Sometime after his departure, Mrs. Blandy and her daughter went on a visit to Turville Court, the house of a friend named Mrs. Pocock, of whom we shall hear again.  While there, the old lady became suddenly, and as was at first feared fatally, ill.  Her constant cry, according to Mary, was, “Let Cranstoun be sent for,” and no sooner had that insignificant warrior posted from Southampton to the sick-room than the patient began to mend.  She declared, now that he had come, she would soon be well, and refused to take her medicines from any hand but his.  Mr. Blandy, also summoned in haste, was much out of humour at “the great expense” incurred, and proposed forthwith to take his wife home, where “neither the physician’s fees nor the apothecary’s journeys could be so expensive”; and whenever the invalid was able to travel, the whole party, including the indispensable captain, returned to Henley.  On the strength of the old lady’s continued illness, Cranstoun contrived to “put in” another six months’ free board and lodging under the Blandys’ hospitable roof, until his regiment was “broke” at Southampton, when he set out for London.  During this visit, says Mary, her father was sometimes “very rude” to his guest, which, in the circumstances, is not surprising.

Meanwhile, on 1st March, 1748, the Commissary Court 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