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