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TRIAL OF MARY BLANDY
Edited By
WILLIAM ROUGHEAD
Author of "Twelve Scots Trials,"
"The Riddle of the Ruthvens,"
"Glengarry's Way," &c.
ILLUSTRATED
1914
To Lord Dunsany
This record of grim reality
in exchange for his beautiful dreams
PREFACE
In undertaking to prepare an account of this celebrated trial, the Editor at the outset fondly trusted that the conviction of "the unfortunate Miss Blandy" might, upon due inquiry, be found to have been, as the phrase is, a miscarriage of justice. To the entertainment of this chivalrous if unlively hope he was moved as well by the youth, the sex, and the traditional charms of that lady, as by the doubts expressed by divers wiseacres concerning her guilt; but a more intimate knowledge of the facts upon which the adverse verdict rested, speedily disposed of his inconfident expectation.
Though the evidence sheds but a partial light upon the hidden springs of the dark business in which she was engaged, and much that should be known in order perfectly to appreciate her symbolic value remains obscure, we can rest assured that Mary Blandy, whatever she may have been, was no victim of judicial error. We watch, perforce, the tragedy from the front; never, despite the excellence of the official "book," do we get a glimpse of what is going on behind the scenes, nor see beneath the immobile and formal mask, the living face; but, when the spectacle of The Fair Parricide is over, we at least are satisfied that justice, legal and poetic, has been done.
Few cases in our criminal annals have occasioned a literature so extensive. The bibliography, compiled by Mr. Horace Bleackley in connection with his striking study, "The Love Philtre" (Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold, London, 1905),—which, by his courteous permission, is reprinted in the Appendix, enumerates no fewer than thirty contemporary tracts, while the references to the case by later writers would of themselves form a considerable list.
To this substantial cairn a further stone or two are here contributed. There will be found in the Appendix copies of original MSS. in the British Museum and the Public Record Office, not hitherto published, relating to the case. These comprise the correspondence of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, Mr. Secretary Newcastle, the Solicitor to the Treasury, and other Government officials, regarding the conduct of the prosecution and the steps taken for the apprehension of Miss Blandy's accomplice, the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun; a petition of "The Noblemen and Gentlemen in the Neighbourhood of Henley-upon-Thames" as to the issuing of a proclamation for his arrest, with the opinion thereon of the Attorney-General, Sir Dudley Ryder; and the deposition of the person by whose means Cranstoun's flight from justice was successfully effected. This deposition is important as disclosing the true story of his escape, of which the published accounts are, as appears, erroneous. Among other matter now printed for the first time may be mentioned a letter from the War Office to the Paymaster-General, directing Cranstoun's name to be struck off the half-pay list; and a letter from John Riddell, the Scots genealogist, to James Maidment, giving some account of the descendants of Cranstoun. For permission to publish these documents the Editor is indebted to the courtesy of Mr. A.M. Broadley and Mr. John A. Fairley, the respective owners.
The iconography of Mary Blandy has been made a feature of the present volume, all the portraits of her known to the Editor being reproduced. A description of the curious satirical print, "The Scotch Triumvirate," will be found in the Appendix.
Of special interest is the facsimile of Miss Blandy's last letter to Captain Cranstoun, of which the interception, like that of Mrs. Maybrick's letter to Brierley, was fraught with such fateful consequences. The photograph is taken from the original letter in the Record Office, where the papers connected with the memorable Assizes in question have but recently been lodged.
For the account of the case contained in the Introduction, the Editor has read practically all the contemporaneous pamphlets—a tedious and often fruitless task—and has consulted such other sources of information as are now available. He has, however, thought well (esteeming the comfort of his readers above his own reputation for research) to present the product as a plain narrative, unencumbered by the frequent footnotes which citation of so many authorities would otherwise require—the rather that any references not furnished by the bibliography are sufficiently indicated in the text.
Finally, the Editor would express his gratitude to Mr. Horace Bleackley and Mr. A.M. Broadley for their kindness in affording him access to their collections of Blandyana, including rarities (to quote an old title-page) "nowhere to be found but in the Closets of the Curious," greatly to the lightening of his labours and the enrichment of the result.
W.R.
8 OXFORD TERRACE,
EDINBURGH, April, 1914.
CONTENTS
[ The Trial—
TUESDAY, 3RD MARCH, 1752. ]
[ Motion by Mr. Ford to call another witness refused]
[ Hon. Mr. Bathurst's Closing Speech for the Prosecution]
[ Mr. Baron Legge's Charge to the Jury]
APPENDICES
[ I.]—Proceedings before the Coroner relative to the Death of Mr. Francis Blandy
[ II.]—Copies of Original Letters in the British Museum and Public Record Office, relating to the Case of Mary Blandy
[ III.]—A Letter from a Clergyman to Miss Mary Blandy, now a prisoner in Oxford Castle, with her Answer thereto; as also Miss Blandy's own narrative of the crime for which she is condemned to die
[ IV.]—Miss Mary Blandy's own account of the affair between her and Mr. Cranstoun, from the commencement of their acquaintance in the year 1746 to the death of her father in August, 1751, with all the circumstances leading to that unhappy event
[ V.]—Letter from Miss Blandy to a Clergyman in Henley
[ VI.]—Contemporary Advertisement of a Love Philtre
[ VII.]—Contemporary Account of the Execution of Mary Blandy
[ VIII.]—Letter from the War Office to the Paymaster-General, striking Cranstoun's name off the Half-Pay List
[ IX.]—The Confessions of Cranstoun—
- 1. Cranstoun's own version of the facts
- 2. Captain Cranstoun's account of the Poisoning of the late Mr. Francis Blandy
[ X.]—Extract from a Letter from Dunkirk anent the death of Cranstoun
[ XI.]—Letter from John Biddell, the Scots genealogist, to James Maidment, regarding the descendants of Cranstoun
[ XII.]—Bibliography of the Blandy Case
[ XIII.]—Description of the satirical print "The Scotch Triumvirate"
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[ Miss Blandy in her Cell in Oxford Castle]
Frontispiece
From an unpublished Sepia Drawing in the Collection of Mr. Horace Bleackley.
[ Facsimile of the Intercepted Letter to Cranstoun written by Mary Blandy ]
From the original MS. in the Public Record Office.
[ Miss Blandy ]
From a Mezzotint by T. Ryley, after L. Wilson, in the Collection of Mr. A.M. Broadley.
[ Miss Mary Blandy in Oxford Castle Gaol ]
From an Engraving in the British Museum.
[ Captain Cranstoun and Miss Blandy ]
From an Engraving in the British Museum.
[ Miss Mary Blandy ]
From an Engraving by B. Cole, after a Drawing for which she sat in Oxford Castle.
[ Miss Molly Blandy, taken from the life in Oxford Castle ]
From an Engraving in the Collection of Mr. A.M. Broadley.
[ Miss Mary Blandy, with scene of her Execution ]
From an Engraving by B. Cole, after an original Painting.
[ Captain William Henry Cranstoun, with his pompous funeral procession in Flanders ]
From an Engraving by B. Cole.
[ The Scotch Triumvirate ]
From a satirical Print in the Collection of Mr. Horace Bleackley.
MARY BLANDY.
INTRODUCTION
In the earlier half of the eighteenth century there lived in the pleasant town of Henley-upon-Thames, in Oxfordshire, one Francis Blandy, gentleman, attorney-at-law. His wife, née Mary Stevens, sister to Mr. Serjeant Stevens of Culham Court, Henley, and of Doctors' Commons, a lady described as "an emblem of chastity and virtue; graceful in person, in mind elevated," had, it was thought, transmitted these amiable qualities to the only child of the marriage, a daughter Mary, baptised in the parish church of Henley on 15th July, 1720. Mr. Blandy, as a man of old family and a busy and prosperous practitioner, had become a person of some importance in the county. His professional skill was much appreciated by a large circle of clients, he acted as steward for most of the neighbouring gentry, and he had held efficiently for many years the office of town-clerk.
But above the public respect which his performance of these varied duties had secured him, Mr. Blandy prized his reputation as a man of wealth. The legend had grown with his practice and kept pace with his social advancement. The Blandys' door was open to all; their table, "whether filled with company or not, was every day plenteously supplied"; and a profuse if somewhat ostentatious hospitality was the "note" of the house, a comfortable mansion on the London road, close to Henley Bridge. Burn, in his History of Henley, describes it as "an old-fashioned house near the White Hart, represented in the view of the town facing the title-page" of his volume, and "now [1861] rebuilt." The White Hart still survives in Hart Street, with its courtyard and gallery, where of yore the town's folk were wont to watch the bear-baiting; one of those fine old country inns which one naturally associates with Pickwickian adventure.
In such surroundings the little Mary, idolised by her parents and spoiled by their disinterested guests, passed her girlhood. She is said to have been a clever, intelligent child, and of ways so winning as to "rapture" all with whom she came in contact. She was educated at home by her mother, who "instructed her in the principles of religion and piety, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England." To what extent she benefited by the good dame's teaching will appear later, but at any rate she was fond of reading—a taste sufficiently remarkable in a girl of her day. At fourteen, we learn, she was mistress of those accomplishments which others of like station and opportunities rarely achieve until they are twenty, "if at all"; but her biographers, while exhausting their superlatives on her moral beauties, are significantly silent regarding her physical attractions. Like many a contemporary "toast," she had suffered the indignity of the smallpox; yet her figure was fine, and her brilliant black eyes and abundant hair redeemed a face otherwise rather ordinary. When to such mental gifts and charm of manner was added the prospect of a dower of ten thousand pounds—such was the figure at which public opinion put it, and her father did not deny that gossip for once spoke true—little wonder that Mary was considered a "catch" as well by the "smarts" of the place as by the military gentlemen who at that time were the high ornaments of Henley society.
Mr. Blandy, business-like in all things, wanted full value for his money; as none of Mary's local conquests appeared to promise him an adequate return, he reluctantly quitted the pen and, with his wife and daughter, spent a season at Bath, then the great market-place of matrimonial bargains. "As for Bath," Thackeray writes of this period, "all history went and bathed and drank there. George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his Court, scarce a character one can mention of the early last century but was seen in that famous Pump Room, where Beau Nash presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton and Pope." Here was famous company indeed for an ambitious little country attorney to rub shoulders with in his hunt for a son-in-law. It is claimed for Miss Blandy by one of her biographers that her vivacity, wit, and good nature were such as to win for her an immediate social success; and she entered into all the gaieties of the season with a heart unburdened by the "business" which her father sought to combine with pleasures so expensive. She is even said to have had the honour of dancing with the Prince of Wales. Meanwhile, the old gentleman, appearing "genteel in dress" and keeping a plentiful table, lay in wait for such eligible visitors as should enter his parlour.
The first to do so with matrimonial intent was a thriving young apothecary, but Mr. Blandy quickly made it plain that Mary and her £10,000 were not to be had by any drug-compounding knave who might make sheep's eyes at her, and the apothecary returned to his gallipots for healing of his bruised affections. His place was taken by Mr. H——, a gentleman grateful to the young lady and personally desirable, but of means too limited to satisfy her parents' views, a fact conveyed by them to the wooer "in a friendly and elegant manner," which must have gone far to assuage his disappointment. The next suitor for "this blooming virgin," as her biographer names her, had the recommendation of being a soldier. Mr. T——, too, found favour with the damsel. His fine address was much appreciated by her mamma, who, being a devotee of fashion, heartily espoused his cause; but again the course of true love was barred by the question of settlements as broached by the old lawyer, and the man of war "retired with some resentment." There was, however, no lack of candidates for Mary's hand and dower. Captain D—— at once stepped into the breach and gallantly laid siege to the fair fortress. At last, it seemed Cupid's troublesome business was done; the captain's suit was agreeable to all parties, and the couple became engaged. Mary's walks with her lover in the fields of Henley gave her, we read, such exquisite delight that she frequently thought herself in heaven. But, alas, the stern summons of duty broke in upon her temporary Eden: the captain was ordered abroad with his regiment on active service, and the unlucky girl could but sit at home with her parents and patiently abide the issue.
Among Mr. Blandy's grand acquaintances was General Lord Mark Kerr, uncle of Lady Jane Douglas, the famous heroine of the great Douglas Cause. His lordship had taken at Henley a place named "The Paradise," probably through the agency of the obsequious attorney, whose family appear to have had the entrée to that patrician abode. Dining with her parents at Lord Mark's house in the summer of 1746, Mary Blandy encountered her fate. That fate from the first bore but a sinister aspect. Among the guests was one Captain the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, a soldier and a Scot, whose appearance, according to a diurnal writer, was unprepossessing. "In his person he is remarkably ordinary, his stature is low, his face freckled and pitted with the smallpox, his eyes small and weak, his eyebrows sandy, and his shape no ways genteel; his legs are clumsy, and he has nothing in the least elegant in his manner." The moral attributes of this ugly little fellow were only less attractive than his physical imperfections. "He has a turn for gallantry, but Nature has denied him the proper gifts; he is fond of play, but his cunning always renders him suspected." He was at this time thirty-two years of age, and, as the phrase goes, a man of pleasure, but his militant prowess had hitherto been more conspicuous in the courts of Venus than in the field of Mars. The man was typical of his day and generation: should you desire his closer acquaintance you will find a lively sketch of him in Joseph Andrews, under the name of Beau Didapper.
If Mary was the Eve of this Henley "Paradise," the captain clearly possessed many characteristics of the serpent. As First-Lieutenant of Sir Andrew Agnew's regiment of marines, he had been "out"—on the wrong side, for a Scot—in the '45, and the butcher Cumberland having finally killed the cause at Culloden on 16th April, this warrior was now in Henley beating up recruits to fill the vacancies in the Hanoverian lines caused by the valour of the "rebels." Such a figure was a commonplace of the time, and Mr. Blandy would not have looked twice at him but for the fact that it appeared Lord Mark was his grand-uncle. The old lawyer, following up this aristocratic scent, found to his surprise and joy that the little lieutenant, with his courtesy style of captain, was no less a person than the fifth son of a Scots peer, William, fifth Lord Cranstoun, and his wife, Lady Jane Kerr, eldest daughter of William, second Marquis of Lothian. True, he learned the noble union had been blessed with seven sons and five daughters; my Lord Cranstoun had died in 1727, and his eldest son, James, reigned in his stead. The captain, a very much "younger" son, probably had little more than his pay and a fine assortment of debts; still, one cannot have everything. The rights of absent Captain D—— were forgotten, now that there was a chance to marry his daughter to a man who called the daughter of an Earl grandmother, and could claim kinship with half the aristocracy of Scotland; and Mr. Blandy frowned as he called to mind the presumption of the Bath apothecary.
