years of age, he had tasted the bitter cup of Slavery pretty thoroughly under Kendall B. Herring, who was a member of the Methodist Church, and in Jack's opinion a "mere pretender, and a man of a very bad disposition." Jack thought that he had worked full long enough for this Herring for nothing. When a boy twelve years of age, his mother was sold South; from that day, until the hour that he fled he had not heard a word from her. In making up his ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... she said. "Of course he did," returned her brother with a smile. "And it was perfectly natural he should do so. Have I not read his thoughts? Do not I know that he considers me a false pretender and CHARLATAN? And have I not humoured him? In this he is no worse than any one of his race. Every great scientific discovery is voted impossible at the first start. Ivan is not to blame because he is like the rest of the world. He will ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... inert, would not risk another war; but if he saw his opportunity to interfere, he was not likely to neglect it. The Pretender would be advised by his brother, Berwick, the victor of Almanza. The insurgent forces would be led by the Duke of Ormonde, who had succeeded Marlborough as commander-in-chief. Marlborough himself had advanced money for the Jacobite ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... sight our Trissotins[6] and our Vadius even under their rejuvenated jaunty airs; it is, not to let one's self be captivated at present any more than formerly by the everlasting Philaminte, that affected pretender of all times, whose form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly renewed; it is, to like soundness and directness of mind in others as well as in ourselves. I only give the first movement and the pitch; on this key one may continue, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... me afterwards, but at that time when that pretender spoke of the diamond as being his own, Elzevir cut in and said in open court that 'twas a lie, and that this precious stone was none other than the one that we had offered in the afternoon, when Aldobrand had said 'twas glass. Then the diamond merchant ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... United Nations! it is very hard, that a Britain born, a Protestant Astrologer, a man of Revolution Principles, an assertor of the Liberty and Property of the people, should cry out in vain, for justice against a Frenchman, a Papist, and an illiterate pretender to Science, that would blast my reputation, most inhumanly bury me alive, and defraud my native country of those services which, in my double capacity [Physician and Astrologer], I daily offer ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... settled into his kingdom, the Jacobites in the North of England and in Scotland began to make a stir, and invited James Stuart over to try to gain the kingdom. The Jacobites used to call him James III., but the Whigs called him the Pretender; and the Tories used, by way of a middle course, to call him the Chevalier—the French word for a knight, as that he certainly was, whether he were king or pretender. A white rose was the Jacobite mark, and the ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... she heard footsteps approaching, and then rose to welcome her visitor. A woman twenty years her senior, bright, capable, energetic, with a shrewd face and kindly eyes whose keen glance was quick to pierce the flimsy veil of humbug, and a tongue whose good-natured sarcasm had made more than one pretender ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... people to support their king in this plan with great unanimity and heartiness. The matter to which we refer was this. James II. having died at just this juncture of affairs, Louis, disregarding his solemn promises, at once acknowledged his son, known in history as the "Pretender," as "King ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... mind is led in charmed subjection. Where can you find battles that kindle your fancy like Falkirk and Flodden and Culloden and Bannockburn? Where a sovereign that attracts, baffles, repels, allures, like Mary Queen of Scots,—and where, tell me where, is there a Pretender like Bonnie Prince Charlie? Think of the spirit in those old Scottish matrons who ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... remarked, "The Irish are a bloodthirsty, lazy, and resentful race." On Wordsworth, another juvenile critic thus expressed himself: "Wordsworth's compositions are utter bosh." The following extract is from an "Essay on the '15": "The Rising of '15 was a failure because the Old Pretender was an unmitigated ass. Fancy an ass trying to take charge ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... surface creep, And while they meet their due distinction keep; Mix'd but not blended; each its name retains, And these are Nature's ever-during stains. And wouldst thou, Artist! with thy tints and brush, Form shades like these? Pretender, where thy blush? In three short hours shall thy presuming hand Th' effect of three slow centuries command? Thou may'st thy various greens and grays contrive; They are not Lichens, nor like ought alive;- But ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... resolved to strike the first blow. The title of the Peshwa was not undisputed. A portion of the Mahratta nation was favorable to a pretender. The Governor-General determined to espouse this pretender's interest, to move an army across the peninsula of India, and to form a close alliance with the chief of the house of Bonsla, who ruled Berar, and who, in power and dignity, was inferior to none ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Freemasonry; On Benefit Societies, by the Rev. T. A. Buckley; Episodes in the Life of a Freemason; The Countess and the Serf, by Miss Pardoe; The Knights of St. Helen's; On Symbols and Symbolism; A