Blandy, Mary, 1720-1752 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- Great Britain; Trials (Poisoning) -- Great Britain
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John Riddell, the Scots genealogist, hitherto unpublished, which is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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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