“ The moment she saw a gentleman, though it was one she did not know, she accosted him, "Sir, you appear to be a gentleman; for heaven's sake, what will become of me?" "Madam!" said he, "you will be sent to Oxford gaol; you will there be tried for your life. If you are innocent, you will be acquitted; if you are guilty, you will suffer death."
The prisoner upon hearing this stamped with her foot, and said, "Oh! that damned villain!" Then pausing, "But why do I blame him? I am most blame myself, for I gave it, and I knew the consequence." ”

“ Prince, who did live at Henley, and now lives at Reading, or of Mr. Pottinger, an apothecary and surgeon in Henley; nor did I ever buy any poison in Henley, or anywhere else in all my life; that as for mother's and Mrs. Pocock's death, I am as innocent of it as the child unborn, so help me God in my last moments, and at the great Day of Judgment. If ever I did hurt their lives, may God condemn me. This, Sir, I hope, will convince you of my innocency. And if the world will not believe what even I dying swear, God forgive them, and turn their hearts. One day all must appear together at one bar. ”

“ If this, then, is the case of every common murderer, what will be thought of one who has murdered her own father? who has designedly done the greatest of all human injuries to him from whom she received the first and greatest of all human benefits? who has wickedly taken away his life to whom she stands indebted for life? who has deliberately destroyed, in his old age, him by whose care and tenderness she was protected in her helpless infancy? ”

“ There is an account, as well as I was able to write, which I sent to my Uncle in London. That I here send you. God knows never poor soul wrote in more pain, and I now am not able hardly to hold my pen. But will not conclude this without explaining the true state of my mind. As I did not give this fatal powder to kill or hurt my poor father; I hope God will forgive me, with repentance for the ill use I have made of that sense he gave me, and not be for ever angry with me. Death I deserve, for not being better on my guard against my grand enemy; for loving and relying too much on the human part. ”

“ One day the interesting prisoner learned from a visitor the startling news that her father's fortune, of which, as he had left no will, she was sole heiress, had been found to amount to less than four thousand pounds! With what feelings would she recall the old attorney's boastful references to her £10,000 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 you will say, confession of my crime cuts off all hope of Royal Mercy. Dear Miss, do not indulge yourself in such a thought. Prepare for the worst. Consider how pernicious flattery of this nature is. Remember that God is only a God of mercy in this; in another life, he is a God of justice.
I can hardly think that shame has any share in the concealment of your guilt; for no shame can exceed that which you have already suffered. Besides, confession is all the amends you can make; and mankind know experimentally how frail and imperfect human nature is, and will allow for it accordingly. ”

“ On the Monday morning before he died she said to me, "Betty, go up to your master and give my duty to him, and tell him I beg to speak one word with him." I did. She went up. I met her when she came out of the room from him. She clasped me round the neck, and burst out a-crying, and said, "Susan and you are the two honestest servants in the world; you ought to be imaged in gold for your honesty; half my fortune will not make you amends for your honesty to my father." ”

“ One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle." And again, on 13th May, "Miss Blandy died with a coolness of courage that is astonishing, and denying the fact, which has made a kind of party in her favour; as if a woman who would not stick at parricide would scruple a lie! We have made a law for immediate execution on conviction of murder: it will appear extraordinary to me if it has any effect; for I can't help believing that the terrible part of death must be the preparation for it." ”

“ Miss Blandy, I have upon my hands an unhappy affair, which to you I have made no secret of; I can assure you, before I speak what follows, I am not now married, nor never was; tho' by the nature of the Laws of Scotland, I am involved in some difficulties brought upon me by that affair, out of which it will be some time before I can extricate myself. Do you think you could love a man well enough to stay till this affair be brought to a determination? ”

“ For, gentlemen, the prisoner at the bar, Miss Mary Blandy, a gentlewoman by birth and education, stands indicted for no less a crime than that of murder, and not only for murder, but for the murder of her own father, and for the murder of a father passionately fond of her, undertaken with the utmost deliberation, carried on with an unvaried continuation of intention, and at last accomplished by a frequent repetition of the baneful dose, administered with her own hands. ”

“ Death has no stings to wound innocence. Guilt alone clothes him with terrors (to the guilty wretch he is terrible indeed!) . And at the resurrection, and at the last day, you will joyfully behold Jesus Christ your Saviour, join the triumphant multitudes of the blessed, and follow them into the everlasting mansions of glory.
The other point I am about to speak to, is upon a supposition of your guilt. God direct me what to say! If you repent, you will be saved. But what repentance can be adequate to such crimes? O Miss! your infamous end is a satisfaction due to human laws. ”

