CURIOUS TRIALS CONNECTED WITH THE
ARISTOCRACY.

XXIV. ROBERT, LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH.

THE case of this noble criminal, though one now little known, has some remarkable circumstances attending it.

The Hon. Robert Balfour was, when he committed the crime, son and heir apparent to the fourth Lord Balfour of Burleigh. He was born in 1687, at the seat of his father, Lord Burleigh, near Kinross; and having studied successively at Orwell, near the place of his birth, and at St. Andrews, so successfully as to obtain considerable credit, he returned home, being intended by his father to join the army of the Duke of Marlborough, then in Flanders. At his father's house he became enamoured of Miss Robertson, the governess of his sisters, and in order to break off the connexion he was sent to make the tour through France and Italy, the young lady being dismissed from the house of her patron. Balfour, before his quitting Scotland, declared his intention, if ever the young lady should marry, to murder her husband; but deeming this to be merely an empty threat, she was, during his absence, united to Henry Stenhouse, a schoolmaster at Inverkeithing, with whom she went to live at Inverkeithing. On his return to his father's house, he learned this fact, and immediately proceeded to put his threat into execution. Mrs. Stenhouse, on seeing him, remembering his expressed determination, screamed with affright; but her husband, unconscious of offence, advanced to her aid, and in the interim, Balfour, entering the room, shot him through the heart in the midst of his scholars. The offender escaped, but was soon afterwards apprehended near Edinburgh; and being tried, was convicted and sentenced to be beheaded by the maiden,* on account of the nobility of his family.

The subsequent escape of the criminal from an ignominious end is not the least remarkable part of his case. The scaffold was actually erected for the purpose of his execution; but on the day before it was to take place his sister went to visit him, and, being very like him in face and

* The following description of the Maiden, by Mr. Pennant, may not prove uninteresting:-"This machine of death is now destroyed; but I saw one of the same kind in a room under the Parliament-house in Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent Morton, who took a model of it as he passed through Halifax, and at length suffered by it himself. It is in form of a painter's easel, and about ten feet high; at four feet from the bottom is the cross bar on which the felon lays his head, which is kept down by another placed above. In the inner edges of the frame are grooves; in these is placed a sharp axe, with a vast weight of lead, supported at the very summit with a peg: to that peg is fastened a cord, which the executioner cutting, the axe falls, and does the affair effectually, without suffering the unhappy criminal to undergo a repetition of strokes, as has been the case in the common method. I must add, that if the sufferer is condemned for stealing a horse or cow, the string is tied to the beast, which, on being whipped, pulls out the peg, and becomes the executioner."

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stature, they changed clothes, and he escaped from prison. His friends having provided horses for him, he proceeded to a distant village, where he lay concealed until an opportunity was eventually offered him of quitting the kingdom. His father died in the reign of Queen Anne, but he had first obtained a pardon for his son, who succeeded to the title and honours of the family, and died in the year 1752, sincerely penitent for his crime.

Balfour's honours, however, became forfeit before his decease, for he had been present at the meeting at Lochmaben, the 29th May, 1714, when the Chevalier's health was publicly drunk at the Cross, and he engaged in the rising of the following year, for which he was attainted by Act of Parliament.

XXV. THE PARRICIDE BY MISS BLANDY, AT THE INSTIGATION OF THE HON. CAPTAIN CRANSTOUN.

THE case of Miss Blandy appears at great length in the State Trials, and a statement at its conclusion would go to shew that the unhappy woman was ignorant of the deadly nature of the drug which she administered to her father. This could not possibly have been so, in accordance with the evidence adduced. The details of the commission of the crime, given at the trial, are throughout disagreeable, sometimes disgusting, and nowhere very interesting. A summary therefore of the horrid affair is all that is here presented. To begin with the parties concerned.

Mr. Francis Blandy was an attorney residing at Henley-on-Thames, and held the office of town-clerk of that place. He possessed ample means, and his house became the scene of much gaiety. As report gave to his daughter a fortune of no inconsiderable extent, and as besides, her manners were sprightly and affable, and her appearance engaging, her hand was sought in marriage by many persons whose rank and wealth rendered them fitting to become allied to her. But among all these visitants, none were received with greater pleasure by Mr. or Mrs. Blandy, or their daughter, than those who held commissions in the army. This predilection was evinced in the introduction of the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, at that time engaged on the recruiting service for a foot regiment, in which he ranked as Captain.

