In 1910 Alice the wife of Sir Alexander Bosville Macdonald of the Isles privately published A romantic chapter in family history (London, 1910) in which she said that her husband’s great-grandmother Louisa was the daughter of Lady Almeria Carpenter by William Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

In a formal declaration made about their marriage before the Provost of Annan on 26 October 1807 Louisa, without mentioning the name LacCoast, described herself as ‘Mrs Louisa Maria Edsir’, saying that she and Godfrey were ‘engaged and betrothed to each other as husband and wife in Christmas week 1799, and from that period understood themselves to be married persons’[10] Godfrey Macdonald’s wife Louisa Maria had in fact for many years been described in printed peerages as the ‘daughter of Farley Edsir, Esq.’, and she was so described in Godfrey Macdonald’s obituary in 1832, in her own obituary in 1835 and in the above-mentioned daughter’s obituary in 1839, as well as in the Gentleman's Magazine, in Edmund Lodge’s Peerage of the British Empire in 1837 and in Burke’s Peerage in 1901.

[11] Alice Macdonald says that Louisa had initially been adopted by and taken the surname of one Farley Edsir a steward to the Duke of Gloucester and tenant of a dairy farm near Hampton Court.

[12] She says that Louisa believed that she was born 6 January 1782 and that her ‘birth’ was entered incorrectly under the date 4 February 1781 in the baptismal register of Leatherhead, Surrey, where an entry in 1781 reads ‘Maria D. of Farley & Mary Edsar – Febry 4’.

She seems to be suggesting some later interpolation but searches show that Maria was the eighth of ten children baptised to Farley and Mary Edsor, Edsar or Edser, seven at Stoke d’Abernon between 1766 and 1780 and then three at Leatherhead between 1781 and 1787.

Mrs Davidson of Tulloch had apparently claimed to have seen a paper signed by Mary Edser after the death of the Duke of Gloucester in 1805 to the effect that Louisa Maria was ‘not her child, but of great parents’[13] words which echo those that Farley is alleged to have used to Godfrey Macdonald when he asked permission to marry the girl in 1799.

[15] No evidence has been produced to show a link between Almeria Carpenter and the child baptised Edser, or to the attendant Lacoste and the LacCoast who became Mrs Macdonald and was later said to have been an Edsir.