Trial of Mary Blandy by William Roughead

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On the receipt of Lord Mark's letter, Mrs. Blandy, womanlike,
believed the worst: "her poor Polly was ruined." But her sympathies
were so far enlisted on behalf of the fascinating intended that she
eagerly clutched at any explanation, however lame, which would put
things upon the old footing. She proved a powerful advocate; and, in
the end, Mr. Blandy, accepting his guest's word, allowed the
engagement to continue in the meantime, until the result of the
legal proceedings should be known. He was as loath to forego the
chance of such an aristocratic connection as was his wife to part
from so "genteel" a friend; while Mary Blandy--well, the damsels of
her day were not morbidly nice in such matters, more than once had
the nuptial cup eluded her expectant lips, _enfin_, she was nearing
her thirtieth year: such an opportunity, as Mr. Bunthorne has it,
might not occur again. With the proverbial blindness of those
unwilling to see, the old man did nothing further in regard to Lord
Mark Kerr's communication; that nobleman, annoyed at the
indifference with which his well-meant warning had been received,
forbade his kinsman the house, and the Blandys were thus deprived of
their only means of knowledge as to the doings of their ambiguous
guest.

For the movements of that gentleman from this time until the first
"date" in the case, August, 1750, we must rely mainly upon the
narrative given by his fair fiancee in her _Own Account_, and,
unfortunately, after the manner of her sex, she is somewhat careless
of dates. This first visit of Cranstoun lasted "five or six
months"--from the autumn of 1747 till the spring of 1748--when he
went to London on the footing that Mary, with her father's
permission, should "stay for him" till the "unhappy affair" with his
_soi-disant_ spouse was legally determined. Pending this desired
result, the lovers maintained a vigorous correspondence.

Sometime after his departure, Mrs. Blandy and her daughter went on a
visit to Turville Court, the house of a friend named Mrs. Pocock, of
whom we shall hear again. While there, the old lady became suddenly,
and as was at first feared fatally, ill. Her constant cry, according
to Mary, was, "Let Cranstoun be sent for," and no sooner had that
insignificant warrior posted from Southampton to the sick-room than
the patient began to mend. She declared, now that he had come, she
would soon be well, and refused to take her medicines from any hand
but his. Mr. Blandy, also summoned in haste, was much out of humour
at "the great expense" incurred, and proposed forthwith to take his
wife home, where "neither the physician's fees nor the apothecary's
journeys could be so expensive"; and whenever the invalid was able
to travel, the whole party, including the indispensable captain,
returned to Henley. On the strength of the old lady's continued
illness, Cranstoun contrived to "put in" another six months' free
board and lodging under the Blandys' hospitable roof, until his
regiment was "broke" at Southampton, when he set out for London.
During this visit, says Mary, her father was sometimes "very rude"
to his guest, which, in the circumstances, is not surprising.

