had decreed
William Henry Cranstoun and Anne Murray to be man and wife and the
child of the marriage to be their lawful issue, and had decerned the
captain to pay the lady an annuity of L40 sterling for her own
aliment and L10 for their daughter's, so long as she should be
maintained by her mother, and further had found him liable in
expenses, amounting to L100. The proceedings disclose a very ugly
incident. Shortly after leaving his wife, as before narrated,
Cranstoun wrote to her that his sole chance of promotion in the Army
depended on his appearing unmarried, and with much persuasion he at
length prevailed upon her to copy a letter, framed by him, to the
effect that she had never been his wife. Once possessed of this
document in her handwriting, the little scoundrel sent copies of it
to his own and his wife's relatives in Scotland, whereby she
suffered much obloquy and neglect, and when that unhappy lady raised
her action of declarator, with peculiar baseness he lodged the
letter in process. Fortunately, she had preserved the original
draft, together with her faithless husband's letters thereanent.
This judgment was, for the gallant defender, now on half-pay, a
veritable _debacle_, and we may be sure that the confiding Blandys
would have heard no word of it from him; but Mrs. Cranstoun, having
learned something of the game her spouse was playing at Henley,
herself wrote to Mr. Blandy, announcing the decision of the
Commissaries and sending for his information a copy of the decree in
her favour. This, surely, should have opened the eyes even of a
provincial attorney, but Cranstoun, while admitting the fact,
induced him to believe, the wish being father to the thought, that
the Court of first instance, as was not unprecedented, had erred,
and that he was advised, with good hope of success, to appeal
against the judgment to the Court of Session. Finally to dispose of
the captain's legal business, it may now be said that the appeal was
in due course of time dismissed, and the decision of the
Commissaries affirmed. Thus the marriage was as valid as Scots law
could make it. True, as is pointed out by one of his biographers, he
might have appealed to the House of Lords, "but did not, as it
seldom happens that they reverse a decree of the Lords of Session!"
Nowadays, we may assume, Cranstoun would have taken the risk. The
result of this protracted litigation was never known to Mr. Blandy.

In the spring of 1749, "a few m