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LOCAL HISTORY PREVIOUS | NEXT | BROWSE ARCHIVES Bogus Prince held court at Wanstead City financiers as well as staid Wanstead locals were all taken in when Gregor MacGregor, a soldier of fortune, held court at Oak Hall as the self-styled prince of a legendary "sovereign state" called Poyais, on the eastern coastline of South America. Needless to say, as the state of Poyais existed only in the imagination of this crafty Highland opportunist, none of the investors ever benefited from their support of this arch-imposter. The following text is taken from an article penned by the renowned Wanstead historian Winifred Eastment, that appeared in the January 1969 edition of Essex Countryside Magazine. "Wanstead's romantic phase is generally agreed to have reached its zenith from around 1715 to the early nineteenth century, covering that period of wealth and powerful Tylney influence under which the great Wanstead House was planned, built and fabulously furnished to make it a veritable museum of priceless pictures, tapestries, sculptures and objets d'art collected from all over the world, only to be disposed of by auction in 1822 - a year or so before the entire structure was demolished and sold as builder's material for the trifling sum of £10,000, a catastrophe resulting directly from the tragic mésalliance of its last owner, Miss Catherine Tylney Long, and the dissolute Mr William Pole Wellesley. Now, so much of the subsequent limelight has been relentlessly focused upon the pathetic figure of this young heiress - then reputed to the be the richest woman in England - and her disastrous marriage that at least one other sensational aspect of this same era has been considerably under-played by the chroniclers; or, of course, it may have been deliberately hushed up by the embarassed local victims of the villain of the piece - Gregor MacGregor, bogus prince and astute financial manipulator, whose operational headquarters were based at Oak Hall, Wanstead, from 1823 to 1824, a mercifully brief "reign". Oak Hall was owned at that time by a Major William John Richardson, a respected figure in London society, whose wife, formerly Miss Jane Hippesley, was an acknowledged beauty of her day. The major, reputed to be of impeccable character (and probably no more gullible than his fellows), nevertheless became deeply involved in a fraudulent affair which had shattering repercussions not only at local but also at national and international levels. Wanstead's Major Richardson found himself (doubtless to his own immense surprise) acting as charge d'affaires at the London legation of a legendary "sovereign state" called Poyais, on Nicaragua's eastern coastline, whose self-styled prince - His Serene Highness Gregor I of the Independent State of Poyais - held court at Oak Hall for a couple of years, during which time it became a veritable hive of diplomatic activity, where audiences were given, "state" banquets held, honours conferred, high officials received and appointments made for supposed service to the remote state of Poyais ! He managed to deceive not only Wanstead's guileless inhabitants and hundreds of eager members of the investing public, but even the shrewd "gnomes" of London's contemporary banking world, the astute experts of the Stock Exchange, and indeed the city fathers, including the Lord Mayor himself, who welcomed the "prince" to London on arrival from his far-off dominions - ostensibly for the coronation of George IV but more specifically on a fund-raising mission to bolster up and develop his palm-decked paradise. Shrewd Highness ! Psycopath, an incurable sufferer from delusions, or just a common scallywag, superb confidence trickster, the arch-imposter of all time ? Born in 1786, of soldiering stock, MacGregor joined the army at an early age and envisaged a bold and rewarding career; but normal promotion was too slow for his liking, so he tested his fortune in South America, turning up around 1811 in Venezuela, where he hit the headlines as a dare-devil fighter and "bold liberator" in Bolivar's cause. After many wild escapades in the Caribbean as a soldier of fortune and plausible opportunist he landed on Nicaraguan soil, where he secured a land concession and thought up an empire on a grand scale, incorporating a prodigious scheme of recolonization and development, assigning himself the supposed rights and priveleges of a sovereign ruler. He came to London to establish his status, recruit settlers and raise funds to finance it all. There he followed his brief reign at Oak Hall, a country mansion belonging to Major Richardson - "a pretty fine house and all a-buzz with comings and goings - servants in livery - officers in uniform", as one commentator noted, continuing "His Highness was excessively civil - he had just come in from riding in the park - He called me into his private closet, where he sent for wine and called for Major Richardson to join us - They discoursed seriously for above an hour, and I marvelled to learn of the enlightened conditions in His Highness's dominions". With surprising ease (and the help of a wildly eulogistic brochure - "Sketch of the Mosquito Shore") His Highness persuaded the London money market to subscribe to a gigantic loan - said to be £200,000 - to the "Government of Poyais" in the form of £100 bonds redeemable in 30 years at 5 per cent interest.It is claimed that convincing documents were produced to satisy the shrewd (!) financiers and doubtless the entire investing public felt equally convinced that they were on to a really food thing. Could forgery then have been a sideline for His Highness ? The bonds were of course, worthless; no dividends were ever paid. The make believe state crumbled, and MacGregor was unmasked. He was removed from Oak Hall to prison for debt, but he later wormed his way unobtrusively to France with a good deal of his ill-gotten gains, but he eventually lost it all and died in Caracas, in 1845. One would have expected persistent echoes of his machinations to have haunted Wanstead forever, but maybe his luckless dupes preferred to forget how they had been completely hoodwinked by this jumped-up soldier of fortune, this man with a brilliant brain but no conscience. However we may be sure that it took some time for the dust to settle once more in "Sleepy Hollow". Sir Gregor Macgregor and the Land That Never Was: The Extraordinary Story of the Most Audacious Fraud in History You can read more about MacGregor, his dreamt up empire, and how he lured so many people into his grand scheme in this book published in softback by Headline. Buy it online at Amazon or WH Smith. See also these other related articles: Clan Gregor History Website