Word Finder - pretender

definition

A person who professes beliefs and opinions that they do not hold.

definition

A claimant to an abolished or already occupied throne.

He's a pretender, pure and simple.

In the same year he joined as a volunteer against the Pretender, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk (1746).

He reigned only four months (in 294), and was succeeded by the pretender Narseh.

He now renounced all further efforts on the Pretender's behalf.'

Not a rough prophet in the desert like John, not a leader striking for political freedom, not a pretender aiming at the petty throne of the Herods, not even a great rabbi, building on the patriotic foundation of the Pharisees who had secured the national life by a new devotion to the ancient law.

Lord Stormont's family was Jacobite in its politics, and his second son James (c. 1690-1728), being apparently mixed up in some of the plots of the time, joined the court of the exiled Stuarts and in 1721 was created earl of Dunbar by James Edward, the Old Pretender.

But, in a false alarm, the Jacobites suddenly retreated, and a few years later the town was reimbursed by the State for the Pretender's extortions.

Derby, however, was always royalist in sympathy, and did not finally surrender till 1646; in 1659 it rebelled against Richard Cromwell, and in 1745 entertained the young Pretender.

As soon as the rebel army got possession of Edinburgh Maclaurin fled to England, to avoid making submission to the Pretender.

Shortly after Murad's accession the emperor Manuel, having applied in vain for the renewal of the annual subsidy paid him by the late sultan for retaining in safe custody Mustafa, an alleged son of Bayezid, released the pretender.

Both France and Anjou supported this pretender's cause from time to time; he was always a thorn in Henry's side till his untimely death at Alost (1128), but more especially after the catastrophe of the White Ship (1120) deprived the king of his only lawful son.

To this type of glass belong many of the Jacobite glasses which commemorate the old or the young Pretender.

In May he had charge of the bill for securing the Protestant succession; he took part in the impeachment of the Whig lords for their conduct concerning the Partition treaties, and opposed the oath abjuring the Pretender.

The aims of the former, prudent, procrastinating and vacillating by nature, never extended probably beyond the propitiation of his Tory followers; and it is difficult to imagine that Bolingbroke could have really advocated the Pretender's recall, whose divine right he repudiated and whose religion and principles he despised.

It is possible to suppose a connexion between his zeal for making peace with France and a desire to forward the Pretender's interests or win support from the Jacobites.'

In March 1714 Herville, the French envoy in London, sent to Torcy, the French foreign minister in Paris, the substance of two long conversations with Bolingbroke in which the latter advised patience till after the accession of George, when a great reaction was to be expected in favour of the Pretender.

On the death of his father on the 9th of January 1873 the Imperialists proclaimed him Napoleon IV., and he became the official Pretender.

Of all the European nations France was the one on which Jacobite hopes mainly rested, and the warm sympathy which Cardinal Tencin, who had succeeded Fleury as French minister, felt for the Old Pretender resulted in a definite scheme for an invasion of England to be timed simultaneously with a prearranged Scottish rebellion.

Pilate fulfilled his pledge by giving them the man of their choice, and Jesus, whom he had vainly hoped to release on a satisfactory pretext, he now condemned to the shameful punishments of scourging and crucifixion; for the cross, as Jesus had foreseen, was the inevitable fate of a Jewish pretender to sovereignty.

It shows us the Lord Jesus entering on the mission predicted by the Baptist without declaring Himself to be the Messiah; attracting the multitudes in Galilee by His healing power and His unbounded sympathy, and at the same time awakening the envy and suspicion of the leaders of religion; training a few disciples till they reach the conviction that He is the Christ, and then, but not till then, admitting them into the secret of His coming sufferings, and preparing them for a mission in which they also must sacrifice themselves; then journeying to Jerusalem to fulfil the destiny which He foresaw, accepting the responsibility of the Messianic title, only to be condemned by the religious authorities as a blasphemer and handed over to the Roman power as a pretender to the Jewish throne.

After his liberation Lockhart became a secret agent of the Pretender; but his correspondence with the prince fell into the hands of the government in 1727, compelling him to go into concealment at Durham until he was able to escape abroad.

These Memoirs, together with Lockhart's correspondence with the Pretender, and one or two papers of minor importance, were published in two volumes in 1817, forming the well-known "Lockhart Papers," which are a valuable authority for the history of the Jacobites.

James Wood, who became Nonconformist minister in the chapel at Atherton in 1691, earned fame and the familiar title of "General" by raising a force from his congregation, uncouthly armed, to fight against the troops of the Pretender (1715).

