1 WAS interested in the fifth instalment of 'The Fitzherberts', that excellent series by Nicholas Fitzherhert. It was headlined "The Lass of Richmond Hill" and contains the stark statement that she was that Lass.
I should be most interested to learn the grounds on which this statement was made.
All the main dictionaries of quotations give Leonard MacNally as the most probable author as does the National Dictionary of Biograph; although it has a note that Leigh Hunt, "very improbably" suggests that George 111 wrote the ballad and addressed it to Lady Sarah Lennox. •
In the family there has always been a very strong tradition that Leonard MacNally's first wife Frances l'anson was the Lass (of Richmond, Yorkshire) Leonard's father had been denounced under the Penal Laws and stripped of all his property. Leonard lived as a Protestant all his life but was reconciled to Catholicism on his deathbed.
George Janson-Smith 10 King's Court, Bognor Regis, West Sussex