Author: Lawton, Hugh
Biography:
LAWTON, Hugh (1778-1859?: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 11 May 1778 at Lake Marsh Estate, Cork, Ireland, the only son of Christopher Lawton and Mercy Hutchinson, who had married in 1772. The family were wealthy landowning Protestants. He was educated at Eton and Oriel College Oxford (matric. 1795) but does not seem to have taken a degree. He married, on 30 May 1799, at Ovens, Cork, Anna Maria Gordon Warren, the only daughter of another wealthy landowner, William Warren of Lisgold, Cork. They went on to have twelve children. At around the time of Poems (1814), he was moving in the social circle of Viscountess Avonmore at the Clytha Estate, Monmouthshire, and fashionable circles in Bath. The volume was well subscribed with several members of his wife’s well-connected family taking copies. Its occasional verse in Irish and Welsh locations is probably of less interest to modern readers than the long poem, “The Slave” (90-8) and “On the Pleasure arising from Dreams” (134-7). He returned to Ireland where, as was usual for a landowner, he became a magistrate. His wife died on 20 Apr. 1851 at Dumbro’, Bantry, Cork, and the newspaper reports indicate that he was still alive. Nor was he indicated as “deceased” on the marriage certificate of his son Hugh in 1853. O’Donoghue gives 1859 (often repeated) as his date of death but no location or month or day and there do not appear to be any newspaper reports to corroborate this date. (ancestry.co.uk 4 Jun. 2022; Burke [1852], 1: 699; O’Donoghue, 246; Cork Constitution 24 Apr. 1851) AA