“ Think what power man has over our sex, when we truly love! And what woman, let her have what sense she will, can stand the arguments and persuasions men will make use of? Don't think that by this I mean, that I ever was, or could have been persuaded to hurt one hair of my poor father's head. No; what I mean is Cranstoun's baseness and art, in making me believe that those powders were innocent, and would make my father love him. He gave my father some himself more than a year before he died, and said, when he gave it him, that he (Cranstoun) had took several papers of it himself. ”

“ However, the Doctor owned that my behaviour shewed me to be anxious for my poor father's life. Could I paint the restless nights and days I went through, the prayers I made to God to take me and spare my father, whose death alone, unattended with other misfortunes, would have greatly shocked me, the heart of every person who has any bowels at all would undoubtedly bleed for me. What is here advanced, the man that attended me knows to be true also, who cannot be suspected of partiality. Susan Gunnel can attest the same. ”

“ Now, Miss, you must necessarily be in one of these two situations; you must either be innocent, by not designing to hurt your father; or you designed to kill your father, and are guilty, and conceal your guilt for private reasons. Permit me to offer something upon each of these heads.
If it should be the case, that you are innocently the cause of Mr. Blandy's death, which Heaven grant! if you harboured not a thought of injuring your unhappy father, you have the greatest of all comforts to support you. ”

“ Who could have thought that Miss Blandy, a young lady virtuously brought up, distinguished for her good behaviour and prudent conduct in life, till her unfortunate acquaintance with the wicked Cranstoun, should ever be brought to a trial for her life, and that for the most desperate and bloodiest kind of murder, committed by her own hand, upon her own father? ”

“ You have, dear Miss, applied to temporal counsel, with regard to the determination of your body. They have failed. Your life is forfeited to justice. You are already dead in the eye of the law. Oh! Miss, the counsels which my poor understanding gives, is spiritual; may they be more successful: May God grant that the fate of your soul may not resemble the fate of your body! ”

“ The unhappy prisoner, ruined and undone by the treacherous flattery and pernicious advice of that abandoned, insidious, and execrable wretch, who had found means of introducing himself into her father's family, and whilst there, by false pretences of love, gained the affection of his only daughter and child. Love! did I call it? It deserves not the name; if it was love of anything it was of the £10,000 supposed to be the young lady's fortune. Could a man that had a wife of his own, and children, be really in love with another woman? ”

“ Detest your sins truly, and resolve to do so for the time to come, and be in charity with all men. If you perform these things truly and sincerely, your life, which sets in gloomy clouds, shame and darkness, may, by the mercies of God, rise in glory, honour and brightness.
But perhaps, Miss, to your everlasting hazard, you will not confess your guilt, for some private reasons. And what must these be?
You may possibly then imagine, that if you confess your crime to God, you are not obliged to confess to the world. Generally speaking God is the sole confessor of mankind ”

“ Sure, it is hard to die for ignorance, and too good an opinion of a villain! Must the falsities and malice which I have been pursued with, prevail so far as to take away my life? O consider my misfortunes, and indeed it will fill your eyes with tears; you must pity me, and say, never was poor soul so hardly used. But peace, my heart. I gave my father the powder on Monday night; on Tuesday he complained. I sent for the apothecary; who came, and said he would send him some physic. In the evening my father said he would have some water gruel. ”

“ Perhaps, Gentlemen, you will suppose I am guilty of a great deal of Vanity, in imagining myself capable of so grossly imposing on the Understanding of a Lady of such refined sense as Miss Blandy was acknowledged to be. In answer to which I can only say, that when Love has taken possession of the Heart, it leaves but very little Room for Reflection. That this was Miss Blandy's case, I will give you some few instances of the violence of her Passion, and then leave you to judge to what extravagant Lengths that might carry her. ”

“ When complaint is made of their sickness, how does the prisoner behave? Does she not administer to them with as much art and skill as a physician could? Does she not prescribe proper liquids and draughts to absorb and take off the edge of the corroding poison? If she knew not what it was how could she administer so successfully to prevent the fatal consequences of it both in the maid and the charwoman? During this transaction the unhappy father finds himself afflicted with torturing pains immediately after receiving the composition from his daughter. ”

