Leonard Mac Nally - Playwright, Lyricist and Legal Author

Playwright, Lyricist and Legal Author

McNally was a successful dramatist and wrote a number of well-constructed but derivative comedies, as well as comic operas. His first dramatic work was The Ruling Passion, a comic opera written in 1771, and he is known to have authored at least twelve plays between 1779 and 1796 as well as other comic operas. His works include The Apotheosis of Punch (1779) a satire on the Irish playwright Sheridan, Tristram Shandy (1783), which was an adaptation of Lawrence Sterne's novel, Robin Hood (1784), Fashionable Levities (1785), Richard Cœur de Lion (1786), and Critic Upon Critic (1788).

He also wrote a number of songs and operettas for Covent Garden. One of his songs, Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill, became very well-known and popular following its first public performance at Vauxhall Gardens in London in 1789. It was said to be a favourite of George III and popularized the romantic metaphor "a rose without a thorn", a phrase which McNally had used in the song.

In 1802, McNally published what became a much-used book on the law of evidence, The Rules of Evidence on Pleas of the Crown. The text played a crucial role in defining and publicizing the beyond reasonable doubt standard for criminal trials.