ssession. 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A hitherto unpublished letter from Henry Fox at the War Office, to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.