Relic of the Pretender; Eleanora Ulfeld; The Prison Flower, by Miss Pardoe; Olden Holiday Customs; Si j'etais Roi; Correspondence. Masonic Intelligence:—Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of England; United Grand Lodge; Grand Conclave of Masonic Knights Templar; The Ancient and Accepted Rite; Royal Freemasons' ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... return from foreign travel he found himself among the stirring events of 1745. He was an ardent supporter of the Pretender, and made no attempt to conceal his views. Jacobite tendencies were indeed generally prevalent in the College at the time, and had this been the sum of his offending, it is probable that little notice would have been taken by the College authorities. But ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... his companion with well-affected modesty; "I a fop! I a pretender to wit? No, no, my dear Sir Asinus, you do me injustice: I am the simplest of mortals, and a very child of innocence. But I was speaking of Shadynook and the fairies of that domain. Never have I seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here disdainfully repel your ridiculous ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already, we could hardly have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful. I'll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender to the position of my son-in law, that can never ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... little time on such declamatory description, but it is essential to the whole effect. This particular piece is followed by the difficulty of a long ascent, by a sleep of exhaustion on a rude and dirty bed, by Borrow's arrest as the Pretender, Don Carlos, in disguise, by an escape from immediate execution into the hands of an Alcalde who read "Jeremy Bentham" day and night; all this ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... though not at this time a Nonconformist, was a stern and unbending Protestant, and was as bitter an opponent of His Holiness the Pope as he certainly would have been, had his days been prolonged, of His Majesty the Pretender. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... Probably both parties sought an occasion to quarrel, since their commissioners had received opposite instructions,—the Austrians defending the claims of Frederick of Augustenburg, as generally desired in Germany, and the Prussians now opposing them. Prussia demanded the expulsion of the pretender; to which Austria said no. Prussia further sounded Austria as to the annexation of the duchies to herself, to which Austria consented, on condition of receiving an equivalent of some province in Silesia. "What!" thought Bismarck, angrily, "give you back part of what was won for Prussia ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... Protestants, about 1720-25, from Moravia, fleeing from the persecutions of Ferdinand, the Second, by the Scotch, after the unsuccessful attempts of Charles Edward (commonly called the "Pretender") to ascend the English throne, and by the Irish, after the rebellion of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, who were offered their pardon on condition of their emigrating to America and in assisting to colonize the English possessions there. The staid prudence of the German, the ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... somewhither, England judges too well whither. Anti-English Armament; to be led by, whom thinks the reader? That same "Conte di Spinelli," who is Charles Edward the Young Pretender,—Comte de Saxe commanding under him! This is no fable; it is a fact, somewhat formidable; brought about, they say, by one Cardinal Tencin, an Official Person of celebrity in the then Versailles world; who owes his red hat (whatever such debt really be) to old Jacobite influence, exerted ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... as would be done elsewhere. On the contrary, she appreciated a scene of such absolute comedy, recognizing it instantly as a situation plucked out of human nature. She compared them to republicans that regretted the sovereign they had deposed for a pretender to start up ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... this they shake hands, embrace in arms, dance, feast, and banquet, according as the devill hath provided in imitation of the supper. Nay, ofttimes he marries them ere they part, either to himselfe, or to their familiar, or to one another, and that by the Book of Common Prayer, as a pretender to witch-finding told me, in the presence of many." After this they part, and a general meeting is held thrice a year, on some holy day; they are "conveyed to it as swift as the winds from the remotest parts of the earth, where they that have done the most execrable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... Brest with nineteen of the line. The news reached London on the 12th, and next day Norris was ordered to hoist his flag at Spithead. His instructions were "to take the most effectual measures to prevent the making of any descent upon the kingdoms." It was nothing but news that the young Pretender had left Rome for France that led to this precaution. The Government had still no suspicion of what was brewing at Dunkirk. It was not till the 20th that a Dover smuggler brought over information which at ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... reaction of all Europe against the excesses of communistic Republicanism, made his attempt for the throne of Spain, arms in hand, amongst the hills and gorges of Guipuzcoa. It is perhaps the last instance of a Pretender's adventure for a Crown that History will have to record with the usual grave moral disapproval tinged by a shamefaced regret for the departing romance. Historians are very much ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... humble town is said to have been the Thronus Bacchi of the ancients. From the spot where