Meanwhile, on 1st March, 1748, the Commissary Court had decreed
William Henry Cranstoun and Anne Murray to be man and wife and the
child of the marriage to be their lawful issue, and had decerned the
captain to pay the lady an annuity of L40 sterling for her own
aliment and L10 for their daughter's, so long as she should be
maintained by her mother, and further had found him liable in
expenses, amounting to L100. The proceedings disclose a very ugly
incident. Shortly after leaving his wife, as before narrated,
Cranstoun wrote to her that his sole chance of promotion in the Army
depended on his appearing unmarried, and with much persuasion he at
length prevailed upon her to copy a letter, framed by him, to the
effect that she had never been his wife. Once possessed of this
document in her handwriting, the little scoundrel sent copies of it
to his own and his wife's relatives in Scotland, whereby she
suffered much obloquy and neglect, and when that unhappy lady raised
her action of declarator, with peculiar baseness he lodged the
letter in process. Fortunately, she had preserved the original
draft, together with her faithless husband's letters thereanent.
This judgment was, for the gallant defender, now on half-pay, a
veritable _debacle_, and we may be sure that the confiding Blandys
would have heard no word of it from him; but Mrs. Cranstoun, having
learned something of the game her spouse was playing at Henley,
herself wrote to Mr. Blandy, announcing the decision of the
Commissaries and sending for his information a copy of the decree in
her favour. This, surely, should have opened the eyes even of a
provincial attorney, but Cranstoun, while admitting the fact,
induced him to believe, the wish being father to the thought, that
the Court of first instance, as was not unprecedented, had erred,
and that he was advised, with good hope of success, to appeal
against the judgment to the Court of Session. Finally to dispose of
the captain's legal business, it may now be said that the appeal was
in due course of time dismissed, and the decision of the
Commissaries affirmed. Thus the marriage was as valid as Scots law
could make it. True, as is pointed out by one of his biographers, he
might have appealed to the House of Lords, "but did not, as it
seldom happens that they reverse a decree of the Lords of Session!"
Nowadays, we may assume, Cranstoun would have taken the risk. The
result of this protracted litigation was never known to Mr. Blandy.

In the spring of 1749, "a few months" after Cranstoun's departure,
Miss Blandy and her mother went to London for the purpose of taking
medical advice as to the old lady's health, which was still
unsatisfactory. They lived while in town with Mrs. Blandy's brother,
Henry Stevens, the Serjeant, in Doctors' Commons. Cranstoun, with
whom Mary had been in constant correspondence, waited upon the
ladies the morning after their arrival, and came daily during their
visit. On one occasion, Mary states, he brought his elder brother,
the reigning baron, to call upon them. This gentleman was James,
sixth Lord Cranstoun, who had succeeded to the title on the death of
his father in 1727. What was his lordship's attitude regarding the
"perplexing affair" in Scotland she does not inform us; but Mr.
Serjeant Stevens refused to countenance the attentions of the
entangled captain. Mrs. Blandy wept because her brother would not
invite Cranstoun to dinner, and it was arranged that, to avoid
"affronts," she should receive the captain's visits in her own room.
But her friend Mrs. Pocock of Turville Court had a house in St.
James's Square. "Hither Mr. Cranstoun perpetually came," says Mary,
"when he understood that I was there;" so they were able to dispense
with the Serjeant's hospitality. One day she and her mother were
bidden to dine at Mrs. Pocock's, to meet my Lord Garnock (the future
Lord Crauford). Cranstoun and their hostess called for them in a
coach, and in the Strand whom should the party encounter but Mr.
Blandy, come to town on business. "For God's sake, Mrs. Pocock, what
do you with this rubbish?" cried the attorney, stopping the coach.
"Rubbish!" quoth the lady, "Your wife, your daughter, and one who
may be your son?" "Ay," replied the old man, "They are very well
matched; 'tis a pity they should ever be asunder!" "God grant they
never may," simpered the ugly lover; "don't you say amen, papa?" But
amen, as appears, stuck in Mr. Blandy's throat: he declined Mrs.
Pocock's invitation to join them, and shortly thereafter returned to
Henley.

During this visit to town Mary Blandy states that Cranstoun proposed
a secret marriage "according to the usage of the Church of
England"--apparently with the view of testing the relative strength
of the nuptial knot as tied by their respective Churches. Mary, with
hereditary caution, refused to make the experiment unless an opinion
of counsel were first obtained, and Cranstoun undertook to submit
the point to Mr. Murray, the Solicitor-General for Scotland.
Whatever view, if any, that learned authority expressed regarding so
remarkable an expedient, Mary heard no more of the matter; but in
Cranstoun's _Account_ the marriage is said to have taken place at
her own request, "lest he should prove ungrateful to her after so
material an intimacy." How "material" in fact was the intimacy
between them at this time we can only conjecture.

