1688, for the murder of his father, Sir James Standsfield, of New
Mills, in East Lothian. To-day New Mills is called Amisfield; it
lies on the south bank of the Tyne, a mile east of Haddington. There
is a fine mansion-house about a century old in the midst of a well
wooded park, and all round are the superbly tilled Lothian fields, as
_dulcia arva_ as ever the Mantuan sang. Amisfield got its present name
thus: Colonel Charteris, infamed (in the phrase of Arbuthnot’s famous
epitaph) for the “undeviating pravity of his manners” (hence lashed by
Pope in many a stinging line), purchased it early in the last century
and re-named it from the seat of his family in Nithsdale. Through him
it passed by descent to the house of Wemyss, still its owners. Amongst
its trees and its waters the place lies away from the beaten track and
is now as charmingly peaceful a spot as you shall anywhere discover.
Name gone and aspect changed, local tradition has but a vague memory
of the two-centuries-old tragedy whereof it was the centre.
Sir James Standsfield, an Englishman by birth, had married a Scots lady
and spent most of his life in Scotland. After the Restoration he had
established a successful cloth factory at the place called New Mills,
and there lived, a prosperous gentleman. But he had much domestic
trouble chiefly from the conduct of his eldest son Philip, who, though
well brought up, led a wild life. Whilst “this profligate youth” (so
Wodrow, who tells the story, dubs him) was a student at the University
of St. Andrews, curiosity or mischief led him to attend a conventicle
where godly Mr. John Welch was holding forth. Using a chance loaf as
a missile, he smote the astonished divine, who, failing to discover
the culprit, was moved to prophecy. “There would be,” he thundered,
“more present at the death of him who did it, than were hearing him
that day; and the multitude was not small.” Graver matters than this
freak stained the lad’s later career. Serving abroad in the Scots
regiment, he had been condemned to death at Treves, but had escaped by
flight. Certain notorious villainies had also made him familiar with
the interior of the Marshalsea and the prisons of Brussels, Antwerp,
and Orleans. Sir James at last was moved to disinherit him in favour
of his second son John. Partly cause and partly effect of this,
Philip was given to cursing his father in most extravagant terms (of
itself a capital offence according to old Scots law); he affirmed his
parent “girned upon him like a sheep’s head in a tongs;” on several
occasions he had even attempted that parent’s life: all which is set
forth at great length in the “ditty” or indictment upon which he was
tried. No doubt Sir James went in considerable fear of his unnatural
son. A certain Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, advocate, testifies that eight
days before the end he met the old gentleman in the Parliament Close,
Edinburgh, whereupon “the defunct invited him to take his morning
draught.” As they partook Sir James bemoaned his domestic troubles.
“Yes,” said Mackenzie, but why had he disherished his son? And the
defunct answered: “Ye do not know my son, for he is the greatest
debauch in the earth. And that which troubles me most is that he twice
attempted my own person.”
Upon the last Saturday of November 1687, the elder Standsfield
travelled from Edinburgh to New Mills in company with Mr. John
Bell, minister of the Gospel, who was to officiate the next day in
Morham Church (Morham is a secluded parish on the lower slope of the
Lammermoors, some three miles south-west of New Mills; the church
plays an important part in what follows). Arrived at New Mills the
pair supped together, thereafter the host accompanied his guest to
his chamber, where he sat talking “pertinently and to good purpose”
till about ten o’clock. Left alone, our divine gat him to bed, but had
scarce fallen asleep when he awoke in terror, for a terrible cry rang
through the silence of the winter night. A confused murmur of voices
and a noise of folk moving about succeeded. Mr. Bell incontinently
set all down to “evil wicked spirits,” so having seen to the bolts of
his chamber door, and having fortified his timid soul with prayers, he
huddled in bed again; but the voices and noises continuing outside the
house he crept to the window, where peering out he perceived nought
in the darkness. The noises died away across the garden towards the
river, and Bell lay quaking till the morning. An hour after day Philip
came to his chamber to ask if his father had been there, for he had
been seeking him upon the banks of the water. “Why on the banks of
that water?” queried Bell in natural amazement. Without answer Philip
hurriedly left the room. Later that same Sunday morning a certain
John Topping coming from Monkrig to New Mills, along the bank of the
Tyne, saw a man’s body floating on the water. Philip, drawn to the
spot by some terrible fascination, was looking on (you picture his
face). “Whose body was it?” asked the horror-struck Topping, but
Philip replied not. Well _he_ knew it was his father’s corpse. It was
noted that, though a hard frosty morning, the bank was “all beaten
to mash with feet and the ground very open and mellow.” The dead man
being presently dragged forth and carried home was refused entry by
Philip into the house so late his own, “for he had not died like a man
but like a beast,”--the suggestion being that his father had drowned
himself,--and so the poor remains must rest in the woollen mill, and
then in a cellar “where there was very little light.” The gossips
retailed unseemly fragments of scandal, as “within an hour after his
father’s body was brought from the water, he got the buckles from
his father’s shoes and put them in his;” and again, there is note
of a hideous and sordid quarrel between Lady Standsfield and Janet
Johnstoun, “who was his own concubine,” so the prosecution averred,
“about some remains of the Holland of the woonding-sheet,” with some
incriminating words of Philip that accompanied.
