the Appendix--but one characteristic detail may be mentioned. As she
was climbing the fatal ladder, covered, for the occasion, with black
cloth, she stopped, and addressing the celebrants of that grim
ritual, "Gentlemen," said she, "do not hang me high, for the sake of
decency."

Mary Blandy was but just in time to make so "genteel" an end. That
very year (1752), owing to the alarming increase of murders, an Act
was passed (25 Geo. II. c. 37) "for better preventing the Horrid
Crime of Murder," whereby persons condemned therefor should be
executed on the next day but one after sentence, and their bodies be
given to the Surgeons' Company at their Hall with a view to
dissection, and also, in the discretion of the judge, be hanged in
chains. The first person to benefit by the provisions of the new Act
did so on 1st July. But although Mary Blandy's body escaped these
legal indignities, as neither coffin nor hearse had been prepared
for its reception, it was carried through the crowd on the shoulders
of one of the Sheriff's men, and deposited for some hours in his
house. There suitable arrangements were made, and at one o'clock in
the morning of Tuesday, 7th April, 1752, the body, by her own
request, was buried in the chancel of Henley Parish Church, between
those of her father and mother, when, notwithstanding the untimely
hour, "there was assembled the greatest concourse of people ever
known upon such an occasion." Henley Church has been "restored"
since Mary's day, and there is now no indication of the grave,
which, as the present rector courteously informs the Editor, is
believed to be beneath the organ, in the north choir aisle.

_Apropos_ to Mary Blandy's death, "Elia" has a quaint anecdote of
Samuel Salt, one of the "Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." This