Mrs. Blandy seems to have made the most of her visit to the
metropolis, for, according to her daughter, she had contracted debts
amounting to forty pounds, and as she "durst not" inform Mr. Blandy,
she borrowed that sum from her obliging future son-in-law. By what
means the captain, in the then state of his finances, came by the
money Mary fails to explain. Being thus, in a pecuniary sense, once
more afloat, the ladies, taking grateful leave of Cranstoun, went
home to Henley.

We hear nothing further of their doings until some six months after
their return, when on Thursday, 28th September 1749, Mrs. Blandy
became seriously ill. Mr. Norton, the Henley apothecary who attended
the family, was sent for, and her brother, the Rev. John Stevens, of
Fawley, who, "with other country gentlemen meeting to bowl at the
Bell Inn," chanced then to be in the town, was also summoned. It was
at first hoped that the old lady would rally as on the former
occasion but she gradually grew worse, notwithstanding the
attentions of the eminent Dr. Addington, brought from Reading to
consult upon the case. Her husband, her daughter, and her two
brothers were with her until the end, which came on Saturday, 30th
September. To the last the dying woman clung to her belief in the
good faith of her noble captain: "Mary has set her heart upon
Cranstoun; when I am gone, let no one set you against the match,"
were her last words to her husband. He replied that they must wait
till the "unhappy affair in Scotland" was decided. The complaint of
which Mrs. Blandy died was, as appears, intestinal inflammation,
but, as we shall see later, her daughter was popularly believed to
have poisoned her. However wicked Mary Blandy may have been, she
well knew that by her mother's death she and Cranstoun lost their
best friend. An old acquaintance and neighbour of Mrs. Blandy, one
Mrs. Mounteney, of whom we shall hear again, came upon a visit to
the bereaved family. Mrs. Blandy, on her deathbed, had commended
this lady to her husband, in case he should "discover an inclination
to marry her"--she already was Mary's godmother; but Mrs. Mounteney
was destined to play another part in the subsequent drama.

Miss Blandy broke the sad news by letter to her lover in London, and
pressed him to come immediately to Henley; but the gallant officer
replied that he was confined to the house for fear of the bailiffs,
and suggested the propriety of a remittance from the mistress of his
heart. Mary promptly borrowed forty pounds from Mrs. Mounteney,
fifteen of which she forwarded for the enlargement of the captain,
who, on regaining his freedom, came to Henley, where he remained
some weeks. Francis Blandy was much affected by the loss of his
wife. At first he seems to have raised no objection to Cranstoun's
visit, but soon Mary had to complain of the "unkind things" which
her father said both to her lover and herself. There was still no
word from Scotland, except a "very civil" letter of condolence from
my Lady Cranstoun, accompanied by a present of kippered
salmon--apparently intended as an antidote to grief; but though the
old man was gratified by such polite attentions, his mind was far
from easy. He was fast losing all faith in the vision of that
splendid alliance by which he had been so long deluded, and did not
care to conceal his disappointment from the person mainly
responsible.

On this visit mention was first made by Cranstoun of the fatal
powder of which we shall hear so much. Miss Blandy states that,
_apropos_ to her father's unpropitious attitude, her lover
"acquainted her of the great skill of the famous Mrs. Morgan," a
cunning woman known to him in Scotland, from whom he had received a
certain powder, "which she called love-powders"--being, as appears,
the Scottish equivalent to the _poculum amatorium_ or love philtre
of the Romans. Mary said she had no faith in such things, but
Cranstoun assured her of its efficacy, having once taken some
himself, and immediately forgiven a friend to whom he had intended
never to speak again. "If I had any of these powders," said he, "I
would put them into something Mr. Blandy should drink." Such is
Mary's account of the inception of the design upon her father's
love--or life. There for the time matters rested.

