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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



... Plymouth to defend some citizens of that town who had become involved in a riot on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. It was the custom in the New England towns to observe this day with a mock procession, in which effigies representing the Pope, the Old Bad One, and James the Pretender, were carried through the streets to be consigned at the end to a bonfire. In this instance violence was done by some of the participants; windows were smashed, gates were broken down, etc. Mr. Otis conducted the defense, showing that the arrested persons taking ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... know that he is a pretender to the throne of Babbiano? You will remember that he is cousin ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... climbing and asserting itself above the falsely named "pink Gloire"; Reine Marie Henriette— which, grown by everybody, is perhaps the worst rose in the world. Gloire de Dijon rampant smothered the pretender and covered the most of its mildewing buds from sight; to be conquered in its turn by the sheer beauty of Marechal Niel, whose every yellow star, bold on its stalk as greenhouses can grow it, shamed all feebler yellows. Devoniensis flung its sprays down from the thatch. La France and Ulrich ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... concur in asserting that that prince was elected by the clergy and the people. Whatever may be the historical truth of the design, Pushkin has given us in this tragedy a dramatic picture full of spirit, of passion, of character, and of life; and some of the personages, particularly those of the pretender Dimitri, and the heroine Marina, are sketched with a vigorous and flowing pencil. The form of this play is ostensibly Shakspearian; but it appears to us to resemble less the works of Shakspeare himself, than some of the more successful imitations of the great dramatist's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... pin, he punished the offender by pursuing him around the schoolroom, sticking a pin into his shoulder whenever he could overtake him. And he had a fearful leather strap, which was sometimes used even upon the shrinking palm of a little girl. If he should find out that I was a pretender and deceiver, as I knew that I was, I could not guess what might happen to me. He never did, however. I was left unmolested in the ignorance which I deserved. But I never liked the girl who did my sums, and I fancied she had a ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... and soul, in his pursuits of sowing, planting, and gathering, Van Baerle, caressed by the whole fraternity of tulip-growers in Europe, entertained nor the least suspicion that there was at his very door a pretender whose throne ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... collection of music and musical instruments. How he managed to gratify his desire in this direction seems not to have been understood by his friends, his means, in their estimation, not being equal to such an expenditure. Hence arose a report that he was employed by the Government to watch the Pretender. Corbett died at an advanced age in 1748, and bequeathed his "Gallery of Cremonys and Stainers" to the authorities of Gresham College, with a view that they should remain for inspection under certain conditions, leaving ten pounds per annum to an attendant to show the instruments. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... had carried away all the proofs of his identity; mother and sister gone, he did not live in the knowledge of any human being. Many there were acquainted with him, but that was all. Had Quintus Arrius been present, what could he have said more than where he found him, and that he believed the pretender to be the son of Hur? But, as will presently appear in full, the brave Roman sailor was dead. Judah had felt the loneliness before; to the core of life the sense struck him now. He stood, hands clasped, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... at Apone, near Padua, in the year 1250. Like his friend Arnold de Villeneuve, he was an eminent physician, and a pretender to the arts of astrology and alchymy. He practised for many years in Paris, and made great wealth by killing and curing, and telling fortunes. In an evil day for him, he returned to his own country, with the reputation of being ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... 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 have written, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... his Subjects should pretend Private Vision, or Spirit, or other Revelation from God, for the countenancing of any doctrine which Abraham should forbid, or when they followed, or adhered to any such pretender, to punish them; and consequently that it is lawfull now for the Soveraign to punish any man that shall oppose his Private Spirit against the Laws: For hee hath the same place in the Common-wealth, that Abraham had in ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... tyranny. The Medici were conscious 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 in a wool factory when Cosimo set eyes upon ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... time, it must be premised, the United Kingdom was in a state of great excitement from the threat generally credited of a French invasion. The Pretender was said to be in high favour at Versailles, a descent upon Ireland was especially looked to, and the noblemen and people of condition in that and all other parts of the kingdom showed their loyalty by raising regiments ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... however, soon escaped from there and fled to England, where he reiterated his declarations respecting the secret articles of the treaty of Vienna. The most important of these declarations was, that Spain and the emperor had agreed to drive George I. from England and to place the Pretender, who had still many adherents, upon the British throne. It was also asserted that marriage contracts were entered into which, by uniting the daughters of the emperor with the sons of the Spanish monarch, would eventually place the crowns of Austria and Spain upon the same brow. The ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... of interrogation; as, "Was it possible that virtue so exalted should be erected upon injustice? that the proudest and the most ambitious of mankind should be the great master and accomplished pattern of humility? that a doctrine so pure as the Gospel should be the work of an uncommissioned pretender? that so perfect a system of morals should be established on blasphemy?"