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