Trial of Mary Blandy by Unknown
page 13 of 334 (03%)
page 13 of 334 (03%)
|
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, |
|