—Jerningham's Essay, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... and nineteen days when British, French and Americans together, old enemies and old friends who had mingled their blood on innumerable battle-fields, destroyed the greatest menace of modern times and hurled the pretender to divine honors ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... was born on the 8th of June; and he connects it with an event that, having a public and a partisan interest, (the birth of that Prince of Wales, who was known twenty-seven years afterwards as the Pretender,) would serve to check his own recollections, and give them a collateral voucher. It is true he wrote for an ill-natured purpose; but no purpose whatever could have been promoted by falsifying this particular ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... of his Spirit; therefore, in the head of all his virtues I shall set that which was the head and spring of them all, his Christianity; for this alone is the true royal blood that runs through the whole body of virtue, and every pretender to that glorious family, who has no tincture of it, is an impostor. This is that same fountain which baptizeth all the gentle virtues that so immortalize the names of the old philosophers; herein ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... lying in ruins upon every side of us. Burdened indeed we are with debt, but abounding with resources. We have a trade, not perhaps equal to our wishes, but more than ever we possessed. In effect, no pretender to the crown; nor nutriment for such desperate and destructive factions as have formerly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... apprentices dipped their spoons indiscriminately, and dined at twelve; the ladies went out visiting at two in the afternoon, and attended church at four. Manchester was conservative in the Jacobite rebellion, and raised a regiment for the Pretender, but the royalist forces defeated it, captured the officers, and beheaded them. Manchester politics then were just the opposite of its present Liberal tendencies, and it was Byrom, a Manchester man, who wrote the quaint epigram regarding the Pretender and his friends which has ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... observe, that before he left France, an English gentleman of distinction expostulating with him, for swerving so much from the principles of his father and his whole family, his lordship answered, 'That he had pawned his principles to Gordon the Pretender's banker for a considerable sum; and till he could repay him, he must be a Jacobite, but that when that was done he would again ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... said: "I come from performing a similar mission of camaraderie among the hosts of Ulster. I am no partisan. I am like a certain philanthropist of whom I have heard who purveyed sherbet to the rival camps of the Sultan of MOROCCO and the Pretender. I trust that my fate may not be his, for he was the sole person killed in one of the noisiest battles ever fought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various

... 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. The man who speaks truth in this world attains ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... her domestic life that she was accorded a position in the world gratifying to her nature to hold. Fate certainly owed the woman destined to live for a few years only, but those years long ones, the wife of that Stuart known as the Pretender, many years in which she could be mistress of herself and the recipient of kindly consideration, if not some measure of posthumous fame. The book gives us pictures not only of the countess, but of many persons of more or less renown with whom she was associated. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... we are to believe the tales from the south. Here is another complication, however. There is, as you know, Count Halfont, and perhaps all of you, for that matter, a pretender to the throne of Axphain, the fugitive Prince Frederic. He is described as young, good looking, a scholar and the next thing ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... and the falsely polite; and, although all cannot explain, all can feel the difference. While we respect the one, we despise the other. Men hate to be cheated. An attempt to deceive us, is an insult to our understandings and an affront to our morals. The pretender to politeness is a cheat. He tries to palm off the base for the genuine; and, although he may deceive the vulgar, he cannot overreach the cultivated. True politeness springs from right feelings; it is a good heart, manifesting itself in an agreeable life; it is a just regard ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady

... state-maxim was Quieta non movere, and was taken by surprise. There are many historians and students of history who now admit, in looking back upon those times, that the fate of the established government hung upon a thread, and that the daring advance of the Pretender followed by another victory might have converted him into a Possessor and Defender. Had any one then asked as to the possibilities of a reconstruction of the severed Union, the answer would probably have been not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... with a coarse mind, and regardless of inflicting pain on the feelings of another, has failed,—marvellously failed,—and he himself is now exhibited not only in our fatherland, but even at the Antipodes, in fact wherever the English language is spoken or read, as a shallow pretender, one quite incompetent to treat of matters of such undying interest as those he presumed to ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... 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, but he found such companionship entertaining enough ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... remarked, and Elizabeth's heart leaped. Perhaps this was a hint that instead of two Gordons in the Third class there would be one in the Junior Fourth. "Charles Stuart MacAllister" was the next name. Miss Hillary smiled again. "Are you the Pretender?" she asked, and the Senior Fourth all laughed at Charles ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... the battle of Culloden in 1746, when Colonel George Hunter was executed for his devotion to the cause of the Young Pretender. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... members of the family are held by the Bulgarians as prisoners of war. It is not stretching the imagination very far to picture them as already dead and out of the way. At the close of the war, if Germany is victorious, the crown will be placed upon the head of the pretender branch. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... eye of a fiend she detected the woman who was wearing the dry-cleaned cast-off clothing of her sister in the city. What she saw the office knew, though she kept her conclusions out of the paper if they would do any harm or hurt anyone's feelings. No pretender ever dreamed that she was not fooling Miss Larrabee. She was willing to agree most sympathetically with Mrs. Conklin, who insisted that the "common people" wouldn't be interested in the list of names at her party; and the only place where we ever saw Miss Larrabee's ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... Notwithstanding their mortification, the unexpected costume of von Aslingen appeared only to increase the young lords' admiration of his character and accomplishments; and instead of feeling that he was an insolent pretender, whose fame originated in his insulting their tastes, and existed only by their sufferance, all cantered away with the determination of wearing on the next day, even if it were to cost them each a calenture, furs enough to keep a man warm during a winter party at St. Petersburg, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... inaugurated his patriotic 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 between their subsequent fortunes. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... bodies of Jacobites, to seize the Tower and the Bank, to arrest the king and the prince, and capture or kill Lord Cadogan, one of the Ministers. At the trial it was proved that Layer had been over to Rome, and had seen the Pretender, who, by proxy, had stood godfather to his child. Troops were to be sent from France; barricades were to be thrown up all over London. The Jacobites had calculated that the Government had only 14,000 men to meet them—3,000 of these would be wanted to guard London, 3,000 ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... 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 ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... who raise suspicions on the 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... 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 I did not think the pretender would relinquish his claims; that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... as good a place as any to own that the Villa Falconieri and the Villa Man-dragone were the only sights we saw in Frascati. We did, indeed, penetrate the chill interior of the local cathedral, but as we did not know at the time that we were sharing it with the memory of the young Stuart pretender Charles Edward, who died in Frascati, and whose brother, Cardinal York, placed a mural tablet to him in the church, we were conscious of no special claim upon our interest. We ought, of course, to have visited the Villa Aldobrandini ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... that had previously lain in the way of many Frenchmen when called on to support Charles VII was now removed. He had been publicly stigmatized, 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 had now declared itself in favor of Charles as the true heir of the crown of St. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... peace, but the object with which he was going out, with the moral and financial support of the Queen, was a corporate demonstration against Spain, of French, Portuguese, and English ships under the main command of Don Antonio, the Portuguese pretender; it was proposed to occupy Terceira in the Azores; and Drake and Hawkins entertained the highest hopes of laying their ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... was better than hers. But many people evaded both claims. They said James II. had "run away," and so abdicated, though he only ran away because he was in duresse and was frightened, and though he claimed the allegiance of his subjects day by day. The Pretender, it was said, was not legitimate, though the birth was proved by evidence which any Court of Justice would have accepted. The English people were "out of" a sacred monarch, and so they tried very hard to make a new one. Events, however, were too strong for ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... though in the light of great literature, poor Stevenson is always at his noddings, and more than that, in the words of Leland's Hans Breitmann, he has "nodings on." He is poor, naked, miserable—a mere pretender—and has no share in the makings of great literature. Mr Moore has stripped him to the skin, and leaves him to the mercy of rain and storm, like Lear, though Lear had a solid ground to go on in self-aid, which Stevenson had not; he had daughters, and one ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... a magnificent speech, which brought him at one bound into the front rank among the republican leaders. His description of December 2nd was such as had never been excelled even by Cicero or by Berryer: "At that time there grouped themselves around a pretender a number of men without talent, without honour, sunk in debt and in crime, such as in all ages have been the accomplices of arbitrary violence, men of