the travellers halted to take, as it were, their impression of the town, they saw before them the little hostelry, a poor pretender to the Thronus Bacchi, with the rude sign of the Holy Mother over the door. The peaked roof, the sunk window, the gray walls, checkered with the rude beams of wood so common to the meaner houses on the Continent, bore something of a melancholy ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... joined by the whole party, who yelled in chorus, while the large old males bellowed defiance, and descended to the lowest branches within eight or ten feet of the crocodile. It was of no use—the pretender never stirred, and I watched it until dark; it remained still inn the same place, waiting for some unfortunate baboon whose thirst might provoke his fate; but not one was sufficiently foolish, although the perpendicular banks prevented them from drinking ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... in Britain; Scotland rises for the Young Pretender, Charles Edward; Battle of Prestonpans; he is victorious and advances into England, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... discharged a small steel pistol when unwarily opened. My hand is but slightly wounded, yet I cannot hold my sword, nor hath my search brought me any news of Alan Breck. He has vanished like an emissary of the Devil or the Pretender, as I doubt not he is. But I will have his blood, if he is not one of their Scotch ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... Paris has a difficult game to play; and the large intelligent family, living in great luxury and consideration, is not the best machine for carrying hopes more or less forlorn; but I expect it would be difficult to find an abler or more judicious pretender. My fear is that—as you say—their way to success lies through some disaster. I do not feel convinced, if an opportunity or a necessity arose, that men like Waddington and Ferry would not be among the first to act as ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... unfortunate King James the Second [Footnote: I do not call him the Prince of Wales, or the Prince, because I am quite satisfied that the right which the House of Stuart had to the throne is extinguished. I do not call him the Pretender, because it appears to me as an insult to one who is still alive, and, I suppose, thinks very differently. It may be a parliamentary expression; but it is not a gentlemanly expression. I KNOW, and I exult in having it in my power to tell, that the ONLY ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... bustling activity at this trying time was indeed portentous, and at last took the form of arresting the unfortunate Dr. Burton (the original of Dr. Slop), on suspicion of holding communication with the invading army of the Pretender, then on its march southward from Edinburgh. The suspect, who was wholly innocent, was taken to London and kept in custody for nearly a year before being discharged, after which, by way of a slight redress, a letter of reprimand for his trop de zele was sent by direction of Lord ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... maitre," said Antonio to me, in French, "those two fellows are Carlist priests, and are awaiting the arrival of the Pretender. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... magnificent egotism might have provoked a smile. And yet, for all its grandiloquence, there was something in his speech that rang hard and true. Unquestionably Longorio was dangerous—a real personality, and no mere swaggering pretender. Alaire felt a certain reluctant respect for him, and at the same time a touch of chilling fear such as she had hardly experienced before. She faced him silently for a moment; ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... the power of Assyria still more sensibly felt. Taking advantage of the circumstance that a civil war was raging in Babylonia between the legitimate monarch Merodach-sum-adin, and his young brother, he marched into the country, took a number of the towns, and having defeated and slain the pretender, was admitted into Babylon itself. From thence he proceeded to overrun Chaldaea, or the district upon the coast, which appears at this time to have been independent of Babylon, and governed by a number of petty kings. The Babylonian ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... of curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led by the nose with their eyes open. But a ship is a creature which we have brought into the world, as it were on purpose to keep us up to the mark. In her handling a ship will not put up with a mere pretender, as, for instance, the public will do with Mr. X, the popular statesman, Mr. Y, the popular scientist, or Mr. Z, the popular—what shall we say?—anything from a teacher of high morality to a bagman—who have won their little race. But I would like (though ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... acquired Whitehall. Edward VI. did not live at St James's Palace regularly, but Queen Mary patronized it, preferring it to Whitehall. It was granted to Prince Henry during the reign of James I., and Charles I. spent the last three days before his execution here. The Prince known as the "Pretender" was born in one of the palace apartments, and many historians have commented on the fact that this chamber was conveniently near a small back-staircase, up which a new-born infant could have been smuggled. During the reign of King William the palace was fitted up as a residence ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... a spirited story of the Jacobite times, concerning the adventures of Hilary Leigh, a young naval officer in the preventive service off the coast of Sussex, on board the Kestrel. Leigh is taken prisoner by the adherents of the Pretender, amongst whom is an early friend and patron who desires to spare the lad's life, but will not release him. The narrative is full