"Before he left Henley for the last time," writes Lady Russell, to
whose interesting account we shall later refer, "Captain Cranstoun
made an assignation with Miss Blandy to meet her in the grounds of
Park Place, which had long been their trysting-place; and here it
was that in a walk which still goes by the name of 'Blandy's Walk,'
he first broached his diabolical plan." Park Place, according to the
same authority, had shortly before been purchased by General Conway
and Lady Ailesbury from Mr. Blandy, as "trustee" of the property.

A "dunning" letter following the impecunious captain to his peaceful
retreat alarmed the lovers, for the appearance of a bailiff in the
respectable house in Hart Street would, for Mr. Blandy, have been,
as the phrase goes, the last straw. Fortunately, Mary had retained
against such a contingency the balance of Mrs. Mounteney's loan; and
with another fifteen pounds of that lady's in his pocket, the
captain left for London to liquidate his debt.

From that time till August, 1750, the shadow of his sinister guest
did not darken the attorney's door. On the first of that month
Cranstoun wrote that he proposed to wait upon him. "He must come, I
suppose," sighed the old man, and allowed Mary to write that the
visitor would be received. Doubtless, he faintly hoped that the
Scottish difficulty was at last removed. But the captain, when he
came, brought nothing better than the old empty assurances, and his
host did not conceal how little weight he now attached to such
professions. The visit was an unpleasant one for all parties, and
the situation was rapidly becoming impossible. Mary "seldom rose
from the table without tears." Her father spent his evenings at "the
coffee-house," that he might see as little as possible of the
unwelcome guest.

One morning, Mary states, Cranstoun put some of the magic powder in
the old gentleman's tea, when, _mirabile dictu_, Mr. Blandy, who at
breakfast had been very cross, appeared at dinner in the best of
humours, and continued so "all the time Mr. Cranstoun stayed with
him"! After this, who could doubt the beneficent efficacy of the
wise woman's drug?

During one of their daily walks this singular lover informed his
betrothed that he had a secret to communicate, to wit, that over and
above the Scottish complication, "he had a daughter by one Miss
Capel" a year before he met the present object of his desires. Miss
Blandy, with much philosophy, replied that she hoped he now saw his
follies and would not repeat them. "If I do," said Cranstoun, "I
must be a villain; you alone can make me happy in this world; and by
following your example, I hope I shall be happy in the next." A day
or two afterwards, when Cranstoun was abroad, Mary, so far
anticipating her wifely duties, entered his room in order to look
out his things for the wash. She found more "dirty linen" than she
expected. In an unlocked trunk was a letter of recent date,
addressed to the gallant captain by a lady then enjoying his
protection in town. Even Miss Blandy's robust affection was not, for
the moment, able to overlook a treachery so base. She locked the
trunk, put the key in her pocket, and at the first opportunity
handed it to Cranstoun, with the remark that he should in future be
more careful of his private correspondence. A disgusting scene
ensued. For two hours the wretched little captain wept and raved,
imploring her forgiveness. On his knees, clinging to the skirts of
her gown, he swore he would not live till night unless she pardoned
his offence. Mary asked him to leave Henley at once; she would not
expose him, and their engagement "might seem to go off by degrees."
But the miserable creature conjured her by her mother's dying words
not to give him up, vowing never to repeat "the same provocations."
In the end Mary foolishly yielded; one wonders at the strength of
that abnormal passion by which she was driven to accept a position
so impossible for a decent and intelligent girl.

Soon after this incident Cranstoun was summoned to Scotland, where
his mother, Lady Cranstoun, was "extremely ill." "Good God!" cried
this admirable son, "what shall I do? I have no money to carry me
thither, and all my fortune is seized on but my half-pay!" For the
third time Miss Blandy came to the rescue, even giving him back a
miniature of his ugly countenance with which he had formerly
presented her. At six o'clock next morning he set out for the North
in a post-chaise. The old attorney rose early with good heart to
speed the parting guest, and furnished him with a half-pint bottle
of rum for the journey. Mary says they "all shed tears"; if so, hers
were the only genuine tokens of regret. As she waved good-bye to her
lover and watched the departing chaise till it was lost to view
along the London road, she little thought that, although his
sinister influence would remain with her to the end, his graceless
person had passed from her sight for ever.