whom one could repeat what Sallust had said of the foul mob ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... quarterly review or monthly magazine, (except, of course, the "North American" and the "Atlantic,") which can decree or deny fame. While the critics are busily proving that an author is a plagiarist or a pretender, the world is crowning him,—as the first ocean-steamer from England brought Dr. Lardner's essay to prove that steamers could not cross the ocean. Literary criticism, indeed, is a lost art, if it ever were an art. For there are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... Your new Lord Chancellor(9) sets out to-morrow for Ireland: I never saw him. He carries over one Trapp(10) a parson as his chaplain, a sort of pretender to wit, a second-rate pamphleteer for the cause, whom they pay by sending him to Ireland. I never saw Trapp neither. I met Tighe(11) and your Smyth of Lovet's yesterday by the Exchange. Tighe and I took no notice of ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... hands. Here Mr. Carew met the rebels, but having no mind to join them, he pretended to be very sick and lame; however, he accosted them with, God bless you, noble gentlemen! and the rebels moving on to Carlisle, he hopped after them, and from thence to Manchester, and there had a sight of the Pretender's son, and other commanders. He afterwards accompanied them to Derby, where a report was spread, that the Duke of Cumberland was coming to fight them; upon which, their courage failing, though the Pretender's son was for fighting, they retreated back to Carlisle; upon which he thought it time to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... close of the 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 ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... fool's hand sought his breast; then, swiftly realizing that it needed but a pretext to bring about the end desired by the pretender in the castle, with an effort he restrained himself, and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... in a precarious position. After showing himself so weak in the face of the long and ruthless British provocations, he has to play the strong man with Germany. Otherwise he will lose what prestige he has left, and he knows that in the background the pretender to the throne, Mr. Roosevelt, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... "I feared it would be someone I did not know. He is the Teniente Lapas, of Karyl's Palace guard. The pobrecito! I wonder what post he hopes to adorn at the Court of the Pretender." ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... cause of the House of Orange in Europe, he corresponded secretly with the Stuarts, kept up assiduous relations with the little Court of St. Germains, and made underhand preparations for marrying one of his daughters with the Pretender, then ex-King (James III.), at St. Germains, and, perhaps, on the morrow de facto King of England. But if Marlborough's soul was mean and sordid, his genius was vast and powerful. In parliament, at St. James's, in foreign councils, in foreign courts, on the field of battle, everywhere he dominated ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... no mere ordinary pretender, working on the superstitions of shallow-pated people. He lived up to his belief—took no money, avoided notoriety when he could; and the proof of his sincerity lies in the fact that he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... object of hatred or of fear. Yet he shall not escape. We hate not the reptile that has stung us, though we might shake it off the wound, and tread upon it. I know the ruffian of old as a stout man at arms, and a pretender, as I have heard, to the favour of the scornful puppet whose beauties, forsooth, spurred us to our wise and hopeful attempt. Fiends that direct this nether world, by what malice have ye decided that the hand which has couched ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... in his word, well garnished with oaths. "Now that there's war up and down and so many of us are going out of the country, there's a saying that the Pretender may e'en sail across from France and beat a drum and give a shout! ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... They are generally classified as Christians. But they protest, you know. Protesto, protestare, verb, active, first conjugation. 'Mi pare che la donna protesta troppo,' as the poet sings. They're Christians, but they protest against the Pope and the Pretender." ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... 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 monarchs in want of thrones—she ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... loved by Jim, and talk of the dukes of Bar brought no thrill to Jim's mother. She cared more to see the two largest elms in France of which Jim had written, than any ruins of ducal dwellings or tombs of Lorraine princes, or even the house where Charles-Edouard the Pretender ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... 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, quoted by Croker, 'that on March 30, 1712, two hundred ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... two wars with Ferdinand, king of Naples, until the year 1492, and brought forward Renatus, duke of Lorraine, as pretender to his crown. True, he proceeded, as his predecessors had done, to encourage princes and people to undertake expeditions against the Turks; but when Dschem, the brother and rival of the Turkish Sultan Bajazet, was delivered over to him at the head of an army against ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... to be set on a pike over the gateway of the Fort, for these our Fathers were not of our day or thought in such matters; and these Englishmen did but follow the usage of England, when so lately as 1747 the heads of the unhappy Pretender's more unhappy followers defiled the air ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... has seen quite enough of life, and learnt quite enough of it, to form a very fair judgment of the man who offers to represent him in Parliament; because he has learnt, not merely something of his own interest, or that of his class, but—what is infinitely more important—the difference between the pretender and ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley

