Famous Impostors : Complete

Impostors of royalty are placed first on account of the fascinating glamour of the throne whichhas allured so many to the attempt.

Perkin Warbeck began a life of royal imposture at the age ofseventeen and yet got an army round him and dared to make war on Harry Hotspur before endinghis short and stormy life on the gallows.

With a crown for stake, it is not surprising that men havebeen found willing to run even such risks as those taken by the impostors of Sebastian of Portugaland Louis XVII of France.

That imposture, even if unsuccessful, may be very difficult to detect, isshown in the cases of Princess Olive and Cagliostro, and in those of Hannah Snell, Mary East, andthe many women who in military and naval, as well as in civil, life assumed and maintained even inthe din of battle the simulation of men.One of the most extraordinary and notorious impostures ever known was that of Arthur Orton,the Tichborne Claimant, whose ultimate exposure necessitated the employment, at great publicexpense of time and money, of the best judicial and forensic wits in a legal process of unprecedentedlength.