Author: Lawrence, Herbert
Biography:
LAWRENCE, Herbert (c.1718-96: ancestry.com)
No record has been found of his birth or baptism but counting back from his age at death, he must have been born about 1718. His birthplace was Aldford, Cheshire; his parents were Herbert and Margaret (Goddard) Lawrence, who had married at Winchester in 1708. His eldest brother Charles (1709-60) became a soldier and the Governor of Nova Scotia; Herbert was named as the administrator of his estate after he died unmarried. A younger brother, Montagu (1724-99), became a stationer and publisher in London with premises near the Strand. Montagu published (anonymously) both of Herbert Lawrence’s known works: The Life and Adventures of Common Sense: an Historical Allegory (1769) and The Passions Personify’d (1773). Lawrence by then had established himself as an apothecary in London. He moved in literary circles, perhaps through his brother’s contacts: David Garrick (1717-79, q.v.), who held his famous Stratford Jubilee celebration in the year of publication of Lawrence’s first book, was a good friend. Lawrence married Elizabeth Baldy (1722-56) in the Roman Catholic Chapel of Somerset House on 24 June 1745. The marriage was childless but on 26 Apr. 1764, after her death, at St. James, Piccadilly, Lawrence married Elizabeth Harrache (1744-1807), with whom he had three children. He died presumably at his residence on Henrietta St. and was buried in Dec. 1796 at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. (ancestry.com 11 Dec. 2023; “Lawrence, Charles,” ODNB 11 Dec. 2023; London Gazette 1761)