... well-house was removed to Queen's Park, where it still stands, but the spring has disappeared (see October 8th). Innocent XII. at the petition of James VII. (and II.) in 1693, placed St. Margaret's feast on June 10th, the birthday of the King's son James (stigmatised the "Old Pretender"), but Leo XIII., in 1898, restored it for the Scottish calendar to the ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett

... which have been commonly received concerning the history and character of the Highlanders is one which it is especially necessary to correct. During the century which commenced with the campaign of Montrose, and terminated with the campaign of the young Pretender, every great military exploit which was achieved on British ground in the cause of the House of Stuart was achieved by the valour of Gaelic tribes. The English have therefore very naturally ascribed to those tribes the feelings of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... "no meanness is impossible to a demagogue,—a pretender to things of which he has even no just conception,—a man who lives to envy and traduce; in a word, a quasi gentleman. Let us hear ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... standing idle about her, should, in imitation of her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head to draw water from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led streams gushed forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that had she insisted on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night to spin, she could never have produced those fabrics which alone her household demanded, and would have been but a puerile actor; that it was not by attempting to return to the ancient and for ever closed fields of toil, but ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... king, Neither north nor south is yours, You've no kingdom that endures! Wandering every fall and spring, With your ruby crown so slender, Are you only a Pretender, ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke

... which a pair of pistols were hung—more like a man of war than a preacher of peace! Even after the defeat at Culloden, the Jacobitism of the north was so strong, and Paplay was so obnoxious, by reason of his vehement preaching against popery, and prelacy, and the Pretender, that he continued long after to wear his sword (in the pulpit and elsewhere), which was rather a formidable concern to the nonjurors about him, in the hand of a brave and athletic champion of true Whiggery. He assigned three ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... 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 ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... gallery, a long and stately room, hung with pictures of ancient Scottish kings; and though the pictures were none of them authentic, they, at least, answer an excellent purpose in the way of upholstery. It was here that the young Pretender gave the ball which makes one of the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Prince's 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 totally aloof from intrigue, and his reveries, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed, at first sight, the party of Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist factions, that, not only intrigue against each other, each aiming to raise its own Pretender to the throne, and exclude the Pretender of the Opposite party, but also are all united in a common hatred for and common attacks against the "Republic." On its side, the Mountain appears, in counter-distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the representative of the "Republic." The party of Order ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... drab trousers, coming crying down the stops, is a dun: Lord Loughcorrib has ruined him, and won't see him: that is his lordship peeping through the blind of his study at him now. Go thy ways, Loughcorrib, thou art a Snob, a heartless pretender, a hypocrite of hospitality; a rogue who passes forged notes upon society;—but I am ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... enjoyed by a hundred other towns, more especially in the Eastern States. Almost without a competitor, as to beauty of situation, or at least on a level with Richmond and Burlington, among the inland towns, it was usually esteemed a Dutch place that every pretender was at liberty to deride, in my younger days. We are a people by no means addicted to placing our candle under the bushel and yet I cannot recall a single civil expression in any native writer touching the beauties of Albany. It may have been owing to the circumstance that so much of the town ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... dissembler of a secret wishes for obscurity and silence: he wants to have the eyes of men turned away from him and their curiosity unroused. Whatever he says or does is to divest the idea of there being anything particularly interesting about him. But he who simulates—call him pretender, impostor, or quack—is nothing, if not taken notice of. The public gaze is his sunshine: obscurity gives him a deadly chill. His ambition is to appear out of the ordinary, being really quite within common lines: the dissembler ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... to me—this possible plan. It may be that he can be emissary from Arthur to the Duke of Gascony for such purpose as may be devised. And we go with him as knights. We know not, of course, that a pretender sits where the Duke of Gascony should. And I fancy that this Dolphus will be right well pleased to welcome us and if we seemingly appear not too scrupulous ourselves we can worm the story from him and ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe

