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
Fawley, who, "with other country gentlemen meeting to bowl at the
Bell Inn," chanced then to be in the town, was also summoned. It was
at first hoped that the old lady would rally as on the former
occasion but she gradually grew worse, notwithstanding the
attentions of the eminent Dr. Addington, brought from Reading to
consult upon the case. Her husband, her daughter, and her two
brothers were with her until the end, which came on Saturday, 30th
September. To the last the dying woman clung to her belief in the
good faith of her noble captain: "Mary has set her heart upon
Cranstoun; when I am gone, let no one set you against the match,"
were her last words to her husband. He replied that they must wait
till the "unhappy affair in Scotland" was decided. The complaint of
which Mrs. Blandy died was, as appears, intestinal inflammation,
but, as we shall see later, her daughter was popularly believed to
have poisoned her. However wicked Mary Blandy may have been, she
well knew that by her mother's death she and Cranstoun lost their
best friend. An old acquaintance and neighbour of Mrs. Blandy, one
Mrs. Mounteney, of whom we shall hear again, came upon a visit to
the bereaved family. Mrs. Blandy, on her deathbed, had commended
this lady to her husband, in case he should "discover