Ten thousand fighting men, and even two of the sons of the pretender (it is said, on his own advice), left the city and surrendered.

The new pretender entered Fars and Ahwaz (Susiana), and it was in this last province near Tostar (Shuster) that Hajjaj came up with him, after receiving from Syria the reinforcements which he had demanded in all haste from the caliph.

The pretender was betrayed by the king of Kabul and killed himself.

After some successes, the pretender was ultimately cornered at the castle of Sanam near Kish, and took poison together with all the members of his family.

Both Oxford and Bolingbroke were in communication with the Pretender's party, and on the 27th of July Oxford, who had gradually lost influence and quarrelled with Bolingbroke, resigned, leaving the supreme power in the hands of the latter.

In 1708, on the occasion of the Scottish expedition, notwithstanding her solicitude for his safety, she had styled James in her speech closing the session of parliament as "a popish pretender bred up in the principles of the most arbitrary government."

Her moderation towards the Jacobites in Scotland, after the Pretender's expedition in 1708, was much praised by Saint Simon.

After Culloden, however, it was seen that all serious danger of a Stuart restoration was passed; and in 1778 Catholics who abjured the Pretender and denied the civil authority of the pope were relieved from their most pressing disabilities.

The belief that he had not really died, but would return again to confound his foes, was long prevalent, not only in the remoter provinces, but even in Rome itself; and more than one pretender was able to collect a following by assuming the name of the last of the race of Augustus.

His enemies denounced him as a pretender, a selfish intriguer, and an abandoned profligate; his supporters placed him among the sages and sometimes even among the saints.

John's son Donald, sometimes called "gentle Lochiel," joined Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, in 1745, was wounded at Culloden, and escaped to France, dying in the same year as his father.

He recognized the Pretender, "James III.," and promised him subsidies conditional upon the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism in England.

He was defeated by Caesar at Zela, and on his return to Rome was slain by a pretender Asander who married his daughter Dynamis, and in spite of Roman nominees ruled as archon, and later as king, until 16 B.C. After his death Dynamis was compelled to marry an adventurer Scribonius, but the Romans under Agrippa interfered and set Polemon (14-8) in his place.

The brother of Ferdinand, Don Carlos, the first pretender, fought seven years, during the minority of Isabella, to dispute her title, and her rights were only maintained through the gallant support of the army, the Cortes and the Liberals and Progressists, who at the same time established constitutional and parliamentary government, dissolved the religious orders, confiscated the property of the orders and of the Jesuits, disestablished the Church property, and attempted to restore order in finances.

Several expeditions involving heavy fighting were necessary against these in 1901-4, and a certain amount of success was achieved, but the pretender escaped, revolt still smouldered and hostilities were continued.

The elections, though often controlled by the Turkish Divan, were still constitutionally in the hands of the boiars, who were split up into various factions, each with its own pretender to the throne.

In 1715 the Earl Marischal proclaimed the Old Pretender at Aberdeen, and in 1745 the duke of Cumberland resided for a short time in the city before attacking the Young Pretender.

It is notable that when, after Edreds death, there was civil strife, owing to the quarrel of his nephew Edwy with some of his kinsmen, ministers and bishops, the rebels, who included the majority of the Mercians and Northumbrians, set up as their pretender to the throne not a Dane but Edwys younger brother Edgar, who ruled for a short time north of Thames, and became sole monarch on the death of his unfortunate kinsman.

Meanwhile in England another pretender had appeared.

The pretender was crowned at Westminster on the 22nd of December 1135less than a month after his uncles death.

These terms so irritated the Scots, who had shown signs of submission up to this moment, that they refused to accept the pretender, and kept up a long guerilla warfare which ended in his final expulsion..

When battle was joined some left the field and many joined the pretender.

But the pretender nevertheless sailed from Flanders in July 1495 with a following of 2000 exiles and German mercenaries.

But a pretender backed by Scottish spears did not appeal to the sympathies of the English borderers.

The pretender led off his horde to meet the relieving force, but when he reached Taunton he found that his followers were so dispirited that disaster was certain.

It took a year or two to satisfy him that Portugal was really his; not until 1583 was the fleet of the pretender Don Antonio destroyed in the Azores.

The landing of the Pretender in Scotland (1715), and the defeat of a portion of his army which had advanced to Prestona defeat which was the consequence of the apathy of his English supporters, and which was followed by the complete suppression of the rebelliongave increased strength to the Whig government.