... 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 against ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... of the Parisian wits and caricaturists from which it has never entirely recovered. The "umbrella" of the Orleans family, which the ribald press of that day made the emblem of their royalty, still figures in the lampoons addressed to the present pretender. The caricature of the royal physiognomy as a pear is one of the most famous in history. Louis-Philippe wore his hair piled in a species of pyramid over his forehead, which lent plausibility to this defamation; this ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... course, in an indefinite mystic way either to intimidate or convince him ... but, . . and he smiled a little.. in any case it only rested with himself to unmask this graceful pretender to angelic honors! And while he thought thus, her soft tones trembled on the silence again, ... he listened as a dreaming mariner might listen to the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... fate, True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... boxes sat the Duchesse de Montgeron with the Comtesse de Lisieux; in another the Vicomtesse de Nointel and Madame Thomery. In the first box on the left Madame Desvanneaux was to be seen, with her husband and her son, the youthful and recently rejected pretender to the hand ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... 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 of equality by demanding odbiianego, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... "A pretender to Antiquities, roving, magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased: and being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many Letters sent to A.W. with folliries and misinformations." ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... wondered. He was a follower and imitator of Paracelsus, like him affected universal knowledge, aspired to revolutionise the science of medicine, and died with the reputation of one who, with great powers and acquirements, instead of becoming a great man, ended as a brilliant pretender, and was rather an 'architect of ruin' to the systems of others, than the founder of a solid fabric of his own. More admired, of course, not the quackery, but the adventurous boldness of Helment's genius, and his devotion to chemistry; which is certainly the most spiritual of all the sciences, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... the Old Light, had quarrelled, and, it is added, fought: "The Holy Tulzie," which recorded, gave at the same time wings to the scandal; while for "Holy Willie," an elder of Mauchline, and an austere and hollow pretender to righteousness, he reserved the fiercest of all his lampoons. In "Holy Willie's Prayer," he lays a burning hand on the terrible doctrine of predestination: this is a satire, daring, personal, and profane. Willie claims praise ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... arranged for staff officers in Europe. But then, the necessary good will and good judgment are wanting in the head of this military organization. And this Halleck, this Halleck is a mere mockery, a mere sciolist, a shallow pretender to military science. He may have the capacity to translate a book, but nothing of all that he translates effects any hold upon his brain, or he would, long before now, have done something towards organising the army. A general inspector is the first necessity. Then establish the necessary ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... how such a trade debases; How ill it suits the Artist, proud and true! The botching work each fine pretender traces Is, I perceive, a ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... imposture of this kind. A man having boasted in his presence that he was endowed with this supernatural privilege, the officer took an opportunity of applying to his arm the point of a sword and drew the blood, to the no little diversion of the spectators, and mortification of the pretender to superior gifts, who vowed revenge, and would have taken it had not means been used to keep him at a distance. But a single detection of charlatanerie is not effectual to destroy a prevalent superstition. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... he 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

... of the Rebellion and of the landing of the Young Pretender reached here Aug. 19, 1745. The Scotch did not come so far as Birmingham, but [though thousands of swords were made here for "Bonnie Prince Charlie"] some little preparation was made to receive them. At a meeting held October 5, 1745, it was ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... Son of God. At once the Sanhedrim reassembled. A political deliverer they might have welcomed, but in a Messiah they had little faith. The very fact of his Messiahship constituted him a claimant to the Jewish throne, and as such a pretender with whom Pilate could deal. Moreover—and here was the point—to claim divinity was to attack the unity of God. Of impious blasphemy ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... 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 in one ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... dead? Well, well, we've much to be thankful for, and that's a solemn word! Me talking nonsense, you say? Oh, if I'd never more to answer for! How was I to know your uncle he was lying there a sham and a false pretender before the Lord? Not long to live, that's what I said. And I'll hold by it, when the time comes, before the Throne. What's that you say? Well, and wasn't he lying there his very self in his bed, and folding his hands on his breast and saying ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... the exiled court of James the Second," replied he. "And I shall bring in the King, and Mary of Modena, and the Prince their son, who was afterwards the Pretender." ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... presented to the King The London Clergy disobey the Royal Order Hesitation of the Government It is determined to prosecute the Bishops for a Libel They are examined by the Privy Council They are committed to the Tower Birth of the Pretender He is generally believed to be supposititious The Bishops brought before the King's Bench and bailed Agitation of the public Mind Uneasiness of Sunderland He professes himself a Roman Catholic Trial of the Bishops The Verdict; Joy of the People Peculiar State ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... as to their reception at Chinon, perhaps even whether their mission might not expose them to the ridicule of their kind, if not to unknown dangers of magic and contact with the Evil One, should this wonderful girl turn out no inspired virgin but a pretender or sorceress. Jean de Metz informs us that she bade them not to fear, that she had been sent to do what she was now doing; that her brothers in paradise would tell her how to act, and that for the last four or five years her brothers in paradise and her ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... but 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 ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... much parable as miracle. That leafy tree was distinguished among fig trees; the others offered no invitation, gave no promise; "the time of figs was not yet"; they, in due season would bring forth fruit and leaves; but this precocious and leafy pretender waved its umbrageous limbs as in boastful assertion of superiority. For those who responded to its ostentatious invitation, for the hungering Christ who came seeking fruit, it had naught but leaves. Even for the purposes of the lesson involved, we cannot ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... confound them as much as possible, so as to throw the Jacobite odium upon every man who opposed government.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 35. Lord Bolingbroke (Works, iii. 28) complains that the writers on the side of the ministry 'frequently throw out that every man is a friend to the Pretender who is not a friend ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... disaffection to the King; and, that just before the recess of the Parliament, one Dr. John Heydon was taken up for treasonable practices, in sowing a sedition in the navy, and engaging persons in a conspiracy to seize the Tower. The man was a pretender to great skill in astrology, but had lost much of his reputation, by prognosticating the hanging of Oliver to his son Richard Cromwel and Thurloe, who came to him in disguise, for the calculation of nativities, being dressed like distressed ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... a brutal 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... far did the pretender go hobbling. He changed his gait and hurried to the eastern side of Valhalla. There a great oak tree flourished and out of a branch of it a little bush of Mistletoe grew. Loki broke off a spray and with it in his hand he went to ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... or throat, have been treated with complete success; while, in reality, the cases, if they ever existed, (of which I have considerable doubt) were either of a scrofulous nature, or the remains of a certain disease. I am confident the pretender NEVER saw a real case of cancer of the mouth and throat; and the very assertion that portions of bone have been exfoliated in these cases, gives the lie direct to the whole, for it is a fact that cancer never causes bone to exfoliate, and in this I am borne out by every medical ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent

... in town, and was now settled in his mansion in Carlton Terrace. It was the fashion among the creme de la creme to keep aloof from him. The Tories did not love revolutionary dynasties, and the Whigs being in office could not sanction a pretender, and one who, they significantly intimated with a charitable shrug of the shoulders, was not a very scrupulous one. The prince himself, though he was not insensible to the charms of society, and especially of agreeable women, was not much chagrined by this. The world ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... primary cause of the war, then raging, was the acceptance by Louis of the crown of Spain for his grandson Philip despite a previous formal renunciation. But the immediate occasion was his espousal of the cause of the son of James II as pretender to the British throne, which enabled the English Government to form a great European alliance to wrest Spain from Philip and prevent Louis from becoming the ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport

... goodly following and these quickly surrounded him and Bu-lot, but there were many knives against them and now Ja-don pressed forward through those who confronted the pretender. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... love for King James that sent my father hither, though he swore allegiance to Anne and the First George. I can say with pride that he was no indifferent servant to either, refusing honours from the Pretender in '15, when he chanced to be at home. An oath is an oath, sir, and we have yet to be false to ours. And the King, say I, should, next to God, be loved and loyally served by his subjects. And so I have served this George, and his grandfather ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... now thoroughly frightened at the serious turn of the dialogue. Was this "Count" a pretender and one of the many bogus noblemen of whom I had read? Rayel was sounding him, that was quite evident. I saw now the mistake I had made in bringing my ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... is sincerity but an actor is a pretender. He appears to be what he is not. Now our ancient wise men felt that pretense of any sort must have a dangerous reactionary influence on the character. If a man learns how to be a clever actor on the stage he may be a skilled deceiver in other walks of life. Moreover, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... the fellow; he has the audacity to say that he has never heard of Calros the pretender, who ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... of investigation. Even men of science, so called, have this feeling. I know that the scientific advisers of the Admiralty, who, years ago, received 100 pounds a year each for his trouble, were sneered at by a wealthy pretender as "fellows to whom a hundred a year is an object." Dr. Thomas Young was one of them. To a bookish man—I mean a man who can manage to collect books—there is no tax. To myself, for example, 40 pounds worth of books deducted from my shelves, and the life-use ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... 