It was the month of November, 1750, when Cranstoun took final leave
of Henley. In October, a year after Mrs. Blandy's death, divers
curious phenomena had been observed in the old house by the bridge.
Cranstoun professed that he could get no sleep o' nights, in his
room "over the great parlour," by reason of unearthly music sounding
through the chamber after midnight, for two hours at a time. On his
informing his host of the circumstance, Mr. Blandy caustically
observed, "It was Scotch music, I suppose?" from which Miss Blandy
inferred that he was not in a good humour--though the inference
seems somewhat strained. This manifestation was varied by rappings,
rustlings, banging of doors, footfalls on the stairs, and other
eerie sounds, "which greatly terrified Mr. Cranstoun." The old man
was plainly annoyed by these stories, though he merely expressed the
opinion that his guest was "light-headed." But when Cranstoun one
morning announced that he had been visited in the night, as the
clock struck two, by the old gentleman's wraith, "with his white
stockings, his coat on, and a cap on his head," Mr. Blandy "did not
seem pleased with the discourse," and the subject was dropped. But
Mary, mentioning these strange matters to the maids, expressed the
fear that such happenings boded no good to her father, and told how
Mr. Cranstoun had learned from a cunning woman in Scotland that they
were the messengers of death, and that her father would die within
the year.

Whatever weight might attach to these gloomy prognostications of the
mysterious Mrs. Morgan, it became obvious that from about that date
Francis Blandy's health began to fail. He was in the sixty-second
year of his age, and he suffered the combined assault of gout,
gravel, and heartburn. The state of irritation and suspense
consequent upon his daughter's relations with her lover must greatly
have aggravated his troubles. It was assumed by the prosecution, on
the ground of Mr. Blandy losing his teeth through decay, that he had
begun to manifest the effects of poison soon after Cranstoun left
Henley in November, 1750, but from the evidence given at the trial
it seems improbable that anything injurious was administered to him
until the receipt in the following April of that deadly present from
Scotland, "The powder to clean the pebbles with." Mr. Norton, the
medical man who attended him for several years, stated that the last
illness Mr. Blandy had before the fatal one of August, 1751, was in
July, 1750. The stuff that Cranstoun had put into the old
gentleman's tea in August could, therefore, have no reference to the
illness of the previous month, and certainly was not the genuine
preparation of Mrs. Morgan. If Mary Blandy were not in fact his
accomplice later, it may have been sifted sugar or something equally
simple, to induce her to believe the magic powder harmless.

Having at length got his would-be son-in-law out of the house, Mr.
Blandy determined to be fooled no further; he ordered Mary to write
to Cranstoun telling him on no account to show his face again at
Henley until his matrimonial difficulties were "quite decided."
Tears and entreaties were of no avail; like all weak characters, Mr.
Blandy, having for once put down his foot, was obdurate. This
ultimatum she duly communicated to her lover in the North; if we
could know in what terms and how replied to by him, we should solve
the riddle. Hitherto they seem to have trusted to time and the old
man's continued credulity to effect their respective ends, but now,
if Miss Blandy were to secure a "husband" and Cranstoun lay hands
upon her L10,000, some definite step must be taken. Both knew, what
was as yet unknown to Mr. Blandy, that the appeal had long since
been dismissed, and that while his wife lived Cranstoun could never
marry Mary. At any moment her father might learn the truth and
alter, by the stroke of a pen, the disposition of his fortune. That
they openly agreed to remove by murder the obstacle to their mutual
desires is unlikely. Cranstoun, as appears from all the
circumstances, was the instigator, as he continued throughout the
guiding spirit, of the plot; probably nothing more definite was said
between them than that the "love powder" would counteract the old
man's opposition; but from her subsequent conduct, as proved by the
evidence, it is incredible that Mary acted in ignorance of the true
purpose of the wise woman's prescription.

