pounds!  With what feelings would she recall the old attorney’s boastful references to her L10,000 dower, the fame of which had first attracted her “lover,” Cranstoun, and so led to results already sufficiently regrettable, the end of which she shuddered to foresee.  How passionately the fierce woman must have cursed the irony of her fate!  But to this mental torment were soon to be added physical discomfort and indignity.  A rumour reached the authorities in London that a scheme was afoot to effect her rescue.  On Friday, 25th October, the Secretary of State having instructed the Sheriff of the county “to take more particular care of her,” the felon’s fetters she had before feared were riveted upon her slender ankles; and there was an end to the daily walks amid the pleasant alleys of the keeper’s garden.  This broad hint as to her real position induced a different state of mind.  The chapel services, hitherto somewhat neglected, were substituted for the mundane pastimes of tea-drinkings and cards, and the prison chaplain, the Rev. John Swinton, became her only visitor.  To the pious attentions of that gentleman she may now be left while we see what happened beyond the narrow circuit of her cell.

We are enabled to throw some fresh light upon the doings of the powers in whose high hands lay the prisoner’s life from certain correspondence, hitherto unpublished, relating to her case.  These documents, here printed for the first time from the original MSS. in the British Museum and Public Record Office, will be found in the Appendix.  On 27th September, 1751, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, advising that, if upon the examinations there appeared to be sufficient grounds to proceed against Mary Blandy for her father’s murder, the prosecution should be carried on at the expense of the Crown, an unusual but not unprecedented practice; and that Mr. Sharpe, Solicitor to the Treasury, be ordered to take the necessary steps, under direction of the Attorney-General; otherwise it would be a reproach to the King’s justice should so flagrant a crime escape punishment, as might, if the prosecution were left in the hands of the prisoner’s own relatives, occur.  As it was thought that Susan Gunnell and the old charwoman, Ann Emmet, material witnesses, “could not long survive the effects of the poison they partook of,” and might “dye” before the trial, which in ordinary course would not be held until the Lent Assizes, his lordship suggested that a special commission be sent into Berkshire to find a bill of indictment there, so that the trial could be had at the King’s Bench Bar within the next term.  It appears from the correspondence that one Richard Lowe, the Mayor of Henley’s messenger, had, shortly after Miss Blandy’s committal, been despatched to Scotland with the view of apprehending the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun as accessory to the murder.  From the address on Mary’s intercepted letter, Cranstoun was believed to be in Berwick, and