I now take up the story as given by Umphrey Spurway, described as an
Englishman and clothier at New Mills. His suspicions caused him to
write to Edinburgh that the Lord Advocate might be warned. Philip
lost no time in trying to prevent an inquiry. At three or four of the
clock on Monday morning Spurway, coming out of his house, saw “great
lights at Sir James’ Gate;” grouped round were men and horses. He was
told they were taking away the body to be buried at Morham, whereat
honest Umphrey, much disturbed at this suspicious haste, sighed for the
“crowner’s quest law” of his fatherland. But on the next Tuesday night
after he had gone to bed a party of five men, two of them surgeons,
came post haste to his house from Edinburgh, and showing him an order
“from my Lord Advocat for the taking up again the body of Sir James
Standsfield,” bid him rise and come. Philip also must go with the party
to Morham. Here the grave was opened, the body taken out and carried
into the church, where the surgeons made their examination, which
clearly pointed to death by strangulation not by drowning (possibly
it struck Spurway as an odd use for a church; it had not seemed so
to a presbyterian Scot of the period). The dead being re-dressed in
his grave clothes must now be set back in his coffin. A terrible thing
happened. According to Scots custom the nearest relative must lift the
body, and so Philip took the head, when lo! the corpse gushed forth
blood on his hands! He dropped the head--the “considerable noise” it
made in falling is noted by one of the surgeons--frantically essayed
to wipe off the blood on his clothes, and with frenzied cries of “Lord
have mercy upon me, Lord have mercy upon us!” fell half swooning across
a seat. Strong cordials were administered, and in time he regained his
sullen composure.
A strange scene to ponder over, but how terrible to witness! Think of
it! The lonely church on the Lammermoors, the dead vast and middle
of the dreary night (November 30, 1687), the murdered man, and the
Parricide’s confession (it is so set forth in the “ditty”) wrung from
him (as all believed) by the direct interposition of Providence. What
fiction ever equalled this gruesome horror? Even his mother, who had
sided with him against the father, scarce professed to believe his
innocence. “What if they should put her bairn in prison?” she wailed.
“Her bairn” was soon hard and fast in the gloomy old Tolbooth of
Edinburgh, to which, as the _Heart of Midlothian_, Scott’s novel was in
future days to give a world-wide fame.
The trial came on February 6 ensuing. In Scotland there is no inquest
or public magisterial examination to discount the interest of the
story, and the crowd that listened in the Parliament House to the
evidence already detailed had their bellyful of surprises and horrors.
The Crown had still in reserve this testimony, sensational and deadly.
The prosecution proposed to call James Thomson, a boy of thirteen, and
Anna Mark, a girl of ten. Their tender years were objected. My Lords,
declining to receive them as witnesses, oddly enough consented at the
request of the jury to take their declaration. The boy told how Philip
came to his father’s house on the night of the murder. The lad was
hurried off to bed, but listened whilst the panel, Janet Johnstoun,
already mentioned, and his father and mother softly whispered together
for a long time, until Philip’s rage got the better of his discretion,
and he loudly cursed his father and threatened his life. Next Philip
and Janet left the house, and in the dead of night his father and
mother followed. After two hours they crept back again; and the boy,
supposed to be sleeping, heard them whisper to each other the story of
the murder, how Philip guarded the chamber door “with a drawn sword
and a bendit pistol,” how it was strange a man should die so soon, how
they carried the body to the water and threw it in, and how his mother
ever since was afraid to stay alone in the house after nightfall. The
evidence of Anna Mark was as to certain criminating words used by her
mother Janet Johnstoun.
