2 - Biography

Summary

In a mysterious and uncharacteristically firm statement, the DNB entry on George Lawson insists that he was not a Yorkshireman. If the authors were attacking received opinion, they neither give grounds for their view, nor any alternative birth place for Lawson. He seems, however, to have been born in the tiny Yorkshire village of Lancliffe, a clustering of stone houses thrown against the spectacular edge of Kirkby fell, Ribblesdale and the expansive green surges of Lancashire. What may have been the Lawson home still stands close to the house in which William Paley was later to be born. In a paean of praise to Lawson's Politica, Dr John Carr, himself an eminent son of the village and a relation of Lawson's, calls Lancliffe the envy of York, or even Athens, for giving birth to Lawson.

Te tantum genuit vicis brevis, anulus orbis

Lancliff, nascenti conscia terra mihi.

Eborac'invideant, vel Athenae …

Hyperbole or not, this tells us clearly enough where to look for the beginnings of George Lawson. The Emmanuel College archives for 1615 record a signature which Venn, who had to cope with numerous George Lawsons from Yorkshire, hazards may be that George Lawson who later became a divine, as well as critic and supporter of the parliamentarian cause. Subsequent handwriting confirms the signature, and Lawson claimed an MA from Emmanuel. On this basis, I turned to Lancliffe at the turn of the century for evidence of birth.