How far matters went at this time we do not know, for Cranstoun left Henley in the autumn and did not revisit "The Paradise" till the following summer. Meanwhile Captain D—— returned from abroad, but unaccountably failed to communicate with the girl he had the year before so reluctantly left behind him. Mary's uncles, "desirous of renewing a courtship which they thought would turn much to the honour and benefit of their niece," intervened; but Captain D——, though "polite and candid," declined to renew his pretensions, and the affair fell through. Whether or not he had heard anything of the Cranstoun business does not appear.
According to Miss Blandy's Own Account, it was not until their second meeting at Lord Mark Kerr's in the summer of 1747 that the patrician but unattractive Cranstoun declared his passion. She also states that in doing so he referred to an illicit entanglement with a Scottish lady, falsely claiming to be his wedded wife, and that she (Mary) accepted him provisionally, "till the invalidity of the pretended marriage appeared to the whole world." But here, as we shall presently see, the fair authoress rather antedates the fact. Next day Cranstoun, formally proposing to the old folks for their daughter's hand, was received by them literally with open arms, henceforth to be treated as a son; and when, after a six weeks' visit to Bath in company with his gouty kinsman, the captain returned to Henley, it was as the guest of his future father-in-law, of whose "pious fraud" in the matter of the £10,000 dowry; despite his shrewdness, he was unaware. Though the sycophantic attorney would probably as lief have housed a monkey of lineage so distinguished, old Mrs. Blandy seems really to have adored the foxy little captain for his beaux yeux. Doubtless he fooled the dame to the top of her bent. For a time things went pleasantly enough in the old house by the bridge. The town-clerk boasted of his noble quarry, the mother enjoyed for the first time the company and conversation of a man of fashion, and Mary renewed amid the Henley meadows those paradisiacal experiences which formerly she had shared with faithless Captain D——. But once more her happiness received an unexpected check. Lord Mark Kerr, a soldier and a gentleman, becoming aware of the footing upon which his graceless grand-nephew was enjoying the Blandys' hospitality, wrote to the attorney the amazing news that his daughter's lover already had a wife and child living in Scotland.
The facts, so far as we know them, were these. On 22nd May, 1744, William Henry Cranstoun was privately married at Edinburgh to Anne, daughter of David Murray, merchant in Leith, a son of the late Sir David Murray of Stanhope, Baronet. As the lady and her family were Jacobite and Roman Catholic, the fact of the marriage was not published at the time for fear of prejudicing the gallant bridegroom's chances of promotion. The couple lived together "in a private manner" for some months, and in November the bride returned to her family, while the captain went to London to resume his regimental duties. They corresponded regularly by letter. Cranstoun wrote to his own and the lady's relatives, acknowledging that she had been his wife since May, but insisting that the marriage should still be kept secret; and on learning that he was likely to become a father, he communicated this fact to my Lord, his brother. Lady Cranstoun invited her daughter-in-law to Nether Crailing, the family seat in Roxburghshire, there to await the interesting event, but the young wife, fearing that Presbyterian influences would be brought to bear upon her, unfortunately declined, which gave offence to Lady Cranstoun and aroused some suspicion regarding the fact of the marriage. At Edinburgh, on 19th February, 1745, Mrs. Cranstoun gave birth to a daughter, who was baptised by a minister of the kirk in Newbattle, according to one account, in presence of members of both parents' families; and, by the father's request, one of his brothers held her during the ceremony. In view of these facts it must have required no common effrontery on the part of Cranstoun to disown his wife and child, as he did in the following year. The country being then in the throes of the last Jacobite rising, and his wife's family having cast in their lot with Prince Charlie, our gallant captain perceived in these circumstances a unique opportunity for ridding himself of his marital ties. The lady was a niece of John Murray of Broughton, the Prince's secretary who served the cause so ill; her brother, the reigning baronet, was taken prisoner at Culloden, tried at Carlisle, and sentenced to death, but owing to his youth, was reprieved and transported instead; so Cranstoun thought the course comparatively clear. His position was that Miss Murray had been his mistress, and that although he had promised to marry her if she would change her religion for his own purer Presbyterian faith, and as the lady refused to do so, he was entirely freed from his engagement. With cynical impudence he explained his previous admission of the marriage as due to a desire to "amuse" her relatives and save her honour. In October, 1746, his wife, by the advice of her friends and in accordance with Scots practice, raised in the Commissary Court at Edinburgh an action of declarator of marriage against her perfidious spouse, and the case was still pending before the Commissaries when Lord Mark Kerr, as we have seen, "gave away" his grand-nephew to the Blandys.
The old attorney was justly incensed at the unworthy trick of which he had been the victim. He had designed, indeed, on his own account, a little surprise for his son-in-law in the matter of the mythical dower, but that was another matter; so, in all the majesty of outraged fatherhood, he sought an interview with his treacherous guest. That gentleman, whose acquaintance with "tight corners" was, doubtless, like Mr. Waller's knowledge of London, extensive and peculiar, rose gallantly to the occasion. A firm believer in the £10,000 dot, he could not, of course, fully appreciate the moral beauty of Mr. Blandy's insistence on the unprofitableness of deceit; but, taxed with being a married man, "As I have a soul to be saved," swore he, "I am not, nor ever was!" The lady had wilfully misrepresented their equivocal relations, and the proceedings in the Scottish Courts meant, vulgarly, blackmail. Both families knew the true facts, and Lord Mark's interference was the result of an old quarrel between them, long since by him buried in oblivion, but on account of which his lordship, as appeared, still bore him a grudge. The action would certainly be decided in his favour, when nothing more would be heard of Miss Murray and her fraudulent claims. The affair was, no doubt, annoying, but such incidents were not viewed too seriously by people of fashion—here the captain would delicately take a pinch, and offer his snuff-box (with the Cranstoun arms: gules, three cranes argent) to the baffled attorney.
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 fiancée 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 £40 sterling for her own aliment and £10 for their daughter's, so long as she should be maintained by her mother, and further had found him liable in expenses, amounting to £100. 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 débâcle, 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 £10,000, 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.
On the evening of Sunday, 4th August, Susan Gunnell, by order of her mistress, made in a pan a quantity of water gruel for her master's use. On Monday, the 5th, Miss Blandy was seen by the maids at mid-day stirring the gruel with a spoon in the pantry. She remarked that she had been eating the oatmeal from the bottom of the pan, "and taking some up in the spoon, put it between her fingers and rubbed it." That night some of the gruel was sent up in a half-pint mug by Mary for her father's supper. When doing so, she repeated her curious action of the morning, taking a little in a spoon and rubbing it. On Tuesday, the 6th, the whole house was in confusion: Mr. Blandy had become seriously ill in the night, with symptoms of violent pain, vomiting, and purging. Mr. Norton, the Henley apothecary who attended the family, was summoned—at whose instance does not appear—and on arriving at the house he found the patient suffering, as he thought, from "a fit of colic." He asked him if he had eaten anything that could have disagreed with him; and Mary, who was in the bedroom, replied "that her papa had had nothing that she knew of, except some peas on the Saturday night before." Not a word was said about the gruel; and Mr. Norton had no reason to suspect poison. He prescribed, and himself brought certain remedies, promising to call next day. In the afternoon Miss Blandy, in the kitchen, asked Elizabeth Binfield, the cook, this strange question: "Betty, if one thing should happen, will you go with me to Scotland?" to which Betty cautiously replied, "If I should go there and not like it, it would be expensive travelling back again." That evening Susan was told to warm some of the gruel for her master's supper; she did so, and Mary herself carried it to him in the parlour. On going upstairs to bed, he was repeatedly sick, and called to Susan to bring him a basin.
Next morning, Wednesday, the 7th, Betty Binfield brought down from the bedroom the remains of Mr. Blandy's supper. Old Ann Emmet, the charwoman, chanced, unhappily for herself, to be in the kitchen. Susan told her she might eat what had been left, which she did, with the result that she too became violently ill, with symptoms similar to those of Mr. Blandy, and even by the following spring had not sufficiently recovered to be able to attend the trial of her benefactress. When Susan, at nine o'clock, went up to dress her mistress and informed her of her protegee's seizure, Miss Blandy feelingly remarked that she was glad she had not been downstairs, as it would have shocked her to see "her poor dame" so ill. The doctor called in the forenoon and found his patient easier. Later in the day Mary said to Susan that as her master had taken physic, he would require more gruel, but as there was still some left, she need not make it fresh "as she was ironing." Susan replied that the gruel was stale, being then four days old, and, further, that having herself tasted it, she felt very ill, upon which facts Mary made no comment. She thoughtfully warned the cook, however, that if Susan ate more of the gruel "she might do for herself—a person of her age," from which we must infer that Susan was much her master's senior; how, otherwise, was the old man to take it daily with impunity?
The strange circumstances attending this gruel aroused the maids' suspicions. They examined the remanent contents of the pan—the aged but adventurous Susan again tasting the fatal mixture was sick for many days—and found a white, gritty "settlement" at the bottom. They prudently put the pan in a locked closet overnight. Next day, Thursday, the 8th, Susan carried it to their neighbour, Mrs. Mounteney, who sent for Mr. Norton, the apothecary, by whom the contents were removed for subsequent examination, the result of which will in due course appear.
Meanwhile, Mary's uncle, the Rev. Mr. Stevens, of Fawley, having heard of his brother-in-law's illness, arrived on Friday, the 9th. To him Susan communicated the suspicious circumstances already mentioned, and he advised her to tell her master what she knew. Accordingly, at seven o'clock the following morning (Saturday, the 10th), Susan entered her master's bedroom, and broke to him the fearful news that his illness was suspected to be due to poison, administered to him by his own daughter. So soon as he had recovered from the first shock of this terrible intelligence, the old attorney asked her where Mary could have obtained the poison—he does not seem to have questioned the fact of its administration—and Susan could suggest no other source than Cranstoun. "Oh, that villain!" cried the sick man, realising in a flash the horrid plot of which he was the victim, "that ever he came to my house! I remember he mentioned a particular poison that they had in their country." Susan told him that Mr. Norton advised that Miss Blandy's papers be seized forthwith, but to this Mr. Blandy would not agree. "I never in all my life read a letter that came to my daughter," said the scrupulous old man; but he asked Susan to secure any of the powder she could find.
Determined at once to satisfy himself of the truth, Mr. Blandy rose and went downstairs to breakfast. There was present at that meal, besides himself and Mary, one Robert Littleton, his clerk, who had returned the night before from a holiday in Warwickshire. The old man appeared to him "in great agony, and complained very much." Mary handed her father his tea in his "particular dish." He tasted it, and, fixing his eyes upon her, remarked that it had a bad, gritty taste, and asked if she had put anything into it. The girl trembled and changed countenance, muttering that it was made as usual; to hide her confusion she hurried from the room. Mr. Blandy poured his tea into "the cat's basin" and sent for a fresh supply. After breakfast, Mary asked Littleton what had become of the tea, and, being told, seemed to him much upset by the occurrence. When the old man had finished his meal, he went into the kitchen to shave. While there he observed to his daughter, in presence of Betty Binfield, "I had like to have been poisoned once," referring to an occasion when he and two friends drank something hurtful at the coffee house. "One of these gentlemen died immediately, the other is dead now," said he; "I have survived them both, and it is my fortune to be poisoned at last," and, looking "very hard" at her, he turned away.
Miss Blandy must have been blind indeed had she failed to see the significance of these incidents. Anything but obtuse, she at once decided to take instant measures for her own protection. She went up to her room, and collecting Cranstoun's correspondence and what remained of the fatal powder, she returned to the kitchen; standing before the fire on pretence of drying the superscription of a letter, she threw the whole bundle into the grate and "stirred it down with a stick." The cook at the moment, whether by chance or design, put on some coals, which preserved the papers from flaming up, and as soon as their mistress had left the kitchen, the maids, now thoroughly on the alert, took off the coal. The letters were consumed, but they drew out almost uninjured a folded paper packet, bearing in Cranstoun's hand the suggestive words, "The powder to clean the pebbles with," and still containing a small quantity of white powder, which they delivered to Mr. Norton when he called later in the day. The apothecary found his patient worse, and stated his opinion to Mary, who asked him to bring from Reading the great Dr. Anthony Addington (father of Lord Sidmouth). Did she at the eleventh hour, pausing upon her dreadful path, seek yet to save her father's life, or was this merely a move to show her "innocence," as Dr. Pritchard, in similar circumstances, invited an eminent colleague to visit his dying victims? Both in her Narrative and her Own Account Mary takes full credit for calling in Dr. Addington, but she is unable to allude to the episodes of the parlour and the kitchen.
Dr. Addington arrived at midnight. From the condition of the patient, coupled with what he learned from him and Mr. Norton, the doctor had no doubt Mr. Blandy was suffering from the effects of poison. He at once informed the daughter, and inquired if her father had any enemies. "It is impossible!" she replied. "He is at peace with all the world and all the world is at peace with him." She added that her father had long suffered from colic and heartburn, to which his present indisposition was doubtless due. Dr. Addington remained in the sick-room until Sunday morning (the 11th), when he left, promising to return next day. He took with him the sediment from the pan and the packet rescued from the fire, both of which were delivered to him by Mr. Norton. At this time neither physician nor apothecary knew the precise nature of the powder. Before he quitted the house, Dr. Addington warned Mary that if her father died she would inevitably be ruined.
Her position was now, one would think, sufficiently precarious; but the infatuated woman took a further fatal step. Her "love" for her murderous little gallant moved her to warn him of their common danger. She wrote to him at Lennel House, Coldstream, and asked Littleton, who had been in the habit of directing her letters to Cranstoun, to seal, address, and post the missive as usual. But Littleton, aware of the dark cloud of suspicion that had settled upon his master's daughter, opened it and read as follows:—"Dear Willy,—My father is so bad that I have only time to tell you that if you do not hear from me soon again, don't be frightened. I am better myself. Lest any accident should happen to your letters, take care what you write. My sincere compliments. I am ever yours." Littleton at once showed the letter to Mr. Norton, and afterwards read it to Mr. Blandy: "He said very little. He smiled and said, 'Poor love-sick girl! What won't a girl do for a man she loves?'"