Up to this time the panel had been defended by four eminent advocates
mercifully appointed thereto by the Privy Council; there had been the
usual Allegations, Replyes, and Duplies, with frequent citations from
Mattheus, Carpzovius, Muscard, and the other fossils, as to the matters
contained in the “ditty” (indictment), and they had strenuously fought
for him till now, but after the statement of the children they retired.
Then Sir George Mackenzie rose to reply for the Crown. Famous in his
own day, his name is not yet forgotten. He was “the bluidy advocate
Mackenzie” of Covenanting legend and tradition, one of the figures in
Wandering Willie’s tale in _Redgauntlet_ (“who for his worldly wit
and wisdom had been to the rest as a god”). He had been Lord Advocate
already, and was presently to be Lord Advocate again. Nominally but
second counsel he seems to have conducted the whole prosecution. He had
a strong case, and he made the most of it. Passionate invective and
prejudicial matter were mixed with legal argument. Cultured politician
and jurist as he was, he dwelt with terrible emphasis on the scene in
Morham kirk. “God Almighty Himself was pleased to bear a share in
the testimonies which we produce.” Nor was the children’s testimony
forgotten. “I need not fortifie so pregnant a probation.” No! yet he
omitted not to protest for “an Assize of Error against the inquest
in the case they should assoilzie the pannal”--a plain intimation to
jury that if they found Philip Standsfield “not guilty” they were
liable to be prosecuted for an unjust verdict. But how to doubt after
such evidence? The jury straightway declared the panel guilty, and my
lords pronounced a sentence of picturesque barbarity. Standsfield was
to be hanged at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, his tongue cut out and
burned upon the scaffold, his right hand fixed above the east port
of Haddington, and his dead body hung in chains upon the Gallow Lee
betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, his name disgraced for ever, and all his
property forfeited to the Crown. According to the old Scots custom the
sentence was given “by the mouth of John Leslie, dempster of court”--an
office held along with that of hangman. “Which is pronounced for doom”
was the formula wherewith he concluded.
On February 15 Standsfield though led to the scaffold was reprieved
for eight days “at the priest’s desire, who had been tampering to
turn Papist” (one remembers these were the last days of James II.,
or as they called him in Scotland, James VII.’s reign). Nothing came
of the delay, and when finally brought out on the 24th “he called
for Presbyterian ministers.” Through some slipping of the rope, the
execution was bungled; finally the hangman strangled his patient. The
“near resemblance of his father’s death” is noted by an eye-witness.
“Yet Edmund was beloved.” Leave was asked to bury the remains. One
fancies this was on the part of Lady Standsfield, regarding whose
complicity and doting fondness, strange stories were current. The
prayer was refused, but the body was found lying in a ditch a few days
after, and again the gossips (with a truly impious desire to “force the
hand” of Providence) saw a likeness to the father’s end. Once more the
body was taken down and presently vanished.
Lord Fountainhall, a contempory of Standsfield, and Sir Walter Scott,
both Scots lawyers of high official position, thought the evidence of
Standsfield’s guilt not altogether conclusive, and believed something
might be urged for the alternative theory of suicide. Whilst venturing
to differ, I note the opinion of such eminent authorities with all
respect.
Standsfield maintained his innocence to the last. Three servants of
his father’s--two men and a woman--were seized and tortured with the
thumbikins. They confessed nothing. Now, torture was frequently used
in old Scots criminal procedure, but if you did not confess you were
almost held to have proved your innocence.
I cannot discover the after fate of these servants, and probably
they were banished--a favourite method with the Scots authorities
for getting rid of objectionable characters whose guilt was not
sufficiently proved.
The second case, not so romantic albeit a love-story is woven through
its tangled threads, is that of Mary Blandy, spinster, tried at
Oxford in 1752, before two of the Barons of the Exchequer, for the
murder of her father, Francis Blandy, attorney, and town clerk of
Henley-on-Thames. Prosecuting counsel described her as “genteel,
agreeable, sprightly, sensible.” She was an only child. Her sire
being well off she seemed an eligible match, and yet wooers tarried.