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 a more respectable occupation than speech-making. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... desirable, and so salutary, superstition frequently disputes the ascendant even with the admiration of valour; and an order of men, like the Druids among the ancient Gauls and Britons, [Footnote: Caesar.] or some pretender to divination, as at the Cape of Good Hope, finds, in the credit which is paid to his sorcery, a way to the possession of power: his magic wand comes in competition with the sword itself; and, in the manner of the Druids, gives the first ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... the midst of this insipid Way of Life, an old Acquaintance of mine, Tom Meggot, who is a Favourite with her, and allowed to visit me in her Company because he sings prettily, has roused me to rebel, and conveyed his Intelligence to me in the following Manner. My Wife is a great Pretender to Musick, and very ignorant of it; but far gone in the Italian Taste. Tom goes to Armstrong, the famous fine Writer of Musick, and desires him to put this Sentence of Tully [1] in the Scale of an Italian Air, and write it out for my Spouse from ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... Brig remains, but the double dykes have fallen bit by bit into the burn, and the path they made safe is again as naked as when the Kingoldrum Jacobites filed along it, and sweer they were, to the support of the Pretender. It traverses a ridge and is streaked with slippery beech-roots which like to fling you off your feet, on the one side into a black burn twenty feet below, on the other down a pleasant slope. The double dykes were built by ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... whom Napoleon made a marshal of France and Duke of Montebello, thus founding the family to which the French ambassador belonged. The show of coolness on the part of the imperial family evidently vexed the French pretender. He was, indeed, allowed to enter the room behind the imperial train; but he was not permitted to sit at the imperial table, being relegated to a distant and very modest seat. I was informed that, though the Emperor could, and did, have ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... were counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name'! Who would not rather be Peter or John with their bleeding backs than Gamaliel, sitting soft in his presidential chair, and too cautious to commit himself to an opinion whether the name of Jesus was that of a prophet or a pretender? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... hands on France, and especially of maintaining his authority. To them he was only a tool whom they would make use of, who would clear the way for them, and whom they would turn out as soon as the hour arrived for the rightful Pretender to show himself.[*] However, months went by, and they became uneasy. It was only then that they vaguely perceived they were being duped: they had no time, however, to take any steps; the Coup d'Etat burst over their heads, and they were compelled to applaud. That great abomination, the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... their unknown enemies, who had taken away all of their own canoes. How far the medicine-man had anything to do with the other events of his narrative, Crowsfeather very candidly admitted he could not even conjecture. He was still at a loss whether to set down the conjurer for a pretender, or as a real oracle. Peter, however, was less credulous even than the chiefs. He had his superstitious notions, like all uneducated men, but a clear head and quick intellect placed him far above the weaknesses of the red man in general. On receiving a description ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... three or four months of her death, he committed suicide. But before he did so, he formally executed a rather elaborate will, by which he left all his estates in England, 'now unjustly withheld from me contrary to the law and natural right by the rebel pretender Cromwell, together with the treasure hidden thereon or elsewhere by my late murdered father, Sir James de la Molle,' to John Geoffrey Dofferleigh, his cousin, and the brother of his late wife, and his heirs ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... contributing its equal proportion, I am inclined to think that we are in an eminent degree indebted for the success of our Revolution. By passing to the people it vested in a community every individual of which had equal rights and a common interest. There was no family dethroned among us, no banished pretender in a foreign country looking back to his connections and adherents here in the hope of a recall; no order of nobility whose hereditary rights in the Government had been violated; no hierarchy which had been degraded and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... pilgrims that Philip's offer must of necessity be accepted, though Alexius III was on friendly terms with the Pope and had been expected to assist the Crusade. To palliate the flagrant treachery a promise was exacted from the pretender that, when installed as Emperor, he would help in the conquest of Egypt with men, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... There was hung in the apartment one portrait, amongst others, that very much resembled the Duke of D—-. I asked Miss Knight whom it represented. She said that was not known; it had been supposed a likeness of the Pretender, when young. This answer suited my thoughts so comically I could have laughed, if one ever did at courts anything but the contrary of what one was inclined ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Pretender" :   slicker, smoothy, ringer, sweet talker, pseudo, Tartufe, charmer, shammer, claimant, trickster, smoothie, fake, dissimulator, beguiler, cheater, whited sepulcher, cheat, faker, name dropper, pretend, Tartuffe, role player, whited sepulchre, phony, imposter, deceiver



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