y Huntingdon had written
a letter to Miss Blandy after her conviction. On 22nd April, 1752,
Miss Talbot writes to Mrs. Carter, who thought Mary had been "too
severely judged," that "her hardiness in guilt" was shocking to
think of. "Let me tell you one fact that young Goosetree, the
lawyer, told to the Bishop of Gloucester," she writes, with
reference to Miss Blandy's repeated statement that she never
believed her father a rich man. "This Goosetree visited her in jail
as an old acquaintance. She expressed to him great amazement at her
father's being no richer, and said she had no notion but he must
have been worth L10,000. Mr. Goosetree prudently told her the less
she said about that the better, and she never said it afterwards,
but the contrary." Miss Talbot adds that certain letters in Lord
Macclesfield's hands "falsify others of her affirmations." By 5th
May, 1753, Mrs. Delany writes, "We are now very full of talk about
Eliza Canning."

As time goes on the tragedy of Henley, though gradually becoming a
tradition, is still susceptible of current allusion. John Wilkes,
writing from Bath to his daughter on 3rd January, 1779, regarding a
lady of their acquaintance who proposed to keep house for a certain
doctor, remarks "that he is sure it could not have lasted long, for
she would have poisoned him, as Miss Blandy did her father, and
forged a will in her own favour"; but Tate Wilkinson, in his
_Memoirs_, observes, "Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires, the gipsy,
and Miss Blandy were such universal topics in 1752 that you would
have supposed it the business of mankind to talk only of them; yet
now, in 1790, ask a young man of twenty-five or thirty a question
relative to these extraordinary personages, and he will be puzzled
to answer, and will say, 'What mean you by enquiring? I do not
understand you,'" So quickly had the "smarts" of the new generation
forgotten the "fair Blandy" of their fathers' toasts. To make an end
of such quotations, which might indefinitely be multiplied, we shall
only refer the reader to Lady Russell's _Three Generations of
Fascinating Women_ (London: 1901), for good reading _passim_, and
with special reference to her account of the interest taken in the
case by Lady Ailesbury of Park Place, who "was related to the
instigator of the crime," and, believing in Mary's innocence, used
all her influence to obtain a pardon. To Mr. Horace Bleackley's
brilliant study of the case we have already in the Prefa