Some years before the murder, the villain of the piece, William Henry
Cranstoun, a younger son of the Scots Lord Cranstoun and an officer
recruiting at Henley for the army, comes on the scene. Contemporary
gossip paints him the blackest colour. “His shape no ways genteel, his
legs clumsy, he has nothing in the least elegant in his manner.” He was
remarkable for his dulness; he was dissipated and poverty-stricken.
More fatal than all he had a wife and child in Scotland, though he
brazenly declared the marriage invalid spite the judgment of the Scots
courts in its favour. Our respectable attorney, upon discovering these
facts, gave the Captain, as he was called, the cold shoulder. The
prospect of a match with a Lord’s son was too much for Miss Blandy, now
over thirty, and she was ready to believe any ridiculous yarn he spun
about his northern entanglements. Fired by an exaggerated idea of old
Blandy’s riches, he planned his death, and found in the daughter an
agent and, as the prosecution averred, an accomplice.
The way was prepared by a cunning use of popular superstitions.
Mysterious sounds of music were heard about; at least Cranstoun said
so; indeed, it was afterwards alleged he “hired a band to play under
the windows.” If any one asked “What then?” he whispered “that a
wise woman, one Mrs. Morgan, in Scotland,” had assured him that such
was a sign of death to the head of the house within twelve months.
The Captain further alleged that he held the gift of second sight
and had seen the worthy attorney’s ghost; all which, being carefully
reported to the servants by Miss Blandy raised a pleasing horror in the
kitchen. Cranstoun, from necessity or prudence, left Henley before the
diabolical work began in earnest, but he supplied Mary with arsenic
in powder, which she administered to her father for many months. The
doses were so immoderate that the unfortunate man’s teeth dropped whole
from their sockets, whereat the undutiful daughter “damn’d him for a
toothless old rogue and wished him to hell.” Cranstoun, under the guise
of a present of Scotch pebbles, sent her some more arsenic, nominally
to rub them with. In the accompanying letter, July 18, 1751, he
glowingly touched on the beauties of Scotland as an inducement to her,
it was supposed, to make haste. Rather zealous than discreet, she near
poisoned Anne Emmett, the charwoman, by misadventure, but brought her
round again with great quantities of sack whey and thin mutton broth,
sovereign remedies against arsenic.
Her father gradually became desperately ill. Susannah Gunnell,
maidservant perceiving a white powder at the bottom of a dish she was
cleaning had it preserved. It proved to be arsenic, and was produced
at the trial. Susannah actually told Mr. Blandy he was being poisoned;
but he only remarked, “Poor lovesick girl! what will not a woman do for
the man she loves?” Both master and maid fixed the chief, perhaps the
whole, guilt on Cranstoun, the father confining himself to dropping
some strong hints to his daughter, which made her throw Cranstoun’s
letters and the remainder of the poison on the fire, wherefrom the drug
was in secret rescued and preserved by the servants.
Mr. Blandy was now hopelessly ill, and though experienced doctors
were at length called in, he expired on Wednesday, August 14, 1751.
The sordid tragedy gets its most pathetic and highest touch from the
attempts made by the dying man to shield his daughter and to hinder
her from incriminating admissions which under excitement and (one
hopes) remorse she began to make. And in his last hours he spoke to her
words of pardon and solace. That night and again on Thursday morning
the daughter made some distracted efforts to escape. “I ran out of
the house and over the bridge, and had nothing on but a half-sack and
petticoat without a hoop--my petticoats hanging about me.” But now
all Henley was crowded round the dwelling to watch the development of
events. The mob pressed after the distracted girl, who took refuge
at the sign of the Angel, a small inn just across the bridge. “They
were going to open her father,” she said, and “she could not bear the
house.” She was taken home and presently committed to Oxford Gaol to
await her trial. Here she was visited by the high sheriff, who “told me
by order of the higher powers he must put an iron on me. I submitted as
I always do to the higher powers” (she had little choice). Spite her
terrible position and these indignities she behaved with calmness and
courage.
