no Name was subscribed at the Bottom of either, yet, by their Contents, they plainly shew from whom they were sent.

Mr. Cranstoun, at his first Coming into France, talked very little concerning the Affair of Mr. Blandy’s Death:  but some Time after, having read the Account published in London (by the Divine that attended Miss Blandy in her Confinement) as her own Confession, and at her desire:  which was brought him by Mr. R——­, when he came from London, from receiving the L60 Bill before-mentioned, he began to be more open upon that Head to Mr. R——­, particularly in vindicating himself, and blaming her for Ingratitude, for he said, she was as much the Occasion of the unfortunate Deed as himself:  which will more fully appear from the following Relation which he gave of it himself.

That they having contracted so great a Friendship and mutual Love, which was absolutely strengthened by a private Marriage of her own proposing, lest he should prove ungrateful to her (which he said were her own Words) after so material an Intimacy, and leave her, and go and live with his real Wife, and her Mother being dead, she and he, the first Time they met after her Mother’s Decease (which he believed was about 9 or 10 months before Mr. Blandy died, and which was the last Time he was at Henley) began to consult how they should get the old Gentleman out of the Way, she proposing, as soon as they could get Possession of the Effects of the Father, to go both into Northumberland, and live upon it with his Mother:  That he did propose the Method that was afterwards put in Practice, and she very readily came into it, and the whole Affair was settled between them, when he left Henley the last Time, and never before.

He frequently declared, that he believed her Mother was a very virtuous Woman, and blamed her much, for giving such a ludicrous, as well as foreign Account, of some Transactions between him and her Mother, in her Narrative:  and hoped, he said, that what was published as her solemn Declaration, That she did not know (sic) that the Powder which he had sent her, with some Peebles, and which she had administered to her Father, were of a poisonous Quality, was a falsehood, and published without her Knowledge, as it appeared to him the same was not done till after she was dead:  for that she was sensible of what Quality they were, and for what purpose sent, and particularly by the effect they had on a Woman, who was a Servant in her Father’s Family, sometime before, as she had wrote him Word.

  It will not be improper, in this Place, to insert the Letters, as
  they tend to the Confirmation of what Mr. Cranstoun had declared.

LETTER I.