There was then in the house Mary's uncle, Mr. Blandy, of Kingston, who had come to see his brother, and it was prudently decided, in view of all the circumstances, to refuse her access to the sick-room. But on the following morning (Monday, the 12th) Mr. Blandy sent by Susan Gunnell a message to his daughter "that he was ready to forgive her if she would but endeavour to bring that villain to justice." In accordance with the dying man's request, Mary was admitted to his room in presence of Susan and Mr. Norton. Unaware of the recovery of the powder and the interception of her letter, "she thanked God that she was much better, and said her mind was more at ease than it had been"; but, being informed of these damning discoveries, she fell on her knees by her father's bed and implored his forgiveness, vowing that she would never see or write to Cranstoun again. "I forgive thee, my dear," said the old man, "and I hope God will forgive thee; but thou shouldst have considered better than to have attempted anything against thy father." To which she answered, "Sir, as for your illness, I am entirely innocent." She admitted having put the powder into the gruel, "but," said she, "it was given me with another intent." Her father, "turning himself in his bed," exclaimed, "Oh, such a villain! To come to my house, eat and drink of the best my house could afford, and then to take away my life and ruin my daughter! Oh, my dear, thou must hate that man, must hate the ground he treads on, thou canst not help it!" "Sir," said Mary, "your tenderness towards me is like a sword piercing my heart—much worse than if you were ever so angry. I must down on my knees and beg you will not curse me." "I curse thee, my daughter," he rejoined, "how canst thou think I could curse thee? Nay, I bless thee, and hope God will bless thee also and amend thy life. Do, my dear, go out of my room and say no more, lest thou shouldst say anything to thine own prejudice"; whereupon, says Susan, who reports what passed, "she went directly out." Thus Mary and her father parted for the last time. It appears from this pathetic interview that the old man purposely treated her as Cranstoun's innocent dupe, to shield her, if possible, from the consequences of her guilt, of which, in the circumstances, he could have entertained no doubt.
Meanwhile Dr. Addington had applied to the mysterious powder the tests prescribed by the scientific knowledge of the time, which, if less delicate and reliable than the processes of Reinsch and Marsh—a red-hot poker was the principal agent—yielded results then deemed sufficiently conclusive. Judged by these experiments, Mrs. Morgan's mystic philtre was composed of nothing more recondite than white arsenic. When Dr. Addington called on Monday he found the patient much worse, and sent for Dr. Lewis, of Oxford, as he "apprehended Mr. Blandy to be in the utmost danger, and that this affair might come before a Court of judicature." He asked the dying man whether he himself knew if he had "taken poison often." Mr. Blandy said he believed he had, and in reply to the further question, whom he suspected to be the giver of the poison? "the tears stood in his eyes, yet he forced a smile, and said, 'A poor love-sick girl—I forgive her. I always thought there was mischief in those cursed Scotch pebbles.'" Dr. Lewis came, and confirmed Dr. Addington's diagnosis; by their orders Mary was that evening confined to her chamber, a guard was placed over her, and her keys, papers, "and all instruments wherewith she could hurt either herself or any other person" were taken from her. Dr. Addington graphically describes the scene when the guilty woman realised that all was lost. She protested that from the first she had been basely deceived by Cranstoun, that she had never put powder in anything her father swallowed, excepting the gruel drunk by him on the Monday and Tuesday nights, that she believed it "would make him kind to him [Cranstoun] and her," and that she did not know it to be poison "till she had seen its effects." She declined to assist in bringing her lover to justice—she considered him as her husband, "though the ceremony had not passed between them." In reply to further pertinent questions, e.g., whether she really pretended to believe in the childish business of the "love philtre"? why Cranstoun described it, if innoxious, as "powder to clean the pebbles with"? why, in view of her father's grave condition, she failed sooner to call in medical aid? and why she had concealed from him (Addington) what she knew to be the true cause of the illness? her answers were not such, says Dr. Addington, as gave him any satisfaction. She made, however, the highly damaging admission that, about six weeks before, she had put some of the powder into her father's tea, which Susan Gunnell drank and was ill for a week after. This was said in presence of Betty Binfield. Thus, it will be observed, Mary Blandy, on her own showing knew, long before she operated upon, the gruel at all, the baneful effects of the powder. Her statement that the motive for administering it was to make her father "kind" both to herself and Cranstoun should also be, in view of her subsequent defence, remembered.
On Tuesday, the 13th, the doctors found their patient delirious and "excessively weak." He grew worse throughout the day; but next morning he regained consciousness for an hour, and spoke of making his will in a day or two—a characteristic touch. He soon relapsed, however, and rapidly sinking, died at two o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, 14th August, 1751. So the end for which, trampling upon the common instincts of her kind and hardening her heart against the cry of Nature, she had so persistently and horribly striven, was at last attained—with what contentment to "The Fair Parricide," in her guarded chamber, may be left to the speculation of the curious. The servants had access to their mistress's room. That afternoon Miss Blandy asked Robert Harman, the footman, to go away with her immediately—to France, says one account—and offered him £500 if he would do so. He refused. At night, by her request, the cook, Betty Binfield, sat up with her. "Betty, will you go away with me?" she cried, so soon as they were alone. "If you will go to the Lion or the Bell and hire a post-chaise, I will give you fifteen guineas when you get into it, and ten guineas more when we come to London!" "Where will you go—into the North?" inquired the cautious cook; "Shall you go by sea?" and learning that the proposed excursion would include a voyage, Betty, being, as appears, a bad sailor, declined the offer. Her mistress then "burst into laughter," and said she was only joking! In the Narrative, written after her condemnation, Mary boldly denies that these significant incidents occurred; in her more elaborate Account she makes no reference to the subject. Those who saw her at this time testify to her extreme anxiety regarding her own situation, but say she showed no sign of sorrow, compassion, or remorse for her father's death.
The person charged with the duty of warding Mary in her chamber was Edward Herne, parish clerk of Henley, who some twelve years before had been employed in Mr. Blandy's office, and had since remained on intimate terms with the family. It would appear, from an allusion in a contemporary tract, that Herne was that "Mr. H——" whose pretensions to the hand of the attorney's daughter had once been politely rejected. If so, probably he still preserved sufficient of his former feeling to sympathise with her position and wink at her escape. Be the fact as it may, at ten o'clock next morning, Thursday, 15th August, Ned Herne, as Mary names him, leaving his fair charge unguarded, went off to dig a grave for his old master. So soon as the coast was clear, Mary, with "nothing on but a half-sack and petticoat without a hoop," ran out of the house into the street and over Henley bridge, in a last wild attempt to cheat her fate. Her distraught air and strange array attracted instant notice. She was quickly recognised and surrounded by an angry crowd—for the circumstances of Mr. Blandy's death were now common knowledge, and the Coroner's jury was to sit that day. Alarmed by her hostile reception, she sought refuge at the sign of the Angel, on the other side of the bridge, and Mrs. Davis, the landlady, shut the door upon the mob. There chanced then to be in the alehouse one Mr. Lane, who, with his wife, were interested spectators of these unwonted proceedings. Miss Blandy, having "called for a pint of wine and a toast," thus addressed the stranger—"Sir, you look like a gentleman; what do you think they will do to me?" Mr. Lane told her that she would be committed to the county gaol for trial at the Assizes, when, if her innocence appeared, she would be acquitted; if not, she would suffer accordingly. On receiving this cold comfort Mary "stamped her foot upon the ground," and cried, "Oh, that damned villain! But why should I blame him? I am more to blame than he, for I gave it him [her father] and knew the consequence." On cross-examination at a later stage, the witnesses were unable to swear whether the word she used was "knew" or "know." The distinction is obvious; but looking to the other evidence on the point, it is not of much importance. Mr. Alderman Fisher, a friend of Mr. Blandy and one of the jury summoned upon the inquest, came to the Angel and persuaded the fugitive to return. Though the distance was inconsiderable, Mr. Fisher had to convey her in a "close" post-chaise "to preserve her from the resentment of the populace." Welcomed home by the sergeant and mace-bearer sent by the Corporation of Henley to take her in charge, Mary asked Mr. Fisher how it would go with her. He told her, "very hard," unless she could support her story by the production of Cranstoun's letters. "Dear Mr. Fisher," said she, "I am afraid I have burnt some that would have brought him to justice. My honour to him will prove my ruin." If the letters afforded sufficient proof of Cranstoun's criminous intent, it hardly appears how the fact rhymes to Mary's innocence.
That day a post-mortem examination of Mr. Blandy's remains was made by Dr. Addington and others, and in the afternoon "at the house of John Gale, Richard Miles, Gent., Mayor and Coroner of the said town," opened his inquiry into the cause of death. An account of the proceedings at the inquest is printed in the Appendix. The medical witnesses examined were Drs. Addington and Lewis; Mr. Nicholson, surgeon in Henley; and the apothecary, Mr. Norton, who severally spoke to the symptoms exhibited by the deceased during life, the appearances presented by his body, and the result of the analysis of the powder. They were of opinion that Mr. Blandy died of poison, and that the powder was a poison capable of causing his death. The maids, Gunnell and Binfield, Harman the footman, and Mary's old flame, Ned Herne, were the other witnesses whose depositions were taken. Having heard the evidence, the jury found that Francis Blandy was poisoned, and that Mary Blandy "did poison and murder" him; and on Friday, 16th August, the mayor and coroner issued to the constables his warrant to convey the prisoner to the county gaol of Oxford, there to be detained until discharged by due course of law. That night Mr. Blandy's body was buried in the parish church at Henley. None of his relatives were present, Norton, his apothecary; Littleton, his clerk; and Harman, his footman, being the only mourners.
Miss Blandy was not removed to Oxford Castle till the following day, to enable her to make the arrangements necessary for a lengthy visit. By her request, one Mrs. Dean, a former servant of the family, accompanied her as her maid. Her tea caddy—"the cannisters were all most full of fine Hyson"—was not forgotten. At four o'clock on Saturday morning the ladies, attended by two constables, set out "very privately" in a landau and four, and, eluding the attention of the mob, reached Oxford about eleven. Mary's first question on arriving at the gaol was, "Am I to be fettered?" and, learning that she would not be put in irons so long as she behaved well, she remarked, "I have wore them all this morning in my mind in the coach." At first, we are told, "her imprisonment was indeed rather like a retirement from the world than the confinement of a criminal." She had her maid to attend her, the best, apartments in the keeper's house were placed at her disposal, she drank tea—her favourite Hyson—twice a day, walked at her pleasure in the keeper's garden, and of an evening enjoyed her game of cards. Her privacy was strictly respected; no one was allowed to "see her without her consent," though very extraordinary sums were daily offered for that purpose. What treatment more considerate could a sensitive gentlewoman desire? But the rude breath of the outer world was not so easily excluded. One day the interesting prisoner learned from a visitor the startling news that her father's fortune, of which, as he had left no will, she was sole heiress, had been found to amount to less than four thousand pounds! With what feelings would she recall the old attorney's boastful references to her £10,000 dower, the fame of which had first attracted her "lover," Cranstoun, and so led to results already sufficiently regrettable, the end of which she shuddered to foresee. How passionately the fierce woman must have cursed the irony of her fate! But to this mental torment were soon to be added physical discomfort and indignity. A rumour reached the authorities in London that a scheme was afoot to effect her rescue. On Friday, 25th October, the Secretary of State having instructed the Sheriff of the county "to take more particular care of her," the felon's fetters she had before feared were riveted upon her slender ankles; and there was an end to the daily walks amid the pleasant alleys of the keeper's garden. This broad hint as to her real position induced a different state of mind. The chapel services, hitherto somewhat neglected, were substituted for the mundane pastimes of tea-drinkings and cards, and the prison chaplain, the Rev. John Swinton, became her only visitor. To the pious attentions of that gentleman she may now be left while we see what happened beyond the narrow circuit of her cell.
We are enabled to throw some fresh light upon the doings of the powers in whose high hands lay the prisoner's life from certain correspondence, hitherto unpublished, relating to her case. These documents, here printed for the first time from the original MSS. in the British Museum and Public Record Office, will be found in the Appendix. On 27th September, 1751, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, advising that, if upon the examinations there appeared to be sufficient grounds to proceed against Mary Blandy for her father's murder, the prosecution should be carried on at the expense of the Crown, an unusual but not unprecedented practice; and that Mr. Sharpe, Solicitor to the Treasury, be ordered to take the necessary steps, under direction of the Attorney-General; otherwise it would be a reproach to the King's justice should so flagrant a crime escape punishment, as might, if the prosecution were left in the hands of the prisoner's own relatives, occur. As it was thought that Susan Gunnell and the old charwoman, Ann Emmet, material witnesses, "could not long survive the effects of the poison they partook of," and might "dye" before the trial, which in ordinary course would not be held until the Lent Assizes, his lordship suggested that a special commission be sent into Berkshire to find a bill of indictment there, so that the trial could be had at the King's Bench Bar within the next term. It appears from the correspondence that one Richard Lowe, the Mayor of Henley's messenger, had, shortly after Miss Blandy's committal, been despatched to Scotland with the view of apprehending the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun as accessory to the murder. From the address on Mary's intercepted letter, Cranstoun was believed to be in Berwick, and Lowe applied to Mr. Carre, the Sheriff-Depute of Berwickshire, who seems to have made some difficulty in granting a warrant in terms of the application, though ultimately he did so. By that time, however, the bird had flown; and Lowe and Carre each blamed the other for the failure to effect the fugitive's arrest. His lordship accordingly recommended that the Lord Justice-Clerk of Scotland be requested to hold an inquiry into the facts. Lord Hardwicke, in a private letter to the Duke of the same date, commented on the "extraordinary method" taken to apprehend Cranstoun, pointing out that a messenger ought to have been sent with the Secretary of State's warrant, "which runs equally over the whole kingdom"; that might have been executed with secrecy, whereas by the course adopted "so many persons must be apprized of it, that he could hardly fail of getting notice." On receipt of these letters, Newcastle wrote to Sir Dudley Ryder, the Attorney-General, that His Majesty would be pleased to give orders for the prosecution of Mary Blandy, and instructing him to take the requisite steps for that purpose. The result of the Justice-Clerk's inquiry, as appears from the further correspondence, was completely to exonerate Mr. Carre from the charges of negligence and delay made against him by the Mayor's messenger.
On 4th October the Chancellor wrote to the Secretary regarding a petition by the "Noblemen and Gentlemen in the Neighbourhood of Henley-upon-Thames, and the Mayor and principal Magistrates of that Town, to the Duke of Newcastle," thanking his grace for King George's "Paternal Goodness" in directing that the prisoner should be prosecuted at "His Majesty's Expence," stating that no endeavour would be wanting on their part to render that prosecution successful, and praying that, in order to bring to justice "the Wicked Contriver and Instigator of this Villainous Scheme," His Majesty might be pleased to offer by proclamation a reward for Cranstoun's apprehension. The signatories included the Mayor and Rector of Henley, divers county magnates, and also the local magistrates, Lords Macclesfield and Cadogan, whose "indefatigable diligence" in getting up the Crown case was specially commended by Bathurst at the trial. By Lord Hardwicke's instructions the Duke submitted the petition to the Attorney-General, with the query, whether it would be advisable to issue such a proclamation? And Sir Dudley Ryder, while of opinion that the matter was one "of mere discretion in His Majesty" and generally approving the measure, thought it probable that the person in question might even then "be gone beyond sea." Mr. Attorney's conjecture was, as we shall find, correct.