The trial, which lasted twelve hours, took place on February 29, 1752,
in the Divinity School of the University. The prisoner was “sedate
and composed without levity or dejection.” Accused of felony, she had
properly counsel only for points of law, but at her request they were
allowed to examine and cross-examine the witnesses. Herself spoke
a defence possibly prepared by her advisers, for though the style
be artless, the reasoning is exceeding ingenious. She admitted she
was passionate and thus accounted for some hasty expressions; the
malevolence of servants had exaggerated these. Betty Binfield, one of
the maids, was credibly reported to have said of her, “she should be
glad to see the black bitch go up the ladder to be hanged.” But the
powder? Impossible to deny she had administered that. “I gave it to
procure his love.” Cranstoun, she affirmed, had sent it from Scotland,
assuring her that it would so work, and Scotland, one notes, seemed to
everybody “the shores of old romance,” the home of magic incantations
and mysterious charms. It was powerfully objected that Francis Blandy
had never failed in love to his daughter, but she replied that the drug
was given to reconcile her father to Cranstoun. She granted he meant to
kill the old man in hopes to get his money, and she was the agent, but
(she asserted) the innocent agent, of his wicked purpose. This theory
though the best available was beset with difficulties. She had made
many incriminating statements, there was the long time over which the
doses had been spread, there was her knowledge of its effects on Anne
Emmett the charwoman, there was the destruction of Cranstoun’s letters,
the production of which would have conclusively shown the exact measure
in which guilty knowledge was shared. Finally, there was the attempt to
destroy the powder. Bathurst, leading counsel for the Crown, delivered
two highly rhetorical speeches, “drawing floods of tears from the most
learned audience that perhaps ever attended an English Provincial
Tribunal.” The jury after some five minutes’ consultation in the box
returned a verdict of “guilty,” which the prisoner received with
perfect composure. All she asked was a little time “till I can settle
my affairs and make my peace with God,” and this was readily granted.
She was left in prison five weeks.
The case continued to excite enormous interest, increased by an
account which she issued from prison of her father’s death and her
relations with Cranstoun. She was constant in her professions of
innocence, “nor did anything during the whole course of her confinement
so extremely shock her as the charge of infidelity which some
uncharitable persons a little before her death brought against her.”
Some were convinced and denied her guilt, “as if,” said Horace Walpole,
“a woman who would not stick at parricide would scruple a lie.” Others
said she had hopes of pardon “from the Honour she had formerly had of
dancing for several nights with the late P----e of W----s, and being
personally known to the most sweet-tempered P--ess in the world.” The
press swarmed with pamphlets. The Cranstoun correspondence, alleged not
destroyed, was published--a very palpable Grub Street forgery! and a
tragedy, _The Fair Parricide_, dismal in every sense, was inflicted on
the world. The last scene of all was on April 6, 1752. “Miss Blandy
suffered in a black bombazine short sack and petticoat, with a clean
white handkerchief drawn over her face. Her hands were tied together
with a strong black riband, and her feet at her own request almost
touched the ground” (“Gentlemen, don’t hang me high for the sake of
decency,” an illustration of British prudery which has escaped the
notice of French critics). She mounted the ladder with some hesitation.
“I am afraid I shall fall.” For the last time she declared her
innocence, and soon all was over. “The number of people attending her
execution was computed at about 5000, many of whom, and particularly
several gentlemen of the university, were observed to shed tears”
(tender-hearted “gentlemen of the university”!) “In about half an hour
the body was cut down and carried through the crowd upon the shoulders
of a man with her legs exposed very indecently.” Late the same night
she was laid beside her father and mother in Henley Church.
Cranstoun fled from justice and was outlawed. In December that same
year he died in Flanders.
Some Disused Roads to Matrimony
Marriage according to the Canon Law--The English
Law--Peculiars--The Fleet Chapel--Marriage Houses--“The Bishop of
Hell”--Ludgate Hill in the Olden Time--Marriages Wholesale--The
Parsons of the Fleet--Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act--The Fleet
Registers--Keith’s Chapel in May Fair--The Savoy Chapel--The Scots
Marriage Law--The Strange Case of Joseph Atkinson--Gretna Green in
Romance and Reality--The Priests--Their Clients--A Pair of Lord
High Chancellors--Lord Brougham’s Marriage Act--The Decay of the
Picturesque.