Thus Mr. Blandy died of poison, but his daughter was captured whilst attempting to escape, and was conveyed to Oxford Castle, where she was imprisoned till the assizes, when she was tried for parricide, was found guilty, and executed. Captain Cranstoun managed to effect his escape, and went abroad, where he died soon afterwards in a deplorable state of mind, brought about by remorse for the evil and misery he had caused.
Almost equally tragic was the fatal passion of Sir William Kyte, forming another strange domestic drama in real life. Possessed of considerable fortune, and of ancient family, Sir William was deemed a very desirable match, and when he offered his hand to a young lady of noble rank, and of great beauty, he was at once accepted. The marriage for the first few years turned out happily, but the crisis came when Sir William was nominated, at a contested election, to represent the borough of Warwick, in which county lay the bulk of his estate. After the election was over, Lady Kyte, by way of recompensing a zealous partisan of her husband, took an innkeeper's daughter, Molly Jones, for her maid; "a tall, genteel girl, with a fine complexion, and seemingly very modest and innocent." But before many months had elapsed, Sir William was attracted by the girl, and, eventually, became so infatuated by her charms, that, casting aside all restraints of shame or fear, he agreed to a separation between his wife and himself. Accordingly, Sir William left Lady Kyte, with the two younger children, in possession of the mansion-house in Warwickshire, and retired with his mistress and his two eldest sons to a farmhouse on the Cotswold hills. Charmed with the situation, he was soon tempted to build a handsome house here, to which were added two large side-fronts, for no better reason than that Molly Jones, one day, happened to say, "What is a Kite without wings." But the expense of completing this establishment, amounting to at least £10,000, soon involved Sir William in financial difficulties, which caused him to drown his worries in drink.
At this juncture, Molly Jones, forgetting her own past, was injudicious enough to engage a fresh coloured country girl—who was scarcely twenty—as dairymaid, for whom Sir William quickly conceived an amorous regard. Actuated by jealousy or disgust, Molly Jones threatened to leave Sir William, a resolution which she soon carried out, retiring to Cambden, a neighbouring market town, where she was reduced to keep a small sewing school as a means of livelihood. Although left to carry on his intrigue undisturbed, Sir William soon became a victim to gloomy reflections, feeling at times that he had not only cruelly wronged a good wife, but had been deserted by the very woman for whose sake he had brought this trouble and disgrace upon his family. Tormented by these conflicting passions, he occasionally worked himself up into such a state of frenzy that even his new favourite was terrified, and had run away. It was when almost maddened with the thought of his evil past that he formed that fatal resolve which was a hideous ending to "the dreadful consequence of a licentious passion not checked in its infancy." One October evening, as a housemaid was on the stairs, suddenly "the lobby was all in a cloud of smoke." She gave the alarm, and on the door being forced open whence the smoke proceeded, it was discovered that Sir William had set fire to a large heap of fine linen, piled up in the middle of the room. From an adjoining room, where Sir William had made his escape, the flames burst out with such fury that all were glad to make their escape out of the house, the greater part of which was in a few hours burnt to the ground—no other remains of its master being found next morning but the hip-bone, and bones of the back.
A case which, at the time, created considerable sensation was the murder of Thynne of Longleat by a jealous antagonist. The eleventh Duke of Northumberland left an only daughter, whose career, it has been said, "might match that of the most erratic or adventurous of her race." Before she was sixteen years old, she had been twice a widow, and three times a wife. At the age of thirteen, she was married to the only son of the Duke of Newcastle, a lad of her own age, who died in a few months. Her second husband was Thynne of Longleat, "Tom of Ten Thousand," but the tie was abruptly severed by the bullet of an assassin, set on by the notorious Count Konigsmark, who had been a suitor for her hand, and was desirous of another chance. After his death, the young widow, who was surrounded by a host of admirers, married the Duke of Somerset, and she seems to have made him a fitting mate, for when his second wife, a Finch, tapped him familiarly on the shoulder, or, according to another version, seated herself on his knee, he exclaimed indignantly:
"My first wife was a Percy, and she never thought of taking such a liberty."
