Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1883 — LOVE’S SACRIFICE. [ARTICLE]

LOVE’S SACRIFICE.

William Henry Cranstoun was the needy younger son of an ancient Scotch family which had made great alliances, by inter-marriages, with the nobility of Scotland. His uncle, Lord Mark Ker, procured him a commission in the army. Cranstoun married a Miss Murray, m Scotland, in the year 1745, and received a handsome fortune with her, but soon ran through with it, after which they led a shifty existence on his pay, eked out by loans and his winnings at the gaming-table. In 1746, shortly after his wife had been delivered of a sou, Cranstoun (who held the title of Captain), was ordered to join his regiment in England. He was sent with a recruiting party to Henley, and there met an old friend of his uncle’s, a Mr. Blandy. Mr. Blandy was a man of independent means, and he extended a cordial hospitality to the Captain. The latter was not backward in accepting it, and soon made himself at home in his new' acquaintance's houso, setting up his headquarters there. Blandy had a daughter (Mary by name), a pretty and unsophisticated young woman of 26. Of course the trooper could not but pay attentions to her. The Captain was a little, ugly, pock-marked, squinting fellow of 46, but he had a golden tongue for small talk, which would have imposed on a wiser woman than the one he had made a victim of. For ho did make her a victim—not for her sake, but for that of her fortune. The needy soldier saw a golden future for him, and determined to win it. The fact that he was already married did not trouble him in the least. His wife was far enough away in those days of slow coaching and no newspapers not to bo a terror to him. To avoid the chance of any complaint, however, he informed Miss Blandy that he was involved in a disagreeable lawsuit in Scotland with a lady who claimed him as a husband, and asked her if she loved him well enough to wait the issue of the affair. She told him that she did, and with this understanding their courtship continued.

In time, however, Lord Ker heard from one of his nephew’s brother officers of the little game of bigamy the gay Captain was playing, and wrote to Blandy, informing him that the Captain had a wife and children in Scotland, and conjuring him to preserve his daughter from ruin. Alarmed by this intelligence, Mr. Blandy informed his daughter of it, but Cranstoun’s declaration had prepared her to expect, some such news; and whan the old gentleman taxed Cranstoun with it he declared it was only an affair of gallantry, of which he should have no difficulty to free himself. Mrs. Blandy seems to have been under as great - a degree of infatuation as her daughter, for she forbore all further inquiry on the Captain’s bare assurance that the report of his inarriage was false. . Cranstoun, however, could not be equally easy. He saw the necessity of devising some scheme to got his first marriage annulled, and he wrote jit length to his wife, requesting her to disown him for a husband. The substance of this letter was that, having no other way of rising to preferment but in the army, he had but little ground to expect advancement there while it was known that he was encumbered with a wife and family; but could he once pass for a single man he had not the least doubt of being quickly preferred, which would procure him a sufficiency to maintain her as well as himself in. a genteelor manner than he was able to do. “All, therefore,” added he, “I have to request of you is, that you will transcribe the inclosed copy of a letter, wherein yon disown me for a husband; put your maiden name to it and send it Dv the post. All the use I shall make of it shall be to procure the advancement, which will necessarily include your own benefit. In further assurance that you will comply with my request, I remain your most affectionate husband, “W. H. Cranstoun.” Mrs. Cranstoun, ill as she had been treated by her husband, and little hope as she had of more generous usage, was, after repeated efforts had passed, induced to give up her claim, and at length sent him the requested paper, signed Murray, which was her maiden name. The Captain made some copies of this letter, which he sent to his wife’s relations and his own, the consequence of which was that thev withdrew the assistance they had afforded the lady, which reduced her to an extremity she had never before known. Exclusive of this, he had instituted a suit for the dissolution of his marriage, blit when Mrs. Cranstoun was heard and the letters read, the contrivance was seen through, the marriage was confirmed, and Cranstoun was adjudged to pay the expenses of the trial. At the next session the marriage was again confirmed, and Cranstoun was obliged to allow his wife a separate maintenance. Still, however, he paid his addresses to Miss Blandy with the same fervenev as before, which, coming to the knowledge of Mrs. Crans"’toun, she sent her the decree of the Court of Session establishing the validity of the marriage. It is reasonable to suppose that this would have convinced Miss Blandy of the erroneous path in which she was treading. On this occasion she consulted her mother, and,. Cranstoun having set out for Scotland, the old lady advised her to write to him to know the truth of the affair. Absurd as this advice was. she wrote to him, but soon after the receipt of the letter he returned to Henley, when he fe§4 impudence enough to assert M