of exciting ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... protection, or the Philippines, or civil service, or the currency. They know the views of every voter and every voter's wife on public men. They understand whether the people think this man honest and that man a mere pretender. The consensus of judgment of these precinct committeemen indicates with fair accuracy who is the "strongest man" for his party to nominate, and what policies will get the most votes among ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... is just, and that this is always so. Perhaps it is, or will be, but not in the way which you imagine. You have known me, you have known what my life has been; you see what I am, and it is no difficulty to you. You prefer believing that I, whom you call your friend, am a deceiver or a pretender, to admitting the possibility of the falsehood of your hypothesis. You will not listen to my assurance, and you are angry with me because I will not lie against my own soul, and acknowledge sins which I have not committed. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... ensued between the armies of the contending Popes. Innocent was captured, but contrived to make favorable terms with Roger; and a peace was agreed to, which was finally ratified by the death of Anaclete, in 1138. Another anti-pope having been set up, Bernard used his personal influence with the pretender, and induced him to yield. Thus the schism in the Church was healed, and the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... I alluded to the facility with which he had nullified the last 'Senatus-consulte'. He scarcely seemed to hear me, so completely was his mind absorbed in the subject on which he was meditating. At length, suddenly recovering from his abstraction, he said, "Bourrienne, do you think that the pretender to the crown of France would renounce his claims if I were to offer him a good indemnity, or even a province in Italy?" Surprised at this abrupt question on a subject which I was far from thinking of, I replied that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... enabling Admiral Russell to win his naval victory at La Hogue. The former shows how nearly an Arthur Devis at Preston paid the penalty of death owing to his strange resemblance to Charles Edward the Young Pretender, for whom the savage Government of the time offered a reward of L30,000 to any one who could catch him alive or dead. My mother's ancestor was thus very nearly murdered in 1745 for his good looks, as a life-sized portrait at Albury, and an ivory miniature here at Norwood, help ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the King! God bless the faith's defender! God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender. But who that pretender is, and who that king, God bless us all, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... Dundas younger of Arniston was tried in the year 1711 upon charge of leasing-making, in having presented, from the Duchess of Gordon, medal of the Pretender, for the purpose, it was said, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... support Charles VII. was now removed. He had been publicly stigmatised, even by his own parents, as no true son of the royal race of France. The queen- mother, the English, and the partisans of Burgundy, called him the "Pretender to the title of Dauphin;" but those who had been led to doubt his legitimacy, were cured of their scepticism by the victories of the Holy Maid, and by the fulfilment of her pledges. They thought that heaven ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... and barbarous character. They do not seem to have encouraged literature or learning; but this is partly explained by the fact that culture belonged chiefly to the orthodox caliphate; and its learned men could have no dealings with the heretical pretender. The city of Kayrawan, which dates from the Arab conquest in the eighth century, preserves the remains of some noble buildings, but of their other capitals or royal residences no traces of art or architecture remain to bear witness to the taste of their founders. Each began to decay as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... on the frozen road, thrust his hands for warmth into his coat. In another dress, with his dark hair blown backward in the wind, he might have been a cavalier fresh from the service of his lady or his king, or riding carelessly to his death for the sake of the drunken young Pretender. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... another young man, with a "mania for Palace-breaking," of a somewhat different sort. He, too, was "without visible means of support," but nobody called him a vagabond, or a burglar, but only an adventurer, or a "pretender." He had his eye particularly on Royal Windsor, and once a cruel hoax was played off upon him, in the shape of a forged invitation to one of the Queen's grand entertainments at the Castle. He got himself up in Court costume, with the aid of a ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... story of the pretender's having been introduced in a warming pan into the queen's bed, though as destitute of all probability as of all foundation, has been much more prejudicial to the cause of Jacobitism than all that Mr. Locke and others ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... Saint as a "depraved quack," and says that the time he spent with him was worse than wasted. If Saint-Simon was the rogue and pretender that Comte avers, it is no certificate of Comte's insight that it took him four years to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... fact, the contrary. The sinful transgressor, who lives according to the rules of heretical systems, obtains no esteem from good men. It is good conduct that marks a man to be noble or ignoble, heroic or a pretender to manliness, pure or impure. Truth and mercy are immemorial characteristics of a king's conduct. Hence royal rule is in its essence truth. On truth the word is based. Both sages and gods have esteemed truth. ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... same high windows we catch without any stretching of the neck a still more indispensable note in the picture, a famous pretender eating the bread of bitterness. This repast is served in the open air, on a neat little terrace, by attendants in livery, and there is no indiscretion in our seeing that the pretender dines. Ever since the table d'hote in "Candide" Venice has been the refuge of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... to examine him, in such a method as prudence shall direct you, that you may not be imposed upon by an ignorant, false pretender, whom you are to reject with contempt and derision, and beware of giving him ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... person of the emperor, and legists cherished a dim remembrance of the theory that he embodied the popular will, the fact was that he was the choice of a powerful army, ratified by the God of Battles, and maintaining his power as long as he could suppress any rival pretender. The break-up of the Empire through the continual repetition of military strife was accelerated, not caused, by the presence of barbarism both within and without the frontiers. To restore the elements ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... presume to question or dare to differ, the church has driven millions of Godfearing men into passive indifference or overt opposition, and the number is rapidly increasing. The church does not realize how stupendous this army really is. Not every man who regards the church as but a pretender proclaims that fact on the housetops. It is not "good policy," and policy is the distinguishing characteristic of this day and age. Church people are very sensitive to criticism of their creed (perhaps the mother ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... nullius that has been among us, and this grandfather, if he has not actually stolen the name, has got it by these doubtful means. As for the Wycherly, it should pass for nothing. Learning that there is a line of baronets of this name, every pretender to the family would be apt to call a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Jacob, saying that it had always been understood that the Messiah would be a son of David, not of a carpenter; and that he would confirm the law, whereas this Nazarene attacked it. Furthermore, as a still stronger argument against the pretender, it had been promised that the Messiah ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert

... one because there was but the one to bring. There exists none other but that one. It belongeth to the king of the Demons of the Sea. This man is a pretender, and ignorant, else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... councillors kept a watchful eye on the dispositions of every one of the least consequence; so that, although but twenty-five, Felix was already down in two lists, the one, at the palace, of persons whose views, if not treasonable, were doubtful, and the other, in the hands of a possible pretender, as a discontented and therefore useful man. Felix was entirely ignorant that he had attracted so much observation. He supposed himself simply despised and ignored; he cherished no treason, had not the slightest sympathy with any pretender, held ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... still holding aloof, and striving to keep out of the Alliance. But that all-absorbing King had long ago fixed his eye upon England as his future prey, and when he refused to recognize Anne as lawful Queen and declared his intention of placing the "Pretender" (illegitimate son of James) upon the throne, there could be no more hesitation. This Jupiter who had removed the Pyrenees, might wipe out the English Channel too! Hitherto the name Whig had stood for the adherents to the war policy, and Tory for its opponents. Now, all was changed. Even the stupid ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... whole house looks like a place for lumber. There are some fine rooms, but so damp and mouldy it is quite shocking. There is a chapel completely filled with old rubbish and a plaid bed which was put up for the Pretender. ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... king the old Cardinal of Bourbon, under the title of Charles X., and nearly all of Catholic Europe rallied around this pretender to the crown. No one denied the validity of the title, according to the principles of legitimacy, of Henry IV. His rights, however, the Catholics deemed forfeited by his Protestant tendencies. Though Henry immediately issued a decree promising ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... juggling pretender," remarked Padre Vicente—"a Cacique whose mother establishes family connection with the stars in the sky, could in truth have papal power among these heathen! With all their wise looks, and careful speech, these old men are not the influence we have to win for progress in this land:—this ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... a kind much better adapted for doing justice to Marlborough's campaigns. He has remarkable power for individual narrative. His account of the gallant attempt, and subsequent hair-breadth escapes of the Pretender in 1745, is full of interest, and is justly praised by Sismondi as by far the best account extant of that romantic adventure. He possesses also a fair and equitable judgment, much discrimination, evident ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... was prepared to accept the certain punishment of detection and failure. If Hung's audacity was shown by nothing else, it was demonstrated by the lengths to which he carried the supernatural agency that urged him to quit the ignominious life of a Kwantung peasant for the career of a pretender to Imperial honours. The