Family and Education

b. c.1707, 1st s. of Sir Alfred Lawson, 7th Bt.  suc. fa. 14 Feb. 1752.

Offices Held

Sheriff, Cumb. 1756-7.

Biography

An agent of Lord Egremont’s, when surveying the political scene in Cumberland, 13 June 1760, remarked: ‘As for Sir W. Lawson he has no turn to Parliament.’1 Yet when in 1761 Sir James Lowther was returned both for Cumberland and Westmorland, John Robinson wrote to Charles Jenkinson that Lawson would no doubt be chosen for Cumberland should Lowther vacate that seat.2 The new writ was issued on 9 Dec., and on the 14th Lawson, in a circular letter, announced his intention to stand. On 20 Dec. Lowther notified his friends that he had given his interest ‘entirely’ to Lawson on this occasion. He was returned unopposed on the 28th, and in his speech to the electors declared that he would be the better able to discharge the trust imposed on him ‘as he did not look upon himself as particularly obliged to any particular party’. At the election dinner the healths were drunk of the nobility and gentry who were absent but had declared for Lawson.3

In Bute’s list he is marked, in Jenkinson’s hand, as ‘independent’. He died, 1 Dec. 1762, at Barnby Moor, Notts. on his way to attend Parliament.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: Sir Lewis Namier

Notes

• 1. B. Bonsall, Sir James Lowther, 51.
• 2. Jenkinson Pprs. 1760-6, p. 13.
• 3. Bonsall, 58.