There is an interesting letter from one Mr. Wise to Mr. Sharpe, Solicitor to the Treasury, giving us a glimpse of Miss Blandy in prison. The writer describes a visit paid by him to Oxford Castle and the condition in which he found her, tells how he impressed upon the keeper and Mrs. Dean the dire results to themselves of allowing her to escape, and mentions the annoyance of Parson Swinton, "a great favourite of Miss Blandy's," at the "freedom" taken with his name by some anonymous scribbler. This was not the first time that reverend gentleman had to complain of the "liberty" of the Press, as we learn from certain curious pamphlets of 1739, from which it would seem that his reputation had no very sweet savour in contemporary nostrils. Mr. Sharpe, writing to Mr. Wise on 6th December, alludes to a threatening letter sent to Betty Binfield, purporting to be written by Cranstoun, from which it was inferred that the fugitive was lying concealed "either here in London or in the North." A similar "menacing letter" signed W.H.C. had been received by Dr. Lewis on 23rd November, which, like the other, was probably a hoax. Cranstoun, being then safe in France, would not so commit himself.
The last document of the series, "The Examination of Francis Gropptty," dated 3rd February, 1752, tells for the first time the story of the fugitive's escape. This was the man employed by the Cranstoun family to get their disreputable relative quietly out of England. The delicate negotiation was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Home, brother of Lord Home, and a certain Captain Alexander Hamilton. It was represented to Gropptty, who had "lived with Lord Home several years" and then "did business for him," that such a service would "very much, oblige Lord Cranstoun, Lord Home, and all the Family," and that, as there were no orders to stop Cranstoun at Dover, by complying with their request he, personally, ran no risk; accordingly he consented to see the interesting exile as far as Calais. On 2nd September Captain Hamilton produced Cranstoun at Gropptty's house in Mount Street. Our old acquaintance characteristically explained that he was without funds for the journey, having been "rob'd" of his money and portmanteau on his way to town. Gropptty was induced to purchase for the traveller "such, necessaries as he wanted," and Captain Hamilton went to solicit from Lord Ancrum a loan of twenty pounds for expenses. His lordship having unaccountably refused the advance, the guileless Gropptty agreed to lend ten guineas upon Captain Hamilton's note of hand, which, as he in his examination complained, was still "unsatisfied." He and Cranstoun then set out in a post-chaise for Dover, where they arrived next morning at nine o'clock. On 4th September they embarked in the packet for Calais, paying a guinea for their passage; and Gropptty, having seen his charge safely bestowed in lodgings "at the Rate of Fifty Livres a Month," returned to London. Informed of the successful issue of the adventure, the Rev. Mr. Home evinced a holy joy, and, in the name of his noble kinsman and of Lord Cranstoun, promised Gropptty a handsome reward for his trouble. That gentleman, however, said he had acted solely out of gratitude to Lord Home, and wanted nothing but his outlays; so he made out an "Acct. of the Expences he had been at," amounting, with the sum advanced by him, to eighteen pounds, for which Captain Hamilton obligingly gave him a bill upon my Lord Cranstoun. By a singular coincidence this document of debt also remained "unsatisfied"; his lordship, after keeping it for six weeks, "returned it unpaid, and the Examt. has not yet recd. the money"! Thus, in common with all who had any dealings with the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, Gropptty in the end got the worse of the bargain.
While her gallant accomplice, having successfully stolen a march upon the hangman, was breathing the free air of the French seaport, Miss Blandy, in her cell in Oxford Castle, was preparing for her trial. She had at first entrusted her defence to one Mr. Newell, an attorney of Henley, who had succeeded her late father in the office of town-clerk; but the lawyer, at one of their consultations, untactfully expressing astonishment that she should have got herself into trouble over such "a mean-looking little ugly fellow" as Cranstoun, his client took umbrage at this observation as reflecting upon her taste in lovers, dispensed with his further services, and employed in his stead one Mr. Rivers of Woodstock. From the day of her arrest all sorts of rumours had been rife regarding so sensational a case. She had poisoned her mother; she had poisoned her friend Mrs. Pocock—how and when that lady in fact died we do not know; she was still in correspondence with Cranstoun; she was secretly married to the keeper's son, a step to which the circumstances of their acquaintance left her no alternative; her fortune was being employed to bribe the authorities; the principal witnesses against her had been got out of the way; she had (repeatedly and in divers ways) escaped; finally, as she herself, with reference to these reports, complained—"It has been said that I am a wretched drunkard, a prophane swearer, that I never went to chapel, contemned all holy ordinances, and in short gave myself up to all kinds of immorality." The depositions of the witnesses before the coroner were published "by some of the Friends and Relations of the Family, in order to prevent the Publick from being any longer imposed on with fictitious Stories," but both Miss Blandy and Mr. Ford, her counsel, took great exception to this at the trial. Pamphlets, as we shall presently see, poured from the press, and even before she appeared at the bar the first instalments of a formidable library of Blandyana, had come into being.
On Monday, 2nd March, 1752, the grand jury for the county of Oxford found a true bill against Mary Blandy. The Town Hall, where the Assizes were usually held, was "then rebuilding," and as the University authorities had refused the use of the Sheldonian Theatre, the trial was appointed to take place next morning in the beautiful hall of the Divinity School. Owing to the insertion overnight—by a mischievous undergraduate or other sympathiser with the day's heroine—of some obstacle in the keyhole, the door could not be opened, and the lock had to be forced, which delayed the proceedings for an hour. The judges meanwhile returned to their lodgings. This initial difficulty surmounted, at eight o'clock on Tuesday, 3rd March, Mary Blandy was placed at the bar to answer the grave charges made against her. There appeared for the Crown the Hon. Mr. Bathurst and Mr. Serjeant Hayward, assisted by the Hon. Mr. Barrington and Messrs. Hayes, Nares, and Ambler. The prisoner was defended by Mr. Ford, with whom were Messrs. Morton and Aston. The judges were the Hon. Heneage Legge and Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe, two of the Barons of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer.
As the following pages contain a verbatim reprint of the official report of the trial, published by permission of the judges, it is only necessary here briefly to refer to the proceedings. The trial lasted thirteen hours. It is, says Mr. Ainsworth Mitchell, in his Science and the Criminal, "remarkable as being the first one of which there is any detailed record, in which convincing scientific proof of poisoning was given." The indictment charged the prisoner with the wilful murder of Francis Blandy by administering to him white arsenic at divers times (1) between 10th November, 1750, and 5th August, 1751, in tea, and (2) between 5th and 14th August, 1751, in water gruel. The prisoner pleaded not guilty, a jury was duly sworn, and the indictment having been opened by Mr. Barrington, Bathurst began his address for the Crown. Though promoted later to the highest judicial office, he has been described as "the least efficient Lord Chancellor of the eighteenth century." Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Chancellors, says that Bathurst's address was much praised for its eloquence, and "as it certainly contains proof of good feeling, if not of high talent and refined taste," his lordship transcribes for the benefit of his readers certain of its purpler passages. It was deemed worthy, at the time, of publication in separate form, with highly eulogistic notes, wherein we read that by its eloquent appeal both judges and counsel "were moved to mourn, nay, to weep like tenderest infants." The prisoner, however, heard it dry-eyed, nor will its effect be more melting for the modern reader. At the outset the learned counsel observed, with reference to the heinous nature of the crime, that he was not surprised "at this vast concourse of people collected together," from which it appears there were few vacant seats that morning in the Divinity School. Space will not permit us to accompany the future Lord Chancellor through his "most affecting oration," which presents the case for the Crown with moderation and fairness, and concludes with a tribute to the "indefatigable diligence" of the Earl of Macclesfield and Lord Cadogan "in inquiring into this hidden work of darkness." He was followed by Serjeant Hayward, who, employing a more rhetorical and florid style, was probably better appreciated by the audience, but added little to the jury's knowledge of the facts. In an "improving" passage he besought "the young gentlemen of this University," who seem to have been well represented, to guard against the first insidious approaches of vice. "See here," said he, "the dreadful consequences of disobedience to a parent."
We need not examine in detail the evidence led for the prosecution; from the foregoing narrative the reader already knows its main outlines and may study it at large in the following report. The Crown case opened with the medical witnesses, Drs. Addington and Lewis, and Mr. Norton, who clearly established the fact that arsenic was the cause of Mr. Blandy's death, that arsenic was present in the remains of his gruel, and that arsenic was the powder which the prisoner had attempted to destroy. The appearance of Mrs. Mounteney in the witness-box occasioned the only display of feeling exhibited by the accused throughout the whole trial. This lady was her godmother, and as she left the Court after giving her evidence, she clasped her god-child by the hand, exclaiming "God bless you!" For the moment Mary's brilliant black eyes filled with tears, but after drinking a glass of wine and water, she resumed her air of stoical indifference.
Susan Gunnell, "wore down to a Skelliton" by the effects of her curiosity, but sufficiently recovered to come into Court, was the principal witness for the prosecution. In addition to the material facts which we have before narrated, Susan deposed that the prisoner often spoke of her father as "an old villain," and wished for his death, and had complained that she was "very awkward," for, if he were dead, "she would go to Scotland and live with Lady Cranstoun." Susan gave her evidence with perfect fairness, and showed no animus against her former mistress. Equal in importance was the testimony of Betty Binfield, which, perhaps, is more open to Miss Blandy's objection as being "inspired with vindictive sentiments." When communicating to the maids Mrs. Morgan's prophecy regarding the duration of their master's life, the prisoner, said witness, expressed herself glad, "for that then she would soon be released from all her fatigues, and be happy." She was wont to curse her father, calling him "rascal and villain," and on one occasion had remarked, "Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for £10,000?" "Exactly them words," added the scrupulous cook, though in this instance her zeal had probably got the better of her memory. In cross-examination Betty was asked whether she had any ill-will against her mistress. "I always told her I wished her very well," was the diplomatic reply. "Did you," continued the prisoner's counsel, "ever say, 'Damn her for a black bitch! I should be glad to see her go up the ladder and be hanged'"? but Betty indignantly denied the utterance of any such ungenteel expressions.
The account given by this witness of the admissions made by her mistress to Dr. Addington in her presence led to the recall of that gentleman, who, in his former evidence, had not referred to the matter. The prisoner's counsel invited Dr. Addington to say that Miss Blandy's anxiety proceeded solely from concern for her father; the doctor excused himself from expressing any opinion, but, being indiscreetly pressed to do so, said that her agitation struck him as due entirely to fears for herself: he saw no tokens of grief for her father. On re-examination, it appeared that the doctor had attended professionally both Susan Gunnell and Ann Emmet; their symptoms, in his opinion, were those of arsenical poisoning. Alice Emmet was next called to speak to her mother's illness, the old charwoman herself being in no condition to come to Court. Littleton, old Blandy's clerk, gave his evidence with manifest regret, but had to admit that he frequently heard Miss Blandy curse her parent by the unfilial names of rogue, villain, and "toothless old dog." Harman, the footman, to whom Mary had offered the £500 bribe, and Mr. Fisher and Mr. and Mrs. Lane, who spoke to the incidents at the Angel Inn on the day of her attempted flight, were the other witnesses examined; the intercepted letter to Cranstoun was put in, and the Crown case closed.
According to the practice of the time, the prisoner's counsel, while allowed to examine their own, and cross-examine the prosecutor's witnesses, were not permitted to address the jury. Mary Blandy therefore now rose to make the speech in her own defence. Probably prepared for her beforehand, it merely enumerates the various injustices and misrepresentations of which she considered herself the victim. She made little attempt to refute the damning evidence against her, and concluded by protesting her innocence of her father's death; that she thought the powder "an inoffensive thing," and gave it to procure his love. In this she was well advised, for she was shrewd enough to see that upon the question of her knowledge of the quality and effect of the powder the verdict would turn.
Eight witnesses were called for the defence. Ann James, who washed for the family, stated that before Mr. Blandy's illness there was "a difference between Elizabeth Binfield and Miss Blandy, and Binfield was to go away." After Mary's removal to Oxford gaol (Saturday, 17th August), the witness heard Betty one day in the kitchen make use of the unparliamentary language already quoted. Mary Banks deposed that she was present at the time, and heard the words spoken. "It was the night Mr. Blandy was opened" (Thursday, 15th August); she was sure of that; Miss Blandy was then in the house. Betty Binfield, recalled and confronted with this evidence, persisted in her denial, but admitted the existence of "a little quarrel" with her mistress. Edward Herne, Mary's old admirer, gave her a high character as an affectionate, dutiful daughter. He was in the house as often as four times a week and never heard her swear an oath or speak a disrespectful word of her father. In cross-examination the witness admitted that in August, 1750, Miss Blandy told him that Cranstoun had put powder in her father's tea. He had visited her in prison, and on one occasion, a report having reached her that "the Captain was taken," she wrung her hands and said, "I hope in God it is true, that he may be brought to justice as well as I, and that he may suffer the punishment due to his crime, as I shall do for mine." Here for the first time the prisoner intervened. Her questions were directed to bring out that she had told Herne on the occasion mentioned that no "damage" resulted upon Cranstoun's use of the powder, from which fact she inferred its effects harmless, and that the "suffering" spoken of by her had reference to her imprisonment, though guiltless. For the rest, Thomas Cawley and Thomas Staverton, friends of Mr. Blandy for upwards of twenty years, spoke to the happy relations which to their knowledge subsisted between father and daughter. On her last visit to Staverton's house, Mary had remarked that, although her father "had many wives laid out for him," he would not marry till she was "settled." Mrs. Davis, the landlady of the Angel, and Robert Stoke, the officer who took the prisoner into custody, said that Miss Blandy did not then appear to them to be attempting night. This concluded the exculpatory evidence. For the defence, Mr. Ford protested against the "unjustifiable and illegal methods" used to prejudice his client, such as the publication of the proceedings at the inquest, and, particularly, the "very scandalous reports" concerning her, circulated since her commitment, to refute which he proposed to call "the reverend gentleman who had attended her," Parson Swinton. The Court, however, held that there was no need to do so, as the jury would entirely disregard anything not deposed to in Court. Mr. Bathurst replying for the Crown, maintained that it was proved to demonstration that Francis Blandy died of poison, put in his gruel upon the 5th of August by the prisoner's hand, as appeared not only from her own confession, but from all the evidence adduced. "Examine then, gentlemen," said the learned counsel, "whether it is possible she could do it ignorantly." In view of the great affection with which it was proved the dying man behaved to her, the prisoner's assertion that she gave him the powder "to make him love her" was incredible. She knew what effects the poisoned gruel produced upon him on the Monday and Tuesday, yet she would have given him more of it on the Wednesday. Having pointed out that, when she must have known the nature of the powder, she endeavoured to destroy it, instead of telling the physicians what she had given her father, which might have been the means of saving his life, counsel commented on the terms of the intercepted letter to Cranstoun as wholly inconsistent with her innocence. Further, he remarked on the contradiction as to dates in the evidence of the witnesses who reported Betty Binfield's forcible phrase, which, he contended, was in fact never uttered by her. Finally, he endorsed the censure of the prisoner's counsel upon the spreaders of the scandalous reports, which he asked the jury totally to disregard. On the conclusion of Bathurst's reply, the prisoner made the following statement:—"It is said I gave it [the powder] my father to make him fond of me: there was no occasion for that—but to make him fond of Cranstoun."