In April, or the beginning of May, 1751, by Miss Blandy's statement,
she received from her lover a letter informing her that he had seen
his old friend Mrs. Morgan, who was to oblige him with a fresh
supply of her proprietary article, which he would send along with
some "Scotch pebbles" for his betrothed's acceptance. "Ornaments of
Scotch pebbles," says Lady Russell, "were the extreme of fashion in
the year 1750." According to the opening speech for the Crown, both
powder and pebbles arrived at Henley in April; Mary says they did
not reach her hands till June. Susan Gunnell, one of the
maidservants, stated at the trial that there were two consignments
of pebbles from Scotland; one "in a large box of table linen," which
came "early in the spring," and another in "a small box," some three
months before her master's death. Cranstoun's instructions were "to
mix the powder in tea." While professing to doubt "such efficacy
could be lodged in any powder whatsoever," and expressing the fear
"lest it should impair her father's health," Mary consented to give
the love philtre a fair trial. "This some mornings after I did," she
says in her _Own Account_.

Of the earlier phases of Francis Blandy's fatal illness, which began
in this month of June, the evidence tells us nothing more definite
than that he suffered much internal pain and frequently was sick; but
two incidents occurring at that time throw some light upon the cause
of his complaint. It was the habit of the old man to have his tea
served "in a different dish from the rest of the family." One morning
Susan Gunnell, finding that her master had left his tea untasted,
drank it; for three days she was violently sick and continued unwell
for a week. On another occasion Mr. Blandy's tea being again untouched
by him, it was given to an old charwoman named Ann Emmet, often
employed about the house. She shortly was seized with sickness so
severe as to endanger her life. That Mary knew of both these
mysterious attacks is proved; she was much concerned at the illness
of the charwoman, who was a favourite of hers, and she sent white
wine, whey, and broth for the invalid's use.

It is singular that such experiences failed to shake Miss Blandy's
faith in the harmless nature of Mrs. Morgan's nostrum, but they at
least made her realise that tea was an unsuitable vehicle for its
exhibition, and she communicated the fact to Cranstoun. Her
bloodthirsty adviser, however, was able to meet the difficulty. On
18th July he wrote to her, "in an allegorical manner," as
follows:--"I am sorry there are such occasions to clean your
pebbles; you must make use of the powder to them by putting it in
anything of substance wherein it will not swim a-top of the water,
of which I wrote to you in one of my last. I am afraid it will be
too weak to take off their rust, or at least it will take too long a
time." As a further inducement to her to hasten the work in hand, he
described the beauties of Scotland, and mentioned that his mother,
Lady Cranstoun, was having an apartment specially fitted up at
Lennel House for Mary's use. The text of this letter was quoted by
Bathurst in his opening speech for the Crown, but the report of the
trial does not bear that the document itself was produced, or that
it was proved to be in Cranstoun's handwriting. The letter is quoted
in the _Secret History_ and referred to in other contemporary
tracts, and the fact of its existence appears to have been well
known at the time. Further, Miss Blandy in her _Own Account_
distinctly alludes to its receipt, and no objection was taken by her
or her counsel to the reading of it at the trial. The point is of
importance for two reasons. Firstly, this letter, if written by
Cranstoun and received by Mary affords the strongest presumptive
proof of their mutual guilt. Had their design been, as she asserted,
innocent, what need to adopt in a private letter this "allegorical"
and guarded language? Secondly, Mary, as we shall see, found means
before her arrest to destroy the half of the Cranstoun correspondence
in her keeping, and it would have been more satisfactory if the
prosecution had shown how this particular letter escaped to fall into
their hands. That she herself fabricated it in order to inculpate her
accomplice is highly improbable; had she done so, as Mr. Bleackley has
pointed out, its contents would have been more consistent with her
defence.

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