“ Some time after this conversation, my father seemed much out of humour, and said several unkind things, both to Mr. Cranstoun and me. This induced Mr. Cranstoun, when alone with me not long after, to say, "I wish I could give your father some of the love-powders." "For what?" said I. "Because," replied he, "they would make him love me." "Are you weak enough," said I, "to think that there is such a power in any powders?" "Yes, I really do," replied he, "for I took them myself, and forgave a friend soon after; tho' I never intended to have spoke to him again." ”

“ Blandy, come to town on business. "For God's sake, Mrs. Pocock, what do you with this rubbish?" cried the attorney, stopping the coach. "Rubbish!" quoth the lady, "Your wife, your daughter, and one who may be your son?" "Ay," replied the old man, "They are very well matched; 'tis a pity they should ever be asunder!" "God grant they never may," simpered the ugly lover; "don't you say amen, papa?" But amen, as appears, stuck in Mr. Blandy's throat: he declined Mrs. Pocock's invitation to join them, and shortly thereafter returned to Henley. ”

“ As to the unworthy man who has tempted you to your ruin, I have good grounds to believe him to be an infidel. If he has communicated such principles to you, to render you more capable of executing his wicked purposes, your persisting therein will ruin your poor soul for ever. The moment you enter into that awful state of separation, you will be eternally convinced of your error. The very devils believe a God, and tremble. ”

“ Cranstoun was gone from Henley, in August 1750, he has often heard the prisoner say that she heard music, which portended death in the family, and sometimes thought it might be herself, sometimes her father, because he was so much broken; that he has heard her say death would happen before October; that he has often heard her curse her father, damn him for a rogue and a toothless old dog, within two months of his death and a great while before; that he has told her himself that he thought Mr. Blandy seemed broken, upon which she said she thought so too, and that the music portended his death. ”

“ Mr. Bathurst replying for the Crown, maintained that it was proved to demonstration that Francis Blandy died of poison, put in his gruel upon the 5th of August by the prisoner's hand, as appeared not only from her own confession, but from all the evidence adduced. "Examine then, gentlemen," said the learned counsel, "whether it is possible she could do it ignorantly." In view of the great affection with which it was proved the dying man behaved to her, the prisoner's assertion that she gave him the powder "to make him love her" was incredible. ”

“ Blandy, for all your kindnesses to me and my girl. God grant that you may both live long, that you may be a blessing to each other. Whatever little unkindnesses may have passed I freely forgive you. Now, if you please to go down, Mr. Blandy, for my spirits fail me." My father then kissed her, and retired in tears, saying, as he went, "The doctor still may think of something that may be of service to you." At this she smiled and said, "Not without you can give me a new inside." When my father was gone, my mother took hold of my hand, drew me to her, and kissed me. ”

“ There no prompting of witnesses, no lies, no little arts of law will do. There, I doubt not, I shall meet my poor father and mother, and my much loved friend (through the mercies of Jesus Christ, who died for sinners) forgiven and in bliss. There the tears that cannot move man's heart shall be by God dried up. Farewell, Sir, God bless you, and believe me, while I live, ever Your much obliged humble Servant,
M. BLANDY.
(N.B.—This letter was attested to be M. Blandy's, &c., Apr. 4th, 1752.) ”

“ Addington, this single question, whether the horrors and agonies which Miss Blandy was in at this time were not, in your opinion, owing solely to a hearty concern for her father?—I beg, sir, that you will excuse my giving an answer to this question. It is not easy, you know, to form a true judgment of the heart, and I hope a witness need not deliver his opinion of it. ”

“ Miss Blandy states that, apropos to her father's unpropitious attitude, her lover "acquainted her of the great skill of the famous Mrs. Morgan," a cunning woman known to him in Scotland, from whom he had received a certain powder, "which she called love-powders"—being, as appears, the Scottish equivalent to the poculum amatorium or love philtre of the Romans. Mary said she had no faith in such things, but Cranstoun assured her of its efficacy, having once taken some himself, and immediately forgiven a friend to whom he had intended never to speak again. ”

“ Even his days are numbered out, and his own child limits the space of his life but till the following month of October. What could be the meaning of this, but to prepare the world for a death that was predetermined? Who could limit the days of a man's life but a person who knew what was intended to be done towards the shortening of it?
In order to bring this about Cranstoun sends presents of pebbles, as also a powder to clean them, and this powder, gentlemen, you will find is the dreadful poison that accomplished this abominable scheme. ”