the cause was not finally determined, but would be referred to the House pf Lords. Mr. Blandy gave very little credit to the assertion, but his wife obsented at once to all he said, and treated him with as much tenderness as if fie had been her own child. The fact was that the Captain was a shrewd, plausible, and unscrupulous man of the world, and the country gentleman and his silly wife and daughter had little show of safety in his hands. The old lady’s faith in him, indeed, was something simply idiotic, and she continued to favor him up to the timejof her death in 1751. Once she was dead, the husbandnttempted no longer to conceal the dislike he had imbibed for his daughter’s suitor, and his enmity to his presence finally overcame even the Captain’s cast-iron cheek, and he ceased to/visit the house. He kept up his connection with the daughter,'though, and ah the eve of his departure for Scotland had a parting interview with hei, during which he complained of her father’s illtreatment of him. “But I know how to conciliate him,” }»e said. “How?” asked the yotpig woman. “A friend of mine in Edinburg, a doctor, has the secret of some love-powders which never fail. I will get some from him and send them to you. Yon must give them to your father. Do you understand ?”

The silly woman, superstitious and narrow-minded, like most of her class and time, consented; first consulting the village fortune-teller, who examined her hand and bade her do as her lover demanded and all would be well. Cranstoun sent her the powders, according to promise; and Mr. Blandy, being indisposed one Sunday night before his death, a maid-servant maidservant made him some water gruel, into which Miss Blandy conveyed some of the powder and gave it to her father, and, repeating this draught on the following day, he was tormented with the: most violent pains in his bowels. When the old gentleman’s disorder increased, and he was attended by a physician', his’ daughter came into his room, and, falling on her knees to her father said: "Banish me whore you please; do with me what you please, so you do forgive me; and, as for Cranstoun, I will never see him, speak to him, or writ® to him as long as I live if you will forgive me.” “Why, what do you mean?” asked the old man in amazement. The penitent woman then confessed the whole affair.