course of training to which he subjected himself, the ascetic deprivations, the loud prayers and invocations, the supernatural counsels and meetings, was that adopted by every other religious ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... continued, "you have probably also heard of Don Pedro, Prince of Marsine, one time Pretender to ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Essex, whose career was to be so romantic, and whose fate so tragic; those two ominous personages, the deposed little archbishop-elector of Cologne, with his melancholy face, and the unlucky Don Antonio, Pretender of Portugal, for whom, dead or alive, thirty thousand crowns and a dukedom were perpetually offered by Philip II.; young Maurice of Nassau, the future controller of European destinies; great counsellors of state, gentlemen, guardsmen, and portcullis-herald, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god though he might be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and torn him limb from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious pretender. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... bless the Queen and the House of Hanover, And never may Pope or Pretender come over. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... good on account of the behavior of ill men are of the party of the latter. The common cant is no justification for taking this party. I have been deceived, say they, by Titius and Maevius; I have been the dupe of this pretender or of that mountebank; and I can trust appearances no longer. But my credulity and want of discernment cannot, as I conceive, amount to a fair presumption against any man's integrity. A conscientious person would rather doubt his own judgment than condemn his species. He would say, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... [Footnote: But for all that, when, near Rossinish (see Loewe), he captured Flora Macdonald and her ostensibly female companion, Ormskirk flatly declined to recognize Prince Charles. "They may well call you the Pretender, madam," he observed to "Bettie Burke,"—"since as concerns my party you are the most desirable Pretender we could possibly imagine." And thereupon he gave the Prince a pass out of Scotland.] but this was doubted; and in any event, such battues being comparatively rare, he by ordinary appeared ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... divorce, when I expect to be a free man. In vain! Was it not for her and to lay my freedom at her feet, that I consented to this step which has cost me infinite perplexity, and now to be discarded for the first pretender that came in her way! If so, I hardly think I can survive it. You who have been a favourite with women, do not know what it is to be deprived of one's only hope, and to have it turned to shame and disappointment. There is nothing in the world left that ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt

... of which the scenes are laid in the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, the reader recognises little realism of language. But as Scott's historical novels deal with periods extending from that of the crusades down to the Pretender's attempt in 1745, an intimate knowledge of the innumerable social changes and peculiarities ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... derived under the act of settlement; engaging to support him to the utmost of the juror's power; promising to disclose all traiterous conspiracies against him; and expressly renouncing any claim of the pretender, by name, in as clear and explicit terms as the English language can furnish. This oath must be taken by all persons in any office, trust, or employment; and may be tendered by two justices of the peace to ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... retaken by force or reconquered; he who pronounces this word is supposed to wish to reconquer the hand of the first lady and the direction of the dance; it is a kind of act of liberum veto, to which everyone is obliged to give way. The leader then abandons the hand of his lady to the new pretender; every cavalier dances with the lady of the following couple, and it is only the cavalier of the last couple who finds himself definitively ousted if he has not the boldness to insist likewise upon his privilege ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... if he were lord in name he was not so in fortune, and I was astonished to see him driving such a handsome carriage, and still more so at his blue ribbon. In a few words he told me that he was going to dine with the Pretender, but that he would sup at home. He invited me to come to supper, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... eager to join the new coalition in defence of the Hapsburg, whom in common with the rest of Europe she had for years been trying to pull down. But when Louis insolently espoused the cause of the exiled King James, and promised by force to place the pretender on the throne, then she needed no urging, and sent Marlborough and the flower of her army to join Prince ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... the right of the supreme authority alone to handle public matters, or choose officials to do so, it follows that that subject is a pretender to the dominion, who, without the supreme council's knowledge, enters upon any public matter, although he believe that his design will be to the best interest of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... secret out of him in that condition; women were even employed to ply him, and take his words down. I have heard that my Lord Stair, three years after, when the Secretary fled to France and became the Pretender's Minister, got all the information he wanted by putting female spies over St. John in his cups. He spoke freely now:—"Jonathan knows nothing of this for certain, though he suspects it, and by George, Webb will take an Archbishopric, and Jonathan ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... ballad of Boh Da Thone, Erst a Pretender to Theebaw's throne, Who harried the district of Alalone: How he met with ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... his Grandfather Brown and his Grandmother Williams—are struggling in him for the mastery; and their exceedingly opposite natures are pulling his arms and legs asunder. He has to harmonize this antagonism before he becomes himself, and it adds much to his confusion to see that poor little pretender, Tom Titmouse, talking and laughing and making merry. There are, however, no ancestral diversities fighting for the possession of Tom Titmouse. The grandfathers and grandmothers of Tom Titmouse were not people of strong character; they were a decorous race on both sides, with no heavy intellectual ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... period of his rising power), which excluded from the freedom of the city those whose parents were not both Athenian. In the very year in which he attained the supreme administration of affairs, occasion for enforcing the law occurred: Psammetichus, the pretender to the Egyptian throne, sent a present of corn to the Athenian people (B. C. 444); the claimants for a share in the gift underwent the ordeal of scrutiny as to their titles to citizenship, and no ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is yet more wonderful, they prevailed upon us to believe, that in this dreadful treaty of Vienna, it was stipulated between the German emperour and Spain, that they should employ their joint forces against Britain, that they should exalt the pretender to the throne, take immediate possession of Gibraltar, and, without mercy, debar us for ever from our trade both in Spain and in the Western Indies. This his late majesty was advised to assert in his speech from the throne, which I ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... other important bronzes. Vast, unique and of the greatest interest is Theodore Riviere's wonderful group in bronze representing a triumphant band of desert soldiers dragging captive the Moroccan pretender, secured in an iron cage. There, too, are splendid paintings by Monet, Meissonier, Detaille, de Neuvilie, and many other French artists approved by time. Magnificent old tapestries adorn the walls of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... therefore proceeded at once to menaces, telling him that you bad so many advantages over his wife, that you scorned to consider her your rival: but that, nevertheless, you did not choose that any upstart pretender should dare ask to share his majesty's heart. To all this he made no reply; and as the sight of him only increased my indignation, I at length desired him to quit me. I trust you will pardon me for having spoken in as queenlike a manner ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... one thing. Shah Soojah had some shadow of a pretence, which we shall presently examine, to the throne of all Affghanistan; and a king of that compass was indispensable to Lord Auckland's object. But Dost Mahommed never had even the shadow of an attorney's fiction upon which he could stand as pretender to any throne but that of Cabool, where, by accident, he had just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have supported him? "Because thou art virtuous," we must have said, are we to support future usurpation? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... He had no opportunity to injure members of either class, but it is plain, from his four large quarto volumes, called Analecta, that he did not lack the will. In his Analecta Mr. Wodrow noted down all the news that reached him, scandals about 'The Pretender,' Court Gossip, Heresies of Ministers, Remarkable Providences, Woful Apparitions, and 'Strange Steps of Providence'. Ghosts, second sight, dreams, omens, premonitions, visions, did greatly delight him, but it is fair to note that he does not vouch for all his marvels, but merely ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... mission by an act, by a victorious act, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a station of good will, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... MacDonald of Kingsborough; and tradition gives us a stirring picture of Allan's wife—the famous Flora MacDonald, who in Scotland had protected the Young Pretender in his flight—making an impassioned address in Gaelic to the Highland soldiers and urging them on to die for honor's sake. When this Highland force was conquered by the Americans, the large majority willingly bound themselves not to fight further against the American cause ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... appears that Michelson was just such a dreaded opponent to Pugasceff as the man not born of a woman was to Macbeth. Immediately he disappeared from the horizon, he arose anew, and at each encounter with the pretender beat him right and left. When Michelson drove him away from Ufa, Pugasceff totally defeated the Russian leaders approaching from other directions, London, Melgunoff, Duve, and Jacubovics were swept away before him, and he burned before their very eyes the town of Birszk. With ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... that, even in that, they shunned the highest walk. Religious fanaticism was an old established vocation, in which something brilliant was required to attract attention. They could not be George Foxes, nor Joanna Southcotes, nor even Joe Smiths. But the dullest pretender could discourse a jumble of pious bigotry, natural rights, and driveling philanthropy. And, addressing himself to aged folly and youthful vanity, to ancient women, to ill-gotten wealth, to the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Lord Stair because he believed that he had done him an ill office with the King of England, and prevented the latter from entering into the alliance with France