Captain Cranstoun was the second son of William, fifth Lord Cranstoun, a Scotch peer of ancient family, and through the instrumentality of his uncle, Lord Mark Ker, he had obtained his commision. In the year 1745, he had married Anne, sister of Sir David Murray, Bart., of Stanhope, a young lady of good family, with whom he received an ample fortune; and in the year 1752, he was ordered to England to endeavour to procure his complement of men for his regiment. His bad fortune led him to Henly, and there he formed an intimacy with Mary Blandy. At this time Cranstoun was forty-six years of age, while Miss Blandy was twenty years his junior; and it is somewhat extraordinary that a person of her accomplishments and beauty should have formed a liaison with a man so much older than herself, and who besides, is represented as having been devoid of all personal attractions.

A short acquaintance, it appears, was sufficient to excite the flame

of passion in the mind of the gallant captain, as well as of Miss Blandy; and ere long, their troth was plighted. The captain, however, felt the importance of forestalling any information which might reach the ears of his new love of the existence of any person who possessed a better right to his affections than she; and he therefore informed her that he was engaged in a disagreeable lawsuit with a young lady in Scotland who had claimed him as her husband; but he assured her that it was a mere affair of gallantry, of which the process of the law would in the course of a very short time relieve him. This disclosure being followed by an offer of marriage, Cranstoun was referred to Mr. Blandy, and he obtained an easy acquiescence on his part in the wishes expressed by the young lady.

At this juncture, an intimation being conveyed to Lord Ker of the proceedings of his nephew, his lordship took instant steps to apprise Mr. Blandy of the position of Cranstoun. Prejudice had, however, worked its end as well with the father as the daughter, and the assertion of the intended bridegroom of the falsehood of the allegations made was sufficient to dispel all the fears which the report of Lord Ker had raised. But although Captain Cranstoun had thus temporarily freed himself from the effects of the imputation cast upon him, he felt that some steps were necessary to get his first marriage annulled, and he at length wrote to his wife, requesting her to disown him for a husband. The substance of this letter was, that, having no other way of rising to preferment but in the army, he had but little ground to expect advancement there, while it was known he was encumbered with a wife and family; but could he once pass for a single man, he had not the least doubt of being quickly promoted, which would procure him a sufficiency to maintain her as well as himself in a genteeler manner than now he was able to do. "All, therefore," (adds he) "I have to request of you is, that you will transcribe the enclosed copy of a letter, wherein you disown me for a husband; put your maiden name to it, and send it by the post. All the use I shall make of it shall be to procure my advancement, which will necessarily include your own benefit. In full assurance that you will comply with my request, I remain your most affectionate husband."

Mrs. Cranstoun, ill as she had been treated by her husband, and little hope as she had of more generous usage, was, after repeated letters had passed, induced to give up her claim, and at length sent the desired communication. On this, an attempt was made by him to annul the marriage, this letter being produced as evidence; but the artifice being discovered, the suit was dismissed, with costs. Mr. Blandy soon obtained intelligence of this circumstance, and convinced now of the falsehood of his intended son-in-law, he conveyed a knowledge of it to his daughter; but she and her mother repelled the insinuations which were thrown out, and declared, in obedience to what they had been told by the gallant captain, that the suit was not yet terminated, for that an appeal to the House of Lords would immediately be made. Soon after this, Mrs. Blandy died, and her husband began now to shew evident dislike for Captain Cranstoun's visits; but the latter complained to the daughter of the father's ill-treatment, and insinuated that he had a method of conciliating his esteem; and that when he arrived in Scotland he would send her some powders proper for the purpose; on which, to prevent suspicion, he would write "Powders to clean the Scotch pebbles."

Cranstoun sent her the powders, according to promise, and Mr. Blandy

being indisposed on the Sunday se'nnight before his death, Susan Gunnel, a maid-servant, made him some water-gruel, into which Miss Blandy conveyed some of the powder, and gave it to her father; and repeating this draught on the following day, he was tormented with the most violent pains in his bowels.

The disorder, which had commenced with symptoms of so dangerous a character, soon increased; and the greatest alarm was felt by the medical attendants of the old gentleman, that death alone would terminate his sufferings. Every effort was made by which it was hoped that his life could be saved; but at length, when all possibility of his recovery was past, his wretched daughter rushed into his presence, and in an agony of tears and lamentations, confessed that she was the author of his sufferings and of his inevitable death. Urged to account for her conduct, which to her father appeared inexplicable, she denied, with the loudest asseverations, all guilty intention. She repeated the tale of her love, and of the insidious arts employed by Cranstoun, but asserted that she was unaware of the deadly nature of the powders, and that her sole object in administering them was to procure her father's affection for her lover. Death soon terminated the accumulated misery of his wretched parent, and the daughter had scarcely witnessed his demise, ere she became an inmate of a jail.