Mr. Baron Legge then proceeded to charge the jury. The manner in which his lordship reviewed the evidence and his exposition of its import and effect, indeed his whole conduct of the trial, have been well described as affording a favourable impression of his ability, impartiality, and humanity. He proceeded in the good old fashion, going carefully over the whole ground of the evidence, of which his notes appear to have been excellent; and after some general remarks upon the atrocity of the crime charged, and the nature and weight of circumstantial evidence—"more convincing and satisfactory than any other kind of evidence, because facts cannot lie"—observed that it was undeniable that Mr. Blandy died by poison administered to him by the prisoner at the bar: "What you are to try is reduced to this single question, whether the prisoner, at the time she gave it to her father, knew that it was poison, and what effect it would have?" If they believed that she did know, they must find her guilty; if, in view of her general character, the evidence led for the defence, and what she herself had said, they were not satisfied that she knew, then they would acquit her. The jury, without retiring, consulted for five minutes and returned a verdict of guilty. Mr. Baron Legge, having in dignified and moving terms exhorted the unhappy woman to repentance, then pronounced the inevitable sentence of the law—"That you are to be carried to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may God, of His infinite mercy, receive your soul."
It was nine o'clock at night; for thirteen mortal hours Mary Blandy had watched unflinchingly the "interesting game played by counsel with her life for stakes"; the "game" was over, and hers was the losing side; yet no sign of fear or agitation was manifested by that strange woman as she rose for the last time to address her judge. "My lord," said she, "as your lordship has been so good to show so much candour and impartiality in the course of my trial, I have one favour more to beg; which is, that your lordship would please to allow me a little time till I can settle my affairs and make my peace with God"; to which Mr. Baron Legge feelingly replied, "To be sure, you shall have a proper time allowed you." So, amid the tense stillness of the crowded "house," the curtain fell upon the great fourth act of the tragedy of "The Fair Parricide."
On leaving the hall to be taken back to prison, Mary Blandy, we read, "stepped into the Coach with as little Concern as if she had been going to a Ball"—the eighteenth century reporter anticipating by a hundred years his journalistic successor's phrase as to the demeanour of Madeleine Smith in similar trying circumstances. The result of the trial had preceded her to Oxford Castle, where she found the keeper's family "in some Disorder, the Children being all in Tears" at the fatal news. "Don't mind it," said their indomitable guest, "What does it signify? I am very hungry; pray, let me have something for supper as speedily as possible"; and our reporter proceeds to spoil his admirable picture by condescending upon "Mutton Chops and an Apple Pye."
The six weeks allowed her to prepare for death were all too short for the correspondence and literary labours in which she presently became involved. On 7th March "a Reverend Divine of Henley-upon-Thames," probably, from other evidence, the Rev. William Stockwood, rector of the parish, addressed to her a letter, exhorting her to confession and repentance. To this Miss Blandy replied on the 9th, maintaining that she had acted innocently. "There is an Account," she tells him, "as well as I was able to write, which I sent to my Uncle in London, that I here send you." Copies of these letters, and of the narrative referred to, are printed in the Appendix. She sends her "tenderest wishes" to her god-mother, Mrs. Mounteney, and trusts that she will be able to "serve" her with the Bishop of Winchester, apparently in the matter of a reprieve, of which Mary is said to have had good hope, by reason that she had once the honour of dancing with the late Prince of Wales—"Fred, who was alive and is dead." "Pray comfort poor Ned Herne," she writes, "and tell him I have the same friendship for him as ever." She asks that her letter and its enclosure be returned, as, being in her own handwriting, they may be of service to her character after her death. The object of this request was speedily apparent; on 20th March the whole documents were published under the title of A Letter from a Clergyman, to Miss Mary Blandy, &c., with a note by the publisher intimating that, for the satisfaction of the public, the original MS. was left with him. The fair authoress having thus fired the first shot, a fusilade of pamphlets began—the spent bullets are collected in the Bibliography—which, for volume and verbosity, is entitled to honourable mention in the annals of tractarian strife. An Answer to Miss Blandy's Narrative quickly followed upon the other side, in which, it is claimed, "all the Arguments she has advanc'd in Justification of her Innocence are fully refuted, and her Guilt clearly and undeniably prov'd." This was promptly met by The Case of Miss Blandy considered, as a Daughter, as a Gentlewoman, and as a Christian, with particular reference to her own Narrative, the author of which is better versed in classical analogies than in the facts of the case. Mary herself mentions a pamphlet, which she cites as The Life of Miss Mary Blandy, and attributes to "a French usher." This may have been one of the 1751 tracts containing accounts "of that most horrid Parricide," the title of which she deemed too indelicate for exact citation, or, perhaps, an earlier edition of A Genuine and Impartial Account of the Life of Miss Mary Blandy, &c., the copy of which in the Editor's possession, including an account of the execution, was published on 9th April, three days after the completion of that ceremony.
The last literary effort of Mary Blandy was an expansion of her Narrative, re-written in more detail and at much greater length, the revised version appearing on 18th April under the title of Miss Mary Blandy's Own Account of the Affair between her and Mr. Cranstoun, "from the commencement of their Acquaintance in the year 1746 to the Death of her Father in August, 1751, with all the Circumstances leading to that unhappy Event." This ingenious, rather than ingenuous, compilation was, it is said, prepared with the assistance of Parson Swinton, who had some previous experience of pamphleteering on his own account in 1739. Mr. Horace Bleackley has happily described it as "The most famous apologia in criminal literature," and as such it is reprinted in the present volume. Even this tour de force failed to convince a sceptical world, and on 15th April was published A Candid Appeal to the Publick concerning her case, by "a Gentleman of Oxford," wherein "All the ridiculous and false Assertions" contained in Miss Blandy's Own Account "are exploded, and the Whole of that Mysterious Affair set in a True Light." But by this time the fair disputant was beyond the reach of controversy, and the Oxford gentleman had it all his own way; though the pamphleteers kept the discussion alive a year longer than its subject.
An instructive feature of Mary's literary activities during her last days is her correspondence with Elizabeth Jeffries. "That unsavoury person" was, with her paramour, John Swan, convicted at Chelmsford Assizes on 12th March, 1752, of the murder at Walthamstow, on 3rd July, of one Joseph Jeffries, respectively uncle and master to his slayers. Elizabeth induced John to kill the old gentleman, who, aware of their intrigue, had threatened, as the Crown counsel neatly phrased it, "to alter his will, if she did not alter her conduct." This unpleasant case, as was, perhaps, in the circumstances, natural, attracted the attention of Miss Blandy. She read with much interest the report of the trial. "It is barbarous," was her comment—for, in truth, the murder was a sordid business, and sadly lacking in "style"—"but I am sorry for her, and hope she will have a good divine to attend her in her last moments, if possible a second Swinton, for, poor unhappy girl, I pity her." These sentiments shocked a lady visitor then present, who, expressing the opinion that all such inhuman wretches should suffer as they deserved, withdrew in dudgeon. Mary smilingly remarked, "I can't bear with these over-virtuous women. I believe if ever the devil picks a bone, it is one of theirs!" But the murderess of Walthamstow had somehow struck her fancy, and she wrote to her fellow-convict to express her sympathy. That young lady suitably replied, and the ensuing correspondence (7th January-19th March, 1752), published under the title of Genuine Letters between Miss Blandy and Miss Jeffries, if we may believe the description, is highly remarkable. At first Elizabeth asserted her innocence as stoutly as did Mary herself, but afterwards she acknowledged her guilt. Whereupon Mary, more in sorrow than in anger, wrote to her on 16th March for the last time. "Your deceiving of me was a small crime; it was deceiving yourself: for no retreat, tho' ever so pleasant, no diversions, no company, no, not Heaven itself, could have made you happy with those crimes unrepented of in your breast." So, with the promise to be "a suitor for her at the Throne of Mercy," Miss Blandy intimated that the correspondence must close; and on the 28th Miss Jeffries duly paid the penalty of her crime.
In A Book of Scoundrels, that improving and delightful work, Mr. Charles Whibley has, well observed: "A stern test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at an enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talent—an effect which has not too often been rehearsed." This high standard, the hall-mark of the artist in crime, Mary Blandy admittedly attained. The execution, originally fixed for Saturday, 4th April, was postponed until Monday, the 6th, by request of the University authorities, who represented that to conduct such a ceremony during Holy Week "would be improper and unprecedented." The night before her end the doomed woman asked to see the scene of the morrow's tragedy, and looked out from one of the upper windows upon the gibbet, "opposite the door of the gaol, and made by laying a poll across upon the arms of two trees"—in her case "the fatal tree" had a new and very real significance; then she turned away, remarking only that it was "very high." At nine o'clock on Monday morning, attended by Parson Swinton, and "dress'd in a black crape sack, with her arms and hands ty'd with black paduasoy ribbons," Mary Blandy was led out to her death. About the two trees with, their ominous "poll" a crowd of silent spectators was assembled on the Castle Green, to whom, in accordance with the etiquette of the day, she made her "dying declaration"—to wit, that she was guiltless of her father's blood, though the innocent cause of his death, and that she did not "in the least contribute" to that of her mother or of Mrs. Pocock. This she swore upon her salvation; which only shows, says Lord Campbell, who was convinced of her guilt, "the worthlessness of the dying declarations of criminals, and the absurdity of the practice of trying to induce them to confess." We shall not dwell upon the shocking spectacle—the curious will find a contemporary account in the Appendix—but one characteristic detail may be mentioned. As she was climbing the fatal ladder, covered, for the occasion, with black cloth, she stopped, and addressing the celebrants of that grim ritual, "Gentlemen," said she, "do not hang me high, for the sake of decency."
Mary Blandy was but just in time to make so "genteel" an end. That very year (1752), owing to the alarming increase of murders, an Act was passed (25 Geo. II. c. 37) "for better preventing the Horrid Crime of Murder," whereby persons condemned therefor should be executed on the next day but one after sentence, and their bodies be given to the Surgeons' Company at their Hall with a view to dissection, and also, in the discretion of the judge, be hanged in chains. The first person to benefit by the provisions of the new Act did so on 1st July. But although Mary Blandy's body escaped these legal indignities, as neither coffin nor hearse had been prepared for its reception, it was carried through the crowd on the shoulders of one of the Sheriff's men, and deposited for some hours in his house. There suitable arrangements were made, and at one o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, 7th April, 1752, the body, by her own request, was buried in the chancel of Henley Parish Church, between those of her father and mother, when, notwithstanding the untimely hour, "there was assembled the greatest concourse of people ever known upon such an occasion." Henley Church has been "restored" since Mary's day, and there is now no indication of the grave, which, as the present rector courteously informs the Editor, is believed to be beneath the organ, in the north choir aisle.
Apropos to Mary Blandy's death, "Elia" has a quaint anecdote of Samuel Salt, one of the "Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." This gentleman, notable for his maladroit remarks, was bidden to dine with a relative of hers (doubtless Mr. Serjeant Stevens) on the day of the execution—not, one would think, a suitable occasion for festivity. Salt was warned beforehand by his valet to avoid all allusion to the subject, and promised to be specially careful. During the pause preliminary to the announcing of dinner, however, "he got up, looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles—an ordinary motion with him—observed, 'it was a gloomy day,' and added, 'I suppose Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time.'"
The reader may care to know what became of Cranstoun. That "unspeakable Scot," it has regretfully to be recorded, was never made amenable to earthly justice. He was, indeed, the subject of at least four biographies, but human retribution followed him no further. Extracts from one of these "Lives" are, for what they are worth, printed in the Appendix, together with his posthumous Account of the Poisoning of the late Mr. Francis Blandy, a counterblast to Mary's masterpiece. This tract includes the text of three letters, alleged to have been written by her to her lover, and dated respectively 30th June, 16th July, and 1st August, 1751; but as, after his death, all his papers were, by order of Lord Cranstoun, sealed up and sent to his lordship in Scotland, who, in the circumstances, was little likely to part with them, it does not appear how these particular manuscripts came into the "editor's" possession. But, in that age of literary marvels, nothing need surprise us: a publisher actually issued as genuine the Original Letters to and from Miss Blandy and C—— C——, though the fact that Cranstoun's half of the correspondence had been destroyed by Mary Blandy was then a matter of common knowledge. In all these pamphlets, Cranstoun, while admitting his complicity in her crime, with, characteristic gallantry casts most of the blame upon his dead mistress. For the rest, he seems to have passed the brief remainder of his days in cheating as many of his fellow-sinners as, in the short time at his disposal, could reasonably be expected.
A hitherto unpublished letter from Henry Fox at the War Office, to Mr. Pitt, then Paymaster General, dated 14th March, 1752, is, by kind permission of Mr. A.M. Broadley, printed in the Appendix. After referring to Mary's conviction, the writer intimates that Cranstoun, "a reduc'd first Lieut. of Sir Andrew Agnew's late Regt. of Marines, now on the British Establishment of Half-Pay, was charged with contriving the manner of sd. Miss Blandy's Poisoning her Father and being an Abettor therein; and he having absconded from the time of her being comitted for the above Fact, I am commanded to signify to you it is His Majesty's Pleasure that the sd. Lieutenant Wm. Henry Cranstoune be struck off the sd. Establishment of Half-Pay, and that you do not issue any Moneys remaining in your Hands due to the sd. Lieut. Cranstoune." This shows the view taken by the Government of the part played by Cranstoun in the tragedy of Henley.
There will also be found in the Appendix an extract from, a letter from Dunkirk, published in the London Magazine for February, 1753, containing what appears to be a reliable account of the last days of Mary Blandy's lover; the particulars given are in general agreement with those contained in the various "Lives" above mentioned. Obliged to fly from France, where he had been harboured by one Mrs. Ross, his kinswoman, whose maiden name of Dunbar he had prudently assumed, he sought refuge in Flanders. Furnes, "a town belonging to the Queen of Hungary," had the dubious distinction of being selected by him as an asylum. There, on 2nd December, 1752, "at the sign of the Burgundy Cross," after a short illness, accompanied, it is satisfactory to note, with "great agonies," the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun finally ceased from troubling in the thirty-ninth year of his age. His personal belongings, "consisting chiefly of Laced and Embroidered Waistcoats," were sold to pay his debts. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The occasion of so notable a conversion was fittingly marked by the magnificence of his obsequies. "He was buried," we read, "in great solemnity, the Corporation attending the funeral; and a grand Mass was said over the corpse in the Cathedral Church, which, was finely illuminated." The impressive ceremonial would have gratified vainglorious Mr. Blandy had circumstances permitted his presence.
