LAWRENCE, Edward (1633-57), of Goldingtons, Stanstead St Margarets, Herts.

Edward Lawrence had grown up in Holland and Germany between the late-1630s and mid-1640s, and, as his father boasted in a letter of 21 January 1647, could pen a letter in Latin and French at the age of 13.4‘Hist. of the antient fam. of Lawrence’, 15. Henry Lawrence I later rose to favour under Cromwell to become president of the protectoral council, and his son was presumably the Edward Lawrence added to the trade committee on 11 January 1656.5CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 114. By this time Edward Lawrence had resumed acquaintance with Henry Oldenburg, the German polymath, who may have been his tutor on the continent and had since settled in England. During the mid-1650s they corresponded in French, Latin and Italian, and Oldenburg relied on Lawrence for news of affairs of state, especially foreign policy.6Corresp. of Henry Oldenburg, ed. A.R. and M.B. Hall (13 vols. Madison, Wisc. 1965-86) i. 30, 36, 92. John Milton was also well acquainted with Lawrence, whom he celebrated in a sonnet written in the winter of 1655-6

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,

Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire

Help waste a sullen day, what may be won

From the hard season gaining?7J. Milton, Complete Shorter Poems, ed. J. Carey (1968, reissued 1971), 408.

The reality of Lawrence’s life at the protectoral court was rather more glamorous. In May 1655 Samuel Hartlib recorded ‘a music meeting and feast’ held by ‘all the masters and other gentleman lovers of music’, attended by ‘my lord president’s two sons’, Edward and Henry II.8Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib MS 29/5/33B-34A. At the end of 1656 Oldenburg wrote that he hoped Lawrence was ‘not so busy courting the ladies that he could not let him know what is happening in Parliament and the army’.9Oldenburg Corresp. i. 110.

In November 1656 Edward was returned for Pembrokeshire, a county with which he had no previous connection, as a replacement for John Clarke II, who had opted to sit for Cardiganshire instead. The contemporary critics who complained of untried young men being preferred to experienced parliamentarians no doubt had Lawrence among their targets.10‘Hist. of the antient fam. of Lawrence’, 16. He was joined in this Parliament by his father and brother, and also by their distant cousin, William Lawrence. The clerk did not distinguish between these four men in the official record, but it seems that most if not all these references are to Henry I and William, as are the contributions to debate recorded by Thomas Burton*. It is, however, probable that ‘Mr Lawrence, the president’s son’ who voted for kingship on 25 March 1657, was Edward rather than his younger brother. Significantly, the opponent of the protectorate who compiled the list of ‘kinglings’ did not know which county Lawrence sat for, but he was certain that he ‘must do as his father’ in this crucial division.11Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 18, 23 (E.935.5).

The protectoral court was Lawrence’s undoing. In December 1657 he died ‘at his father’s lodgings’ in the smallpox epidemic that also killed the protector’s new son-in-law, Robert Rich.12Bodl. Carte 73, f. 187v. His death was widely reported, with Samuel Pepys† relaying the news to Edward Montagu II* and Samuel Hartlib telling the envoy to Switzerland, John Pell, of this ‘sad providence’.13Bodl. Carte 73, f. 187v; Add. 4279, f. 41. Henry Oldenburg eulogised Lawrence as ‘a lesson to young men, not to consecrate their best years to Satan, and to reserve the dregs for God’.14Oldenburg Corresp. i. 150. Lawrence was buried at Stansted St Margaret alongside the infant daughter of his sister, the countess of Barrymore. He never married.15‘Hist. of the antient fam. of Lawrence’, 16; Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 211, 213.