At the ensuing assizes at Oxford, on the 3rd of March, 1752, Miss Blandy was tried for the wilful murder of her father, before the Hon. Heneage Legge (second son of the second Baron and first Earl of Dartmouth) and Sir Sydney Stafford Smythe, Knt. two of the Barons of the Court of Exchequer. After a long investigation she was found guilty. She addressed the jury, repeating the story which she had before related; but all was of no avail, and sentence of death was passed upon her by Mr. Baron Legge, who had previously summed up the case most lucidly and elaborately.

After conviction, the wretched woman behaved with the utmost decency and penitence. She spent the night before her execution in devotion; and at nine in the morning of the 6th of April, 1752, she left her apartment to be conducted to the scaffold, habited in a black bombazin dress, her arms being bound with black ribands. She died declaring her innocence of intending to poison her father. Her body being put into a hearse, was conveyed to Henly, and interred with her parents, at one o'clock on the following morning.

Cranstoun, for his concern in the killing of Mr. Blandy, was prosecuted to outlawry. His ultimate fate was this. Having heard of Miss Blandy's commitment to Oxford jail, he concealed himself some time in Scotland, and then escaped to Boulogne, in France. Meeting there with Mrs. Ross, who was distantly related to his family, he acquainted her with his situation, and begged her protection; on which she advised him to change his name for her maiden name of Dunbar. Some officers in the French service, who were related to his wife, hearing of his concealment, vowed revenge, if they should meet with him, for his cruelty to the unhappy woman on which he fled to Paris, from whence he went to Furnes, a town in Flanders, where Mrs. Ross had provided a lodging for his reception. He had not been long at Furnes when he was seized with a severe fit of illness, which brought him to a degree of reflection to which he had been long a stranger. At length he sent for a father belonging to an adjacent convent, and received absolution from his hands, on declaring himself a convert to the Catholic faith, and a sincere penitent.

Cranstoun died on the 30th of November, 1752; and the fraternity of monks and friars looked on the conversion of this great sinner as an object of such importance, that solemn Mass was sung on the occasion, and the body was followed to the grave not only by the ecclesiastics, but by the magistrates of the town.

XXVI. THe Fraud upON LORD CLARENDON.

THE nobleman, whose great charity and unbounded benevolence made him the dupe of the following extraordinary fraud, was Thomas Villiers, second Earl of Clarendon, who succeeded his father the first Earl in 1786, and died unmarried in 1824, leaving his honors to his brother John, the third Earl, the father of George William, the present Earl of Clarendon, now Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The person who practised the cheat, Henry Perfect, was a man of respectable parentage, and of excellent abilities. His father was a clergyman living in Leicestershire, and his son, at the completion of his education, entered the army as a lieutenant in the 69th regiment of foot. He was twice married, and received a handsome property with each of his wives; but their estates being held during life only, upon the demise of his second helpmate he was thrown upon his own resources. His commission had long since been disposed of, and he determined to endeavour to procure contributions by writing letters to persons of known charitable dispositions, setting forth fictitious details of distress. In the course of his numerous dispositions, he assumed the various and imaginary characters of the Rev. Mr. Paul, the Rev. Daniel Bennett, Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Smith, and others, but at last he was detected in an attempt to procure money from the Earl of Clarendon, whom he addressed in a letter signed "H. Grant."

He was indicted at the Middlessex sessions for this offence; and his trial, which came on at Hicks' Hall, on the 27th of October, 1804, occupied the whole day.

It then appeared that the Earl of Clarendon being at his seat at Wade's Mill, Hertfordshire, in the previous month of July, he received a letter, purporting to be from Mrs. Grant, which stated in substance

That the writer having heard from a lady, whose name she was not at liberty to reveal, the most charming character of his lordship for kindness and benevolence, she was induced to lay before him a statement of her distressed circumstances. The supposed lady then detailed her case, which was, that she was a native of Jamaica, of affluent and respectable family; that a young man, a Scotchman, and surgeon's mate to a man-of-war, was introduced at her father's house, who so far ingratiated himself with her father, that he seriously recommended him to her for her husband. She did not like him, because he was proud, and for ever vaunting of his high family; but as her father's will had always been a law, she acquiesced on condition that he would live at Jamaica. They were accordingly married, and her father gave him one thousand pounds. He, however, soon became discontented with remaining at Jamaica, and continually importuned her to go with him to Scotland; and as her friends joined in the solicitation, she consented. She had now been six months in England; but her husband had always evaded going to Scotland, and had left her whenever she spoke upon the subject. In short he had gamed, drunk, and committed