Some account of the descendants of Cranstoun is given in a letter by John Riddell, the Scots genealogist, hitherto unpublished, which is printed in the Appendix. George Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse, Cranstoun's nephew, was afterwards an eminent Scottish judge.
A word as to the guilt of Mary Blandy and her accomplice, which, in the opinion of some writers, is not beyond dispute. The question of motive in such cases is generally a puzzling one, and in the commission of many murders the end to be gained, always inadequate, often remains obscure. Barely does the motive—unlike the punishment which it was the sublime object of Mr. Gilbert's "Mikado" equitably to adjust—"fit the crime." Mary was well aware that she could not be Cranstoun's lawful wife, but hers was not a nature to shrink from the less regular union. Her passion for him was irresistible; she had ample proof of his chronic infidelity, but, in her blind infatuation, such "spots" upon the sun of her affection, were disregarded. She knew that, but for the £10,000 bait, her crafty lover would surely play her false; her father was sick of the whole affair, and if she went off with the captain, would doubtless disinherit her. As for that "honourable" gentleman himself, the inducement to get possession of her £10,000, the beginning and end of his connection with the Blandys, sufficiently explains his purpose. Was not the spirit of his family motto, "Thou shalt want ere I want," ever his guiding light and principle, and would such a man so circumstanced hesitate to resort to a crime which he could induce another to commit and, if necessary, suffer for, while he himself reaped the benefit in safety? Had he succeeded in securing both his mistress and her fortune, Mary's last state would, not improbably, have been worse than her first.
So much for the "motive," which presents little difficulty. Then, with regard to the question whether, on the assumption of his guilt, Mary Blandy was the intelligent agent of Cranstoun or his innocent dupe, no one who has studied the evidence against her can entertain a reasonable doubt. Apart from the threatening and abusive language which she applied to her father, her whole attitude towards his last illness shows how false were her subsequent professions of affection. She herself has disposed of the suggestion that she really believed in the love-compelling properties of the magic powder, though such a belief was not inconceivable, as appears from the contemporary advertisement of a "Love Philtre," of which a copy is printed in the Appendix. She told her dying father that if he were injured by the powder, she was not to blame, as "it was given her with another intent." What that "intent" was she did not then explain, but later she informed Dr. Addington that it was to "make him [her father] kind" to Cranstoun and herself. In the speech which she delivered in her own defence she said, "I gave it to procure his love"; and again, on the conclusion of Bathurst's reply, "It is said I gave it my father to make him fond of me: there was no occasion for that—but to make him fond of Cranstoun." In her Narrative she repeats this statement; but in her Own Account, written and revised by herself, she says, "I gave it to my poor father innocent of the effects it afterwards produced, God knows; not so stupid as to believe it would have that desired, to make him kind to us; but in obedience to Mr. Cranstoun, who ever seemed superstitious to the last degree." Here we have an entirely fresh (if no less false) reason assigned for the exhibition of the wise woman's drug; only, of course, another lie, but one which, disposes of her previous defence. Of the true qualities of the powder she had ample proof; she warned the maid that the gruel "might do for her," she saw its virulent effects upon Gunnell and Emmet, as well as on her father from its first administration, while her concealment of its use from the physician, and her destruction of the remanent portion, are equally incompatible with belief either in its innocence or her own. Finally, her burning of Cranstoun's letters, which, if her story was true, were her only means of confirming it, her attempts to bribe the servants, and her statements to Fisher and the Lanes at the Angel, afford, in Mr. Baron Legge's phrase, "a violent presumption" of her guilt.
Cranstoun, even at the time, did not lack apologists, who held that Miss Blandy, herself the solo criminal, cunningly sought to involve her guileless lover in order to lessen her own guilt. This view has been endorsed by later authorities. Anderson, in his Scottish Nation, remarks, "There does not appear to have been any grounds for supposing that the captain was in any way accessory to the murder"; and Mr. T.F. Henderson, in his article on Cranstoun in the Dictionary of National Biography, observes, "Apart from her [Mary Blandy's] statement there was nothing to connect him with the murder." These writers seem to have overlooked the following important facts:—The letter written by Cranstoun to Mary, read by Bathurst in his opening speech, the terms of which plainly prove the writer's complicity; and the packet rescued from the fire, bearing in his autograph the words, "The powder to clean the pebbles with," which, when we remember the nature of its contents, leaves small doubt of the sender's guilt. "A supposition," says Mr. Bleackley, "that does not explain [these] two damning circumstances must be baseless." The nocturnal manifestations experienced by Cranstoun, and interpreted by his friend Mrs. Morgan as presaging Mr. Blandy's death, must also be explained. Further, it would be interesting to know how the defenders of Cranstoun account for the warning given him by Mary in the intercepted letter—"Lest any accident should happen to your letters, take care what you write." That this was part of a subtle scheme to inculpate her lover will, in the circumstances, hardly be maintained. As Mr. Andrew Lang once remarked of a hypothesis equally untenable, "That cock won't fight." Would Cranstoun have fled as he did from justice, and gone into voluntary exile for life, when, if innocent, he had only to produce Mary's letters to him in proof of the blameless character of their correspondence? and why, when on his death those letters passed into Lord Cranstoun's custody, did not that nobleman publish them in vindication of his brother's honour, as he was directly challenged to do by a pamphleteer of the day? The Crown authorities, at any rate, as we have seen, did not share the opinion expressed by the writers above cited; and from what was said by Mr. Justice Buller, in the case of George Barrington (Mich. 30 Geo. III., reported Term Rep. 499), it appears that Cranstoun, for his concern in the murder of Mr. Blandy, was prosecuted to outlawry, the learned judge observing with reference to the form adopted on that occasion, "It was natural to suppose groat care had been taken in settling it, because some of the most eminent gentlemen in the profession were employed in it."
"Alas! the record of her page will tell
That one thus madden'd, lov'd, and guilty fell.
Who hath not heard of Blandy's fatal fame,
Deplor'd her fate, and sorrow'd o'er her shame?"
Thus the author of Henley: A Poem (Hickman & Stapledon, 1827); and, indeed, the frequent references to the case in the "literary remains" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bear witness to the justice of that poetic observation.
The inimitable Letters of Horace Walpole contain, as might be expected, more than one mention of this cause célèbre. Writing on 23rd March, 1752, to Horace Mann, he says, "There are two wretched women that just now are as much talked of [as the two Miss Gunnings], a Miss Jefferies and a Miss Blandy; the one condemned for murdering her uncle, the other her father. Both their stories have horrid circumstances; the first having been debauched by her uncle; the other had so tender a parent, that his whole concern while he was expiring, and knew her for his murderess, was to save her life. It is shocking to think what shambles this country is grown! Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle." And again, on 13th May, "Miss Blandy died with a coolness of courage that is astonishing, and denying the fact, which has made a kind of party in her favour; as if a woman who would not stick at parricide would scruple a lie! We have made a law for immediate execution on conviction of murder: it will appear extraordinary to me if it has any effect; for I can't help believing that the terrible part of death must be the preparation for it." The "law" regarding summary executions to which Walpole refers is the Act already mentioned. To Henry Seymour Conway, on 23rd June, he writes, "Since the two Misses [Blandy and Jefferies] were hanged, and the two Misses [the beautiful Gunnings] were married, there is nothing at all talked of." On 28th August he writes to George Montague, "I have since been with Mr. Conway at Park Place, where I saw the individual Mr. Cooper, a banker, and lord of the manor of Henley, who had those two extraordinary forfeitures from the executions of the Misses Blandy and Jefferies, two fields from the former, and a malthouse from the latter. I had scarce credited the story, and was pleased to hear it confirmed by the very person: though it was not quite so remarkable as it was reported, for both forfeitures were in the same manor." This circumstance is noted in the Annual Register for 1768, in connection with the death of Mr. Cooper, at the age of eighty. From the following references it would appear that the empty old house in Hart Street had acquired a sinister reputation. On 8th November Walpole writes to Conway, "Have the Coopers seen Miss Blandy's ghost, or have they made Mr. Cranston poison a dozen or two more private gentlewomen?"—the allusion being to the deaths of Mrs. Blandy and Mrs. Pocock; and again, on 4th August, 1753, to John Chute. "The town of Henley has been extremely disturbed with an engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold persons, to prevent further bloodshed broke in, and found it was two jackasses which had got into the kitchen."
Walpole barely exaggerates the wholesale legal butcheries by which the streets of London were then disgraced. "Many cartloads of our fellow-creatures are once in six weeks carried to slaughter," says Henry Fielding, in his Enquiry (1751); and well has Mr. Whibley described the period as "Newgate's golden age." As for Tyburn Tree, we read in its Annals, for example, "1752. July 13. Eleven executed at Tyburn."
We can only glance at one or two further instances of the diffusion of "Blandy's fatal fame." None of the varied forms of the Newgate Calendar—that criminous Who's Who?—fails to accord her suitable if inaccurate notice. With other letter-writers of the time than the genial Horace the case forms a topical subject. James Granger reports to a reverend correspondent that "the principal subject of conversation in these parts is the tragical affair transacted at Henley.... It is supposed, as there is no direct and absolute proof that she was guilty, and her friends are rich and have great interest, that she will escape punishment." To Mrs. Delany, writing the day after the execution, the popular heroine "appeared very guilty by her trial," but we learn that Lady Huntingdon had written a letter to Miss Blandy after her conviction. On 22nd April, 1752, Miss Talbot writes to Mrs. Carter, who thought Mary had been "too severely judged," that "her hardiness in guilt" was shocking to think of. "Let me tell you one fact that young Goosetree, the lawyer, told to the Bishop of Gloucester," she writes, with reference to Miss Blandy's repeated statement that she never believed her father a rich man. "This Goosetree visited her in jail as an old acquaintance. She expressed to him great amazement at her father's being no richer, and said she had no notion but he must have been worth £10,000. Mr. Goosetree prudently told her the less she said about that the better, and she never said it afterwards, but the contrary." Miss Talbot adds that certain letters in Lord Macclesfield's hands "falsify others of her affirmations." By 5th May, 1753, Mrs. Delany writes, "We are now very full of talk about Eliza Canning."
As time goes on the tragedy of Henley, though gradually becoming a tradition, is still susceptible of current allusion. John Wilkes, writing from Bath to his daughter on 3rd January, 1779, regarding a lady of their acquaintance who proposed to keep house for a certain doctor, remarks "that he is sure it could not have lasted long, for she would have poisoned him, as Miss Blandy did her father, and forged a will in her own favour"; but Tate Wilkinson, in his Memoirs, observes, "Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires, the gipsy, and Miss Blandy were such universal topics in 1752 that you would have supposed it the business of mankind to talk only of them; yet now, in 1790, ask a young man of twenty-five or thirty a question relative to these extraordinary personages, and he will be puzzled to answer, and will say, 'What mean you by enquiring? I do not understand you,'" So quickly had the "smarts" of the new generation forgotten the "fair Blandy" of their fathers' toasts. To make an end of such quotations, which might indefinitely be multiplied, we shall only refer the reader to Lady Russell's Three Generations of Fascinating Women (London: 1901), for good reading passim, and with special reference to her account of the interest taken in the case by Lady Ailesbury of Park Place, who "was related to the instigator of the crime," and, believing in Mary's innocence, used all her influence to obtain a pardon. To Mr. Horace Bleackley's brilliant study of the case we have already in the Preface referred.
It may, in closing, be worth while to remind the student of such matters that the year with which we have had so much concern was in other respects an important one in the annals of crime. On 14th May, 1752, the "Red Fox," Glenure, fell by an assassin's bullet in the wood of Lettermore, which fact resulted in the hanging of a guiltless gentleman and, in after years, more happily inspired an immortal tale; while on 1st January, 1753, occurred the disappearance of Elizabeth Canning, that bewildering damsel whose mission it was to baffle her contemporaries and to set at nought the skill of subsequent inquirers.
Well, we have learned all that history and tradition has to tell us about Mary Blandy; but what do we really know of that sombre soul that sinned and suffered and passed to its appointed place so long ago? A few "facts," some "circumstances"—which, if we may believe the dictum of Mr. Baron Legge, cannot lie; and yet she remains for us dark and inscrutable as in her portrait, where she sits calmly in her cell, preparing her false Account for the misleading of future generations. Like her French "parallel," Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers, like that other Madeleine of Scottish fame, she leaves us but a catalogue of ambiguous acts; her secret is still her own. If only she had been the creature of some great novelist's fancy, how intimately should we then have known all that is hidden from us now; imagine her made visible for us through the exquisite medium of Mr. Henry James's incomparable art—the subtle individual threads all cunningly combined, the pattern wondrously wrought, the colours delicately and exactly shaded, until, in the rich texture of the finished tapestry, the figure of the woman as she lived stood perfectly revealed.
LEADING DATES IN THE BLANDY CASE
1744.
22 May—Marriage of Cranstoun and Anne Murray.
1745.
19 February—Birth of their daughter.
1746.
August—Cranstoun meets Mary Blandy at Lord Mark Kerr's.
October—Mrs. Cranstoun takes proceedings in Commissary Court.
1747.
August—Second meeting of Cranstoun and Mary. Cranstoun visits the Blandys and stays six months.
1748.
January—Cranstoun returns to London.
1 March—Cranstoun's marriage upheld by the Commissary Court.
May—Mrs. Blandy's illness at Turville Court. Cranstoun pays a second six-months' visit to the Blandys.
December—Cranstoun's regiment "broke" at Southampton. He returns to London.
1749.
March—Mrs. Blandy and Mary visit Mr. Sergeant Stevens in Doctors' Commons.
28 September—Mrs. Blandy taken ill after her return home.
30 September—Death of Mrs. Blandy.
1750.
August—Cranstoun returns to Henley. Puts powder in Mr. Blandy's tea.
October—Cranstoun professes to hear nocturnal music, &c.
November—Cranstoun leaves Henley for the last time.
1751.
April—Cranstoun writes from Scotland to Mary that he has seen Mrs. Morgan and will send powder with pebbles.
June—Powder and pebbles received by Mary, with directions to put the powder in tea. Mr. Blandy becomes unwell. Gunnell and Emmet ill after drinking his tea.
18 July—Cranstoun writes to Mary suggesting she should put the powder in gruel.
4 August—Gunnell makes gruel in pan by Mary's orders.
5 August—Mary seen stirring gruel in pantry. Mr. Blandy taken seriously ill in the night.
6 August—Mr. Norton, the apothecary, called in. Gruel warmed for Mr. Blandy's supper.
7 August—Emmet eats what was left the night before, and is taken ill. Mary orders the remains of the gruel to be warmed. Gunnell and Binfield notice white sediment in pan and lock it up.