and Holland. If that alliance had taken place my son could have prevented the Pretender from beginning his journey; but as England refused to do so, the Regent was obliged to do nothing but what was stipulated for by the treaty of peace: that is to say, not to succour the Pretender with money nor arms, which he faithfully performed. He sent wherever ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... brutality and not without humour. He took up, or rather pretended to take up, the claim of the Prince of Augustenberg to duchies which were a quite lawful part of the land of Denmark. In support of this small pretender he enlisted two large things, the Germanic body called the Bund and the Austrian Empire. It is possibly needless to say that after he had seized the disputed provinces by pure Prussian violence, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... Ferdinand VII died, and his daughter Isabel II ascended to the throne under the regency of her mother Cristina. As the conservatives espoused the cause of the pretender, Don Carlos, the regency was forced to favor the liberals. The rigid press censorship was abolished, and a general amnesty was granted all the victims of Ferdinand's tyranny. In politics the year ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... married, and was wicked enough to deny,[33] was the Daughter of the late Sir David Murray, Baronet, and Sister of the present Sir David Murray, who is now in the Service of the King of France, in the East Indies: This young Gentleman was unfortunate enough to take Part with the young Pretender in the late Rebellion, being Nephew to Mr. Murray, of Broughton, the Pretender's then Secretary: and after the Battle of Culloden was taken Prisoner, and tried at Carlisle, where he received Sentence of Death as a Rebel: but for his Youth, not being ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... for improvement," said the merchant. "In my eyes he is, at this time, only a hypocritical pretender. I hope, for the sake of the world and the church both, that his new associates will make something ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur

... the truth. But we all took the insults that were offered to the flag in President Buchanan's time as coolly as if that were the proper course of things, while the attack on Sumter had the same effect on us that the acknowledgment of the Pretender as King of Great Britain and Ireland by Louis XIV. had on the English. War was then promptly accepted, and has ever since been waged, with that various fortune which is known to all contests, and which will be so known while wars shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... Two tables further on, a palmer, with his pilgrim's costume complete, was practising the lament of the Holy Queen, not forgetting the drone and the nasal drawl. Further on, a young scamp was taking a lesson in epilepsy from an old pretender, who was instructing him in the art of foaming at the mouth, by chewing a morsel of soap. Beside him, a man with the dropsy was getting rid of his swelling, and making four or five female thieves, who were disputing at the same ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... romantic story of Flora Macdonald, the lassie of Skye, who aided in the escape of Charles Stuart, otherwise known as the "Young Pretender," for which she suffered arrest, but which led to signal honor through ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird

... up arms in the cause. According to Mr. Home, his example was decisive of the movement of his neighbours: "So when he who was so wise and prudent declared his purpose of joining Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country who favoured the Pretender's cause, put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer guide than Lord Pitsligo." His Lordship's own account of the motives which urged him on is peculiar:—"I was grown a little old, and the fear of ridicule stuck to me pretty much. I have mentioned ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... that I am sure of putting an innkeeper over my enemy's head? Fancy the humiliation of old Saracinesca, of Giovanni, who will have to take his wife's title for the sake of respectability, of the Astrardente herself, when she finds she has married the penniless son of a penniless pretender!" ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... they do not really have, just as there are some who really try to enjoy what they feel they should enjoy. Nowhere is there quite so much pretense and humbug as in the field of the artistic tastes. Nowhere is the arbitrariness of taste so evident, and nowhere is the "expert" so likely to be a pretender. I say this in full recognition of the fact that science and religion have their modes and pretenses as ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... it would be best to make an alliance with Kari, whom I knew to be honest and no Pretender, since without his help I did not think that it would be possible to defeat the armies of the People of the Incas. For the rest, we must trust to chance, making no ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... no mere pretender could exhibit these proofs; and that, where they were taken as the sole measure of a man's worth, dexterity with a rifle must be of more value than the accomplishments of a talker—Indian-fighting ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... for the attainder of the pretended Prince of Wales, in the English Parliament, with an additional clause of attainder against the Queen, Mary of Modena, together with an oath of abjuration of the "Pretender." The debates which impeded the progress of this measure, plainly prove how deeply engrafted in the hearts of many of the higher classes were those rights which they were thus enforced ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson



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