a private manner” for some months, and in November the bride returned to her family, while the captain went to London to resume his regimental duties.  They corresponded regularly by letter.  Cranstoun wrote to his own and the lady’s relatives, acknowledging that she had been his wife since May, but insisting that the marriage should still be kept secret; and on learning that he was likely to become a father, he communicated this fact to my Lord, his brother.  Lady Cranstoun invited her daughter-in-law to Nether Crailing, the family seat in Roxburghshire, there to await the interesting event, but the young wife, fearing that Presbyterian influences would be brought to bear upon her, unfortunately declined, which gave offence to Lady Cranstoun and aroused some suspicion regarding the fact of the marriage.  At Edinburgh, on 19th February, 1745, Mrs. Cranstoun gave birth to a daughter, who was baptised by a minister of the kirk in Newbattle, according to one account, in presence of members of both parents’ families; and, by the father’s request, one of his brothers held her during the ceremony.  In view of these facts it must have required no common effrontery on the part of Cranstoun to disown his wife and child, as he did in the following year.  The country being then in the throes of the last Jacobite rising, and his wife’s family having cast in their lot with Prince Charlie, our gallant captain perceived in these circumstances a unique opportunity for ridding himself of his marital ties.  The lady was a niece of John Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s secretary who served the cause so ill; her brother, the reigning baronet, was taken prisoner at Culloden, tried at Carlisle, and sentenced to death, but owing to his youth, was reprieved and transported instead; so Cranstoun thought the course comparatively clear.  His position was that Miss Murray had been his mistress, and that although he had promised to marry her if she would change her religion for his own purer Presbyterian faith, and as the lady refused to do so, he was entirely freed from his engagement.  With cynical impudence he explained his previous admission of the marriage as due to a desire to “amuse” her relatives and save her honour.  In October, 1746, his wife, by the advice of her friends and in accordance with Scots practice, raised in the Commissary Court at Edinburgh an action of declarator of marriage against her perfidious spouse, and the case was still pending before the Commissaries when Lord Mark Kerr, as we have seen, “gave away” his grand-nephew to the Blandys.

The old attorney was justly incensed at the unworthy trick of which he had been the victim.  He had designed, indeed, on his own account, a little surprise for his son-in-law in the matter of the mythical dower, but that was another matter; so, in all the majesty of outraged fatherhood, he sought an interview with his treacherous guest.  That gentleman, whose acquaintance with “tight corners” was, doubtless, like Mr. Waller’s knowledge of London,