8 August—Gunnell and Binfield take pan to Mrs. Mounteney, who delivers it to Mr. Norton.
9 August—Mr. Stevens, of Fawley, arrives and hears suspicions.
10 August—Gunnell tells Mr. Blandy of suspicions. Mary burns papers and packet. Dr. Addington called in.
11 August—Pan and packet given to Dr. Addington. He warns Mary. Her letter to Cranstoun intercepted.
12 August—Last interview between Mary and her father.
13 August—Mr. Blandy worse. Dr. Lewis called in. Mary confined to her room.
14 August—Death of Mr. Blandy. Mary attempts to bribe Harmon and Binfield to effect her escape.
15 August—Flight of Mary. Coroner's inquest. Mary apprehended.
17 August—Mary removed to Oxford Castle.
4 September—Cranstoun escapes to Calais.
1752.
2 March—Grand Jury find a True Bill against Mary Blandy.
3 March—Trial at Oxford Assizes. Prisoner convicted and sentenced to death.
6 March—Execution of Mary Blandy.
2 December—Death of Cranstoun.
THE TRIAL
AT THE ASSIZES HELD AT OXFORD FOR THE COUNTY OF OXFORD.
TUESDAY, 3RD MARCH, 1752.
Judges—
THE HONOURABLE HENEAGE LEGGE, ESQ., AND SIR SYDNEY STAFFORD SMYTHE, KNT., Two of the Barons of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer.
Counsel for the Crown—
- The Honourable Mr. BATHURST.
- Mr. Serjeant HAYWARD.
- The Honourable Mr. BARRINGTON.
- Mr. HAYES.
- Mr. NARES.
- Mr. AMBLER.
Counsel for the Prisoner—
- Mr. FORD.
- Mr. MORTON.
- Mr. ASTON.
The Indictment—
On Monday, the 2nd of March, 1752, a bill of indictment was found by the grand inquest for the county of Oxford against Mary Blandy, spinster, for the murder of Francis Blandy, late of the parish of Henley-upon-Thames, in the said county, gentleman.
On Tuesday, the 3rd of March, 1752, the Court being met, the prisoner Mary Blandy was set to the bar, when the Court proceeded thus—
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
Mary Blandy, hold up thy hand. [Which she did.] You stand indicted by the name of Mary Blandy, late of the parish of Henley-upon-Thames, in the county of Oxford, spinster, daughter of Francis Blandy, late of the same place, gentleman, deceased, for that you, not having the fear of God before your eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, and of your malice aforethought, contriving and intending, him the said Francis Blandy, your said late father, in his lifetime, to deprive of his life, and him feloniously to kill and murder on the 10th day of November, in the twenty-third year of the reign of our sovereign lord George the Second, now King of Great Britain, and on divers days and times between the said 10th day of November and the 5th day of August, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of His said Majesty, with force and arms, at the parish of Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, did knowingly, wilfully, and feloniously, and of your malice aforethought, mix and mingle certain deadly poison, to wit, white arsenic, in certain tea, which had been at divers times during the time above specified prepared for the use of the said Francis Blandy to be drank by him; you, the said Mary, then and there well knowing that the said tea, with which you did so mix and mingle the said deadly poison as aforesaid, was then and there prepared for the use of the said Francis Blandy, with intent to be then and there administered to him for his drinking the same; and the said tea with which the said poison was so mixed as aforesaid, afterwards, to wit, on the said 10th day of November and on the divers days and times aforesaid, at Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, was delivered to the said Francis, to be then and there drank by him; and the said Francis Blandy, not knowing the said poison to have been mixed with the said tea, did afterwards, to wit, on the said 10th day of November and on the said divers days and times aforesaid, there drink and swallow several quantities of the said poison so mixed as aforesaid with the said tea; and that you the said Mary Blandy might more speedily kill and murder the said Francis Blandy, you the said Mary Blandy, on the said 5th day of August and at divers other days and times between the said 5th day of August and the 14th day of August, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of our said sovereign lord George the Second, now King of Great Britain, &c., with force and arms, at the parish of Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, did knowingly, wilfully, feloniously, and of your malice aforethought, mix and mingle certain deadly poisons, to wit, white arsenic, with certain water gruel, which had been made and prepared for the use of your said then father, the said Francis Blandy, to be drank by him, you the said Mary then and there well knowing that the said water gruel, with which you did so mix and mingle the said deadly poison as aforesaid, was then and there made for the use of the said Francis Blandy, with intent to be then and there administered to him for his drinking the same; and the same water gruel, with which the said poison was so mixed as aforesaid, afterwards, to wit, on the same day and year, at Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, was delivered to the said Francis, to be then and there drank by him; and the said Francis Blandy, not knowing the said poison to have been mixed with the said water gruel, did afterwards, to wit, on the said 5th day of August and on the next day following, and on divers other days and times afterwards, and before the said 14th day of August, there drink and swallow several quantities of the said poison, so mixed as aforesaid with the said water gruel, and the said Francis Blandy, of the poison aforesaid and by the operation thereof, became sick and greatly distempered in his body, and from the several times aforesaid until the 14th day of the same month of August, in the twenty-fifth year aforesaid, at the parish aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, did languish, on which said 14th day of August, in the twenty-fifth year aforesaid, the said Francis Blandy, at the parish aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, of that poison died; and so you, the said Mary Blandy, him the aforesaid Francis Blandy, at Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, in manner and form aforesaid, feloniously, wilfully, and of your malice aforethought, did poison, kill, and murder, against the peace of our said lord the King, his crown and dignity.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
How sayest thou, Mary Blandy, art thou guilty of the felony and murder whereof thou standest indicted, or not guilty?
PRISONER—
Not guilty.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
Culprit, how wilt thou be tried?
PRISONER—
By God and my country.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
God send thee a good deliverance.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
Cryer, make a proclamation for silence.
CRYER—
Oyez, oyez, oyez! My lords the King's justices strictly charge and command all manner of persons to keep silence, upon pain of imprisonment.
CRYER—
Oyez! You good men, that are impanelled to try between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, answer to your names and save your fines.
The jury were called over and appeared.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
You, the prisoner at the bar, these men which were last called and do now appear are those who are to pass between our sovereign lord the King and you upon the trial of your life and death. If therefore you will challenge them, or any of them, you must challenge them as they come to the book to be sworn, before they are sworn; and you shall be heard.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
Anthony Woodward.
CRYER—
Anthony Woodward, look upon the prisoner. You shall well and truly try and true deliverance make between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, whom you shall have in charge, and a true verdict give, according to the evidence. So help you God.
And the same oath was administered to the rest (which were sworn), and their names are as follow:—
Anthony Woodward, sworn; Charles Harrison, sworn; Samuel George Glaze, sworn; William Farebrother, sworn; William Haynes, sworn; Thomas Crutch, sworn; Henry Swell, challenged; John Clarke, sworn; William Read, challenged; Harford Dobson, challenged; William Stone, challenged; William Hawkins, sworn; John Hayes, the elder, sworn; Samuel Badger, sworn; Samuel Bradley, sworn; William Brooks, challenged; Joseph Jagger, sworn.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
Cryer, count these.
Jury—Anthony Woodward, Charles Harrison, Samuel George Glaze, William Farebrother, William Haynes, Thomas Crutch, John Clarke, William Hawkins, John Haynes, sen., Samuel Badger, Samuel Bradley, Joseph Jagger.
CRYER—
Gentlemen, are ye all sworn?
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
Cryer, make proclamation.
CRYER—
Oyez, oyez, oyez! If any one can inform my lords the King's justices, the King's serjeant, the King's attorney-general, or this inquest now to be taken of any treasons, murders, felonies, or misdemeanours committed or done by the prisoner at the bar let him come forth and he shall be heard, for the prisoner stands now at the bar upon her deliverance; and all persons that are bound by recognisance to give evidence against the prisoner at the bar let them come forth and give their evidence, or they will forfeit their recognisances.
CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS—
Mary Blandy, hold up thy hand. Gentlemen of the jury, look upon the prisoner and hearken to her charge. She stands indicted by the name of Mary Blandy, of the parish of Henley-upon-Thames, in the county of Oxford, spinster, daughter of Francis Blandy, late of the same place, gentleman, deceased, for that she not having [as in the indictment before set forth]. Upon this indictment she has been arraigned, and upon her arraignment has pleaded not guilty, and for her trial has put herself upon God and her country, which country you are. Your charge therefore is to inquire whether she be guilty of the felony and murder whereof she stands indicted, or not guilty. If you find her guilty you shall inquire what goods or chattels, lands or tenements she had at the time of the felony committed, or at any time since. If you find her not guilty you shall inquire whether she fled for the same. If you find that she did fly for the same you shall inquire of her goods and chattels as if you had found her guilty. If you find her not guilty, and that she did not fly for the same, say so, and no more; and hear your evidence.
The Hon. Mr. Barrington then opened the indictment. After which,
Mr.
Bathurst
The Hon. Mr. BATHURST[[1] ] spoke as follows:—
May it please your lordships and you gentlemen of the jury, I am counsel in this case for the King, in whose name and at whose expense this prosecution is carried on against the prisoner at the bar, in order to bring her to justice for a crime of so black a dye that I am not at all surprised at this vast concourse of people collected together to hear and to see the trial and catastrophe of so execrable an offender as she is supposed to be.
For, gentlemen, the prisoner at the bar, Miss Mary Blandy, a gentlewoman by birth and education, stands indicted for no less a crime than that of murder, and not only for murder, but for the murder of her own father, and for the murder of a father passionately fond of her, undertaken with the utmost deliberation, carried on with an unvaried continuation of intention, and at last accomplished by a frequent repetition of the baneful dose, administered with her own hands. A crime so shocking in its own nature and so aggravated in all its circumstances as will (if she is proved to be guilty of it) justly render her infamous to the latest posterity, and make our children's children, when they read the horrid tale of this day, blush to think that such an inhuman creature ever had an existence.
I need not, gentlemen, paint to you the heinousness of the crime of murder. You have but to consult your own breasts, and you will know it.
Has a murder been committed? Who ever beheld the ghastly corpse of the murdered innocent weltering in its blood and did not feel his own blood run slow and cold through all his veins? Has the murderer escaped? With what eagerness do we pursue? With what zeal do we apprehend? With what joy do we bring to justice? And when the dreadful sentence of death is pronounced upon him, everybody hears it with satisfaction, and acknowledges the justice of the divine denunciation that, "By whom man's blood is shed, by man shall his blood be shed."
If this, then, is the case of every common murderer, what will be thought of one who has murdered her own father? who has designedly done the greatest of all human injuries to him from whom she received the first and greatest of all human benefits? who has wickedly taken away his life to whom she stands indebted for life? who has deliberately destroyed, in his old age, him by whose care and tenderness she was protected in her helpless infancy? who has impiously shut her ears against the loud voice of nature and of God, which bid her honour her father, and, instead of honouring him, has murdered him?
It becomes us, gentlemen, who appear here as counsel for the Crown, shortly to open the history of this whole affair, that you may be better able to attend to and understand the evidence we have to lay before you. And though, in doing this, I will endeavour rather to extenuate than to aggravate, yet I trust I have such a history to open as will shock the ears of all who hear me.
Mr. Francis Blandy, the unfortunate deceased, was an attorney at law, who lived at Henley, in this county. A man of character and reputation, he had one only child, a daughter—the darling of his soul, the comfort of his age. He took the utmost care of her education, and had the satisfaction to see his care was not ill-bestowed, for she was genteel, agreeable, sprightly, sensible. His whole thoughts were bent to settle her advantageously in the world. In order to do that he made use of a pious fraud (if I may be allowed the expression), pretending he could give her £10,000 for her fortune. This he did in hopes that some of the neighbouring gentlemen would pay their addresses to her, for out of regard to him she was from her earliest youth received into the best company, and her own behaviour made her afterwards acceptable to them. But how short-sighted is human prudence? What was intended for her promotion, proved his death and her destruction.
For, gentlemen, about six years ago, one Captain William Henry Cranstoun, a gentleman then in the army, happened to come to Henley to recruit. He soon got acquainted with the prisoner, and, hearing she was to have £10,000, fell in love—not with her, but with her fortune. Children he had before; married he was at that time, yet, concealing it from her, he insinuated himself into her good graces, and obtained her consent for marriage.
The father, who had heard a bad character of him, and who had reason to believe, what was afterwards confirmed, that he was at that very time married, you will easily imagine was averse to the proposal. Upon this Captain Cranstoun and the prisoner determined to remove that obstacle out of their way, and resolved to get as soon as possible into possession of the £10,000 that the poor man had unfortunately said he was worth.
In order for this, the captain being at Mr. Blandy's house in August, 1750, they both agreed upon this horrid deed. And that people might be less surprised at Mr. Blandy's death, they began by giving out that they heard music in the house—a certain sign (as Mr. Cranstoun had learned from a wise woman, one Mrs. Morgan, in Scotland) that the father would die in less than twelve months. The captain, too, pretended he was endowed with the gift of second sight, and affirmed that he had seen Mr. Blandy's apparition. This was another certain sign of his death, as she told the servants, to whom she frequently said her father would not live long. Nay, she went farther, and told them he would not live till the October following.
When it was she first began to mix poison with his victuals it is impossible for us to ascertain, but probably it was not long after November, 1750, when Mr. Cranstoun left Henley. The effects of the poison were soon perceived. You will hear Dr. Addington, his physician, tell you Mr. Blandy had for many months felt the dreadful effects of it. One of the effects was the teeth dropping out of his head whole from their sockets. Yet what do you think, gentlemen, the daughter did when she perceived it? "She damned him for a toothless old rogue, and wished him at hell." The poor man frequently complained of pains in his bowels, had frequent reachings and sickness; yet, instead of desisting, she wanted more poison to effect her purpose. And Mr. Cranstoun did accordingly in the April following send her a fresh supply; under the pretence of a present of Scotch pebbles, he enclosed a paper of white arsenic. This she frequently administered in his tea; and we shall prove to you that in June, having put some of it into a dish of tea, Mr. Blandy disliking the taste, left half in the cup. Unfortunately, a poor old charwoman (by name Ann Emmet), glad to get a breakfast, drank the remainder, together with a dish or two more out of the pot, and ate what bread and butter had been left. The consequence was that she was taken violently ill with purging and vomiting, and was in imminent danger of her life. The poor woman's daughter came and told Miss Blandy how ill her mother was; she, sorry that the poison was misapplied, said, "Do not let your mother be uneasy, I will send her what is proper for her." And, accordingly, sent her great quantities of sack whey and thin mutton broth, than which no physician could have prescribed better, and thus drenched the poor woman for ten days together, till she grew tired of her medicines, and sent her daughter again to Miss Blandy to beg a little small beer. "No, no small beer," the prisoner said, "that was not proper for her." Most plainly, then, she knew what it was the woman had taken in her father's tea. She knew its effect. She knew the proper antidotes. Having now experienced the strength of the poison, she grew more open and undaunted, was heard to say, "Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for £10,000?" I will make no remark upon such a horrid expression—it needs none. After this she continued to mix the poison with her father's tea as often as she had an opportunity. Soon afterwards Susan Gunnell, another witness we shall call, happened to drink some which her master had left; she was taken ill upon it, and continued so for three weeks. This second accident alarmed the prisoner. She was afraid of being discovered. She found it would not mix well with tea. Accordingly, she wrote to Mr. Cranstoun for further instructions. In answer to it, he bids her "put it into some liquid of a more thickish substance."