It may be added that one of the most remarkable incidents in this celebrated beauty's life was when by dint of tears and supplications she prevented Queen Anne from making Swift a bishop, out of revenge for the "Windsor prophecy," in which she was ridiculed for the redness of her hair, and upbraided as having been privy to the brutal murder of her second husband. "It was doubted," says Scott, "which imputation she accounted the more cruel insult, especially since the first charge was undoubted, and the second arose only from the malice of the poet."
Another tragedy of a similar kind was the murder of William Mountford, the player. Captain Richard Hill had conceived a violent passion for Mrs. Bracegirdle, the beautiful actress, and is said to have offered her his hand, and to have been refused. At last his passion became ungovernable, and he determined to carry her off by force. To carry out his purpose, he induced his friend Lord Mohun to assist him in the attempt. According to one account, "he dodged the fair actress for a whole day at the theatre, stationed a coach near the Horseshoe Tavern, in Drury Lane, to carry her off in, and hired six soldiers to force her into it. As the beautiful actress came down Drury Lane, at ten o'clock at night, accompanied by her mother and brother, and escorted by her friend Mr. Page, one of the soldiers seized her in his arms, and endeavoured to force her into the coach. But the lady's scream attracted a crowd, and Captain Hill, finding his endeavours ineffectual, bid the soldiers let her go. Disappointed in their object, Lord Mohun and Captain Hill vowed vengeance; and Mrs. Bracegirdle on reaching home sent her servant to Mr. Mountford's house to take care of himself, warning him against Lord Mohun and Captain Hill, "who she feared, had no good intention toward him, and did wait for him in the street." It appears that Mountford had already heard of the attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle, and hearing that Lord Mohun and Captain Hill were in the street, did not shrink from approaching them."
The account says that he addressed Lord Mohun, and told him how sorry he was to find him in the company of such a pitiful fellow as Captain Hill, whereupon, it is said, "the captain came forth and said he would justify himself, and went towards the middle of the street, and Mr. Mountford followed him and drew." The end of the quarrel was that Mountford fell with a terrible wound, of which he died on the following day, declaring in his last moments that Captain Hill ran him through the body before he could draw his sword. Captain Hill, it seems, owed Mountford a deadly grudge, having attributed his rejection by Mrs. Bracegirdle to her love for him—an unlikely passion, it is thought, as Mountford was a married man, with a good-looking wife of his own, afterwards Mrs. Verbruggen, and a celebrated actress.
Oulton House, Suffolk, long known as the "Haunted House," acquired its ill-omened name from a tragic occurrence traditionally said to have happened many years ago, and the peasantry in the neighbourhood affirm that at midnight a wild huntsman, with his hounds, accompanied by a lady carrying a poisoned cup, is occasionally seen. The story is that, in the reign of George II., a squire, returning unexpectedly home from the chase, discovered his wife with an officer, one of his guests, in too familiar a friendship. High words followed, and the indignant husband, provoked by the cool manner in which the officer treated the matter, struck him, whereupon the guilty lover drew his sword and drove it through the squire's heart, the faithless wife and her paramour afterwards making their escape.
Some years afterwards, runs the tale, the Squire's daughter, who had been left behind in the hasty departure, having grown to womanhood, was affianced to a youthful farmer of the neighbourhood. But on their bridal eve, as they were sitting together talking over the new life they were about to enter, "a carriage, black and sombre as a hearse, with closely drawn curtains, and attended by servants clad in sable liveries, drew up to the door." The young girl was seized by masked men, carried off in the carriage to her unnatural mother, while her betrothed was stabbed as he vainly endeavoured to rescue her. A grave is pointed out in the cemetery at Namur, as that in which was laid the body of the unhappy girl, poisoned, it is alleged, by her unscrupulous and wicked mother. It is not surprising, we are told, that the locality was supposed to be haunted by the wretched woman—both as wife and mother equally criminal.