It was too late to mend the matter, however. Mr. Blandy died, and a postmortem showed that his system wts permeated with arsenic. His daughter was arrested, and on March 3, 1752, tried at Oxford. Her only defense was the following curious speech: My Lord : It is morally impossible for .mo to lay down the hardships I have received. I have been aspersed in my character. In the first place, it is said I spoke ill of my father; that I have cursed him and wished him at hell; which is extremely false. Sometimes little family affairs have happened, and he did not speak to me so kind as I should wish. I own I am passionate,; my Lord; and in those passions some hasty expressions might have dropped ; but great care has been taken to recollect every word I have spoken at different times, and to apply them to such particular purposes as my enemies knew would do me the greatest injury. These are hardships, my Lord, such as yourself must allow to be so. It was said, too, my Lord, that I endeavored to make my escape. Your Lordship will judge from the difficulties I labored under. I had lost my father. I was accused of being his murderer. I was not permitted to go near him. I was forsaken by my friends, affronted by tho mob, and insulted by my servants. Although I begged to have the liberty to listen at the door where he died I was not allowed it. My keys were taken* from me; my shoe-buckles and garters too, to prevent me from making away with myself, as though I was the most abandoned creature. What would I do, my Lord ? I verily believe I must have been out of my senses. When I heard my father was dead I ran out of the house, and over the bridge, and had nothing on but a half sack and petticoats, without a hoop—my petticoats hanging about me; the mob gathered about me. Was this a condition, my Lord, to make my escape in ? A good Woman beyond the bridge, seeing me in this condition, desired me to walk in till the mob was dispersed; the Town Sergeant was there; I begged he would take me under his protection, to have me home; the woman said it was not proper, the mob was very great, and that I had better stay a little. When I came home they said I used the constable ill. I was locked up for fifteen hours, with only an old servant of tho family to attend me. I was not allowed a maid nor the common' decencies of my sex. I was sent to jail, and was in hopes there at least this usage would have ended, but was told it was reported I was frequently drunk; that I attempted to make my escape; that I did not attend at chapel. A more abstemious woman, my Lord, I believe does not live. Upon the report of my making my escape, the gentleman who was High Sheriff last year (not the present) came and told me, by order of the higher powers, that he must put ah iron on me. I submitted, as I always do, to the higher powers. Some time after he came again and said he must put a heavier one upon me, which I have worn, my Lord, till I came hither. I asked the Sheriff why I was so ironed. He said he did it by the command of some noble peer on his hearing that I intended making my escape. I told them I never had any such thought, and I would bear it with the other cruel usages I had received on my character. The Rev. Mr. Swinton, the worthy clergyman, who attended me in prison, can testify I was regular at tho chapel whenever I was well. Sometimes I really was not able to come out, and then he attended me in my room. They have likewise published papers and depositions which ought not to have been published, in order to represent me as the most abandoned of ’ my sex, and to prejudice the world against me. ’ I submit myself to your Lordships and to the wortny jury. I do assure your Lordships, as I am to answer at the great tribunal, where I must appear, I am as innocent as the child unborn of the death of my father. I would not endeavor to save my life at the expense of truth. I really thought the powder an innocent, inoffensive thing; and I gave it to procure his love (meaning toward Cranstoun). It has been mentioned, I should say, I was ruined. My Lord, when a young woman loses her character, is not that her ruin? Why then should this expression be construed in so wide a sense? Is it not ruining my character to have auoh a thing laid

to my charge? And, whatever maybe the event of this trial, I am ruined most effectually. Miss Bland was sentenced to death. Her execution occurred at Oxford on April 5, 1752. The night before her death she spent in devotion, and at 9 in the morning she left her being dressed in black bombazine and having her arms bound with black ribbons. Having ascended some steps of the gallows-ladder she said: “Gentlemen, don’t hang me high, for the sake of decency.” Being desired to go something higher she turned about and expressed her ap prehensions that she should fall. * The rope being put around her neck she pulled her handkerchief over 'her face, and was turned off on holding out a book of devotion which she had been reading. Cranstoun, hearing of Miss Blandy’s commitment to Oxford Jail, concealed himself some time in Scotland, and then escaped to Boulogne, in France, where he changed his name to Dunbar. Some officers in the French service, who were related $0 his wife, hearing of his concealment, vowed revenge if they shonld meet him for his cruelty to Jibe unhappy woman, on which he fled to Paris, when he went to Fumes, in Flanders.

He had not been long at Furnes, when he was seized with a severe fit of illenss, which brought him to a degree < f reflection to which he had long been s stranger. At length he sent for a Either belonging to an adjacent convent, and received absolution from bis hands on declaring himself a convert to the Romish faith. ' Cranstoun died on tho 30th of November, 1752, and the fraternity of nonks and. friars looked on his conversion'as an object of so much importance, that solfenrtj mass was sung on the occasion, apsl the body was followed to the grave not only by the ecclesiastics but by the:magistrates of the town. His papers were then sent to England po his brother, Lord Cranstoun, his clothes were sold for the discharge of ais debts, and, in spite of the saintly sharacter of his end, his name stands so this day in the calendar of criminals in England with the inscription against it: “Murderer—died while evading trial.”