The father being ill, frequently took water gruel. This was a proper vehicle for the powder. Therefore from this time you will find her always busy about her father's gruel. But lest Susan Gunnell, who had been ill, should eat any of it, she cautioned her particularly against it, saying, "Susan, as you have been so ill, you had better not eat any of your master's water gruel; I have been told water gruel has done me harm, and perhaps it may have the same effect upon you." And lest this caution should not be sufficient, she spoke to Betty Binfield, the other maidservant, and asked her whether Susan ever ate any of her father's gruel, adding, "She had better not, for if she does it may do for her, you may tell her." Evidently, then, she knew what were the effects of the powder she put into her father's gruel; for if it would "do for" the servant, it would "do for" her father.
But the time approached beyond which she had foretold her father would not live. It was the middle of July, and the father still living. At this Mr. Cranstoun grows impatient. Upon the 18th of July he writes to her, and, expressing himself in an allegorical manner, which, however, you will easily understand, he says, "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 of 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."[[2] ] Here he is encouraging her to double the dose; says, he is afraid it will be too weak, and will take up too much time. And, as a further incitement to her to make haste, describes the beauties of Scotland, and tells her that his mother, Lady Cranstoun, had employed workmen to fit up an apartment for her at Lennel House.
Soon after the receipt of this letter she followed the advice. And you will accordingly find the dose doubled. Her father grew worse, and, as she herself told the servants, complained of a fireball in his stomach, saying, "He never will be well till he has got rid of it." And yet you will find she herself, fearful lest he should get rid of it, was continually adding fuel to the fire, till it had consumed her father's entrails.
Gentlemen, I will not detain you by going through every particular, but bring you to the fatal period. Upon the 3rd of August, being Saturday, Susan Gunnell made a large pan of water gruel for her master. Upon Monday, the 5th, the prisoner will be proved to go into the pantry where it was kept, and, after having, according to Mr. Cranstoun's advice, put in a double dose of the powder, she stirred it about, for a considerable time, in order to make it mix the better. When, fearing she should have been observed, she went immediately into the laundry, to the maids, and told them that "she had been in the pantry, and, after stirring her papa's water gruel, had ate the oatmeal at the bottom," saying that, "if she was ever to take to the eating anything in particular, it would be oatmeal." Strange inconsistence! She who had cautioned the maid against it not above a fortnight before, who had declared that it had been prejudicial to her own health, is on a sudden grown mighty fond of it. But the pretence is easily to be seen through. That afternoon some of the water gruel was taken out of the pan and prepared for her father's supper. She again in the kitchen takes care to stir it sufficiently, looks at the spoon, rubs some between her fingers, and then sends it up to the poor old man her father. He scarce had swallowed it when he was taken violently ill, and continued so all the next day, with a griping, purging, and vomiting. Yet she herself orders a second mess of the same gruel for her father's supper on the Tuesday, and was herself the person who carried it up to her father and administered it to him as nourishment. The poor old man, grown weak with the frequent repetition, had not drank half the mess before he was seized, from head to foot, with the most violent pricking pains, continual reaching and vomiting, and was obliged to go to bed without finishing it. The next morning the poor charwoman, coming again to the house, unfortunately ate the remainder of the gruel, and was instantly affected in so violent a manner that for two hours together it was thought she would have died in Mr. Blandy's house. The prisoner at this time was in bed; but the maid, going up to her room, told her how ill dame Emmet had been, at the same time saying she had ate nothing but the remainder of her father's water gruel. The prisoner's answer was, "Poor woman! I am glad I was not up, I should have been shocked to have seen her"—should have been shocked to have seen the poor charwoman eat what was prepared for her father, but was never shocked at her father's eating it, or at his sufferings!
Gentlemen, in the afternoon of the Wednesday, notwithstanding the poor man, her father, had suffered so much for two days together, yet she again endeavours to give him more of the same gruel. "No," says the maid, "it has an odd taste; it is grown stale, I will make fresh." "It is not worth while to make fresh now, it will take you from your ironing; this will do," was the prisoner's answer. However, Susan made fresh, after which wanting the pan to put it in, she went to throw away what was before in it. Upon tilting the pan, she perceived a white powder at the bottom, which she knew could not be oatmeal. She showed it her fellow-servant, when, feeling it, they found it gritty. They then too plainly perceived what it was had made their poor master ill. What was to be done? Susan immediately carried the pan with the gruel and powder in it to Mrs. Mounteney, a neighbour and friend of the deceased. Mrs. Mounteney kept it till it was delivered to the apothecary, the apothecary delivered it to the physician, and he will tell you that upon trying it he found it to be white arsenic. Mr. Blandy continued from day to day to grow worse. At last, upon the Saturday morning, Susan Gunnell, an old honest, maidservant, uneasy to see how her poor master had been treated, went to his bedside, and, in the most prudent and gentlest manner, broke to him what had been the cause of his illness, and the strong ground there was to suspect that his daughter was the occasion of it. The father, with a fondness greater than ever a father felt before, cried out, "Poor love-sick girl! What will not a woman do for the man she loves? But who do you think gave her the powder?" She answered, "She could not tell, unless it was sent by Mr. Cranstoun." "I believe so too," says the master, "for I remember he has talked learnedly of poisons. I always thought there was mischief in those cursed Scotch pebbles."
Soon afterwards he got up and came to breakfast in his parlour, where his daughter and Mr. Littleton, his clerk, then were. A dish of tea, in the usual manner, was ready poured out for him. He just tasted it and said, "This tea has a bad taste," looked at the cup, then looked hard at his daughter. She was, for the first time, shocked, burst into tears, and ran out of the room. The poor father, more shocked than the daughter, poured the tea into the cat's basin, and went to the window to recover himself. She soon came again into the room. Mr. Littleton said, "Madam, I fear your father is very ill, for he has flung away his tea." Upon this news she trembled, and the tears again stood in her eyes. She again withdraws. Soon afterwards the father came into the kitchen, and, addressing himself to her, said, "Molly, I had like to have been poisoned twenty years ago, and now I find I shall die by poison at last." This was warning sufficient. She immediately went upstairs, brought down Mr. Cranstoun's letters, together with the remainder of the poison, and threw them (as she thought unobserved) into the fire. Thinking she had now cleared herself from the suspicious appearances of poison, her spirits mend, "she thanked God that she was much better, and said her mind was more at ease than it had been." Alas! how often does that which we fondly imagine will save us become our destruction? So it was in the present instance. For providentially, though the letters were destroyed, the paper with the poison in it was not burnt. One of the maids having immediately flung some fresh coals upon the fire, Miss Blandy went well satisfied out of the room. Upon her going out, Susan Gunnell said to her fellow-servants, "I saw Miss Blandy throw some papers in the fire, let us see whether we can discover what they were." They removed the coals, and found a paper with white powder in it, wrote upon, in Mr. Cranstoun's hands, "Powder to clean the pebbles."[[3] ] This powder they preserved, and the doctor will tell you that it was white arsenic, the same which had been found in the pan of gruel.
Having now (as she imagined) concealed her own being concerned, you will find her the next day endeavouring to prevent her lover from being discovered. Mr. Blandy of Kingston having come the night before to see her father, on Sunday morning she sent Mr. Littleton with him to church; while they were there she sat down and wrote this letter to her beloved Cranstoun—
Dear Willy,—My father is so bad, that I have only time to tell you, that if you do not hear from me soon again, don't be frightened. I am better myself. Lest any accident should happen to your letters, take care what you write. My sincere compliments. I am ever yours.
"My father is so bad." Who had made him so? Yet does she say she was sorry for it? No; she knew her father was then dying by that powder that he had sent her, yet could acquaint him she was herself better. Under those circumstances could caution him to take care what he wrote, lest his letters should be discovered! What can speak more strongly their mutual guilt? This letter she sealed with no less than five wafers. When Mr. Littleton came from church she privately gave it to him, desiring it might be directed as usual, and put into the post. Mr. Littleton was at that time too well apprised of this black transaction to obey her commands. He opened the letter, took a copy of it. Upon further recollection, carried the original to the father, who bid him open and read it. He did so. What do you think, gentlemen, was all the poor old man said upon this discovery? He only again dropped these words, "Poor love-sick girl! What will not a woman do for the man she loves?"
Upon the Monday morning, after having been kept for two days without seeing her father, by the order of the physicians, her conscience, or rather fear, began to trouble her; she told the maid she should go distracted if she did not see her father, and sent a message to beg to see him. Accordingly she was admitted. The conversation between them was this—"Papa, how do you do?" "My dear, I am very ill." She immediately fell upon her knees and said, "Dear sir, banish me where you will; do with me what you please, so you do but pardon and forgive me. And as to Mr. Cranstoun, I never will see, write, or speak to him again." He answered, "I do forgive you, but you should, my dear, have considered that I was your own father." Upon this the prisoner said, "Sir, as to your illness I am innocent." Susan Gunnell, who was present, interrupted her at this expression, and told her she was astonished to hear her say she was innocent, when they had the poison to produce against her that she had put into her father's water gruel, and had preserved the paper she had thrown into the fire. The father, whose love and tenderness for his daughter exceeded expression, could not bear to hear her thus accused; therefore, turning himself in his bed, cried out, "Oh that villain! that hath eat of the best, and drank of the best my house could afford, to take away my life and ruin my daughter!" Upon hearing this the daughter ran to the other side of the bed to him; upon which he added, "My dear, you must hate that man, you must hate the very ground he treads on." Struck with this, the prisoner said, "Dear sir, your kindness towards me is worse than swords to my heart. I must down upon my knees and beg you not to curse me." Hear the father's answer, a father then dying by poison given by her hand—"I curse thee, my dear! No, I bless you, and will pray to God to bless you, and to amend your life"; then added, "So do, my dear, go out of the room lest you should say anything to accuse yourself." Was ever such tenderness from a parent to a child! She was prudent enough to follow his advice, and went out of the room without speaking. His kindness was swords to her heart for near half an hour. Going downstairs she met Betty Binfield, and, whilst she was thus affected, owned to her she had put some powder into her father's gruel, and that Susan and she, for their honesty to their master, deserved half her fortune.
Gentlemen, not to tire you with the particulars of every day, upon Wednesday, in the afternoon, the father died. Upon his death the prisoner, finding herself discovered, endeavoured to persuade the manservant to go off with her; but he was too honest to be tempted by a reward to assist her in going off, though she told him it would be £500 in his way. That night she refused to go to bed. Not out of grief for her father's death, for you will be told by the maid who sat up with her that she never during the whole night showed the least sorrow, compassion, or remorse upon his account. But in the middle of the night she proposed to get a post-chaise in order to go to London, and offered the maid twenty-five guineas to go with her. "A post-chaise! and go to London! God forbid, madam, I should do such a thing." The prisoner, finding the maid not proper for her purpose, immediately put a smile upon her face—"I was only joking." Only joking! Good God! would she now have it thought she was only joking?
Her father just dead by poison: she suspected of having poisoned him; accused of being a parricide; and would she have it thought she was capable of joking?
When I see the assistance she now has (and I am glad to see she has the assistance of three as able gentlemen as any in the profession) I am sure she will not be now advised to say she was then joking. But it will appear very plainly to you, gentlemen, that she was not joking, for the next morning she dressed herself in a proper habit for a journey, and, while the people put to take care of her were absent, stole out of the house and went over Henley Bridge. But the mob, who had heard of what she had done, followed her so close that she was forced to take shelter in a little alehouse, the Angel. Mr. Fisher, a gentleman who was afterwards one of the jury upon the coroner's inquisition, came there, and prevailed with her (or in other words forced her) to return home. Upon her return, the inquest sitting, she sends for Mr. Fisher into another room and said, "Dear Mr. Fisher, what do you think they will do with me? Will they send me to Oxford gaol?" "Madam," said he, "I am afraid it will go hard with you. But if you have any of Mr. Cranstoun's letters, and produce them, they may be of some service to you." Upon hearing this she cried out, "Dear Mr. Fisher, what have I done? I had letters that would have hanged that villain, but I have burnt them. My honour to that villain has brought me to my destruction." And she spoke the truth.
This, gentlemen, is in substance the history of this black affair. But, my lords, though this is the history in order of time, yet it is not the order in which we shall lay the evidence before your lordships and the jury. It will be proper for us to begin by establishing the fact that Mr. Francis Blandy did die of poison. When the physicians have proved that, we will then proceed to show that he died of the poison put into the water gruel on the 5th of August. After this we will call witnesses who from a number of circumstances, as well as from her own confession, will prove she put it into her father's water gruel, knowing it was for her father, and knowing it to be poison.
Having done this, we will conclude with a piece of evidence which I forgot to mention before, and that is the conversation between her and Mr. Lane at the Angel. Mr. Lane and his wife happening to be walking at that time, finding a mob about the door, stepped into the alehouse to see the prisoner. The moment she saw a gentleman, though it was one she did not know, she accosted him, "Sir, you appear to be a gentleman; for heaven's sake, what will become of me?" "Madam!" said he, "you will be sent to Oxford gaol; you will there be tried for your life. If you are innocent, you will be acquitted; if you are guilty, you will suffer death."
The prisoner upon hearing this stamped with her foot, and said, "Oh! that damned villain!" Then pausing, "But why do I blame him? I am most blame myself, for I gave it, and I knew the consequence." If she knew the consequence, I am sure there are none of you gentlemen but who will think she deserves to suffer the consequence.
And let me here observe how evidently the hand of Providence has interposed to bring her to this day's trial that she may suffer the consequence. For what but the hand of Providence could have preserved the paper thrown by her into the fire, and have snatched it unburnt from the devouring flame! Good God! how wonderful are all Thy ways, and how miraculously hast Thou preserved this paper to be this day produced in evidence against the prisoner in order that she may suffer the punishment due to her crime, and be a dreadful example to all others who may be tempted in like manner to offend Thy divine majesty!
Let me add that, next to Providence, the public are obliged to the two noble lords[[4] ] whose indefatigable diligence in inquiring into this hidden work of darkness has enabled us to lay before you upon this occasion the clearest and strongest proof that such a dark transaction will admit of. For poisoning is done in secret and alone. It is not like other murders, neither can it be proved with equal perspicuity. However, the evidence we have in this case is as clear and direct as possible, and if it comes up to what I have opened to you I make no doubt but you will do that justice to your country which the oath you have taken requires of you.
Mr.
Serjeant
Hayward