See E. W. Gosse, _Cecil Lawson, a Memoir_ (1883); Heseltine Owen, "In Memoriam: Cecil Gordon Lawson," _Magazine of Art_ (1894). (L. B.)
LAWSON, SIR JOHN (d. 1665), British sailor, was born at Scarborough. Joining the parliamentary navy in 1642, he accompanied Penn to the Mediterranean in 1650, where he served for some time. In 1652 he served under Blake in the Dutch War and was present at the first action in the Downs and the battle of the Kentish Knock. At Portland, early in 1653, he was vice-admiral of the red, and his ship was severely handled. Lawson took part in the battles of June and July in the following summer. In 1654-1655 he commanded in the North Sea and the Channel. Appointed in January 1655-1656 as Blake's second-in-command, Lawson was a few weeks later summarily dismissed from his command, probably for political reasons. He was a Republican and Anabaptist, and therefore an enemy to Cromwell. It is not improbable that like Penn and others he was detected in correspondence with the exiled Charles II., who certainly hoped for his support. In 1657, along with Harrison and others, he was arrested and, for a short time, imprisoned for conspiring against Cromwell. Afterwards he lived at Scarborough until the fall of Richard Cromwell's government. During the troubled months which succeeded that event Lawson, flying his flag as admiral of the Channel fleet, played a marked political rôle. His ships escorted Charles to England, and he was soon afterwards knighted. Sent out in 1661 with Montagu, earl of Sandwich, to the Mediterranean, Lawson conducted a series of campaigns against the piratical states of the Algerian coast. Thence summoned to a command in the Dutch War, he was mortally wounded at Lowestoft. He died on the 29th of June 1665.
See Charnock, _Biographia navalis_, i. 20; Campbell, _Lives of the Admirals_, ii. 251; Penn, _Life of Sir William Penn_; Pepys, _Diary_.
LAWSON, SIR WILFRID, Bart. (1829-1906), English politician and temperance leader, son of the 1st baronet (d. 1867), was born on the 4th of September 1829. He was always an enthusiast in the cause of total abstinence, and in parliament, to which he was first elected in 1859 for Carlisle, he became its leading spokesman. In 1864 he first introduced his Permissive Bill, giving to a two-thirds majority in any district a veto upon the granting of licences for the sale of intoxicating liquors; and though this principle failed to be embodied in any act, he had the satisfaction of seeing a resolution on its lines accepted by a majority in the House of Commons in 1880, 1881 and 1883. He lost his seat for Carlisle in 1865, but in 1868 was again returned as a supporter of Mr Gladstone, and was member till 1885; though defeated for the new Cockermouth division of Cumberland in 1885, he won that seat in 1886, and he held it till the election of 1900, when his violent opposition to the Boer War caused his defeat, but in 1903 he was returned for the Camborne division of Cornwall and at the general election of 1906 was once more elected for his old constituency in Cumberland. During all these years he was the champion of the United Kingdom Alliance (founded 1853), of which he became president. An extreme Radical, he also supported disestablishment, abolition of the House of Lords, and disarmament. Though violent in the expression of his opinions, Sir Wilfrid Lawson remained very popular for his own sake both in and out of the House of Commons; he became well known for his humorous vein, his faculty for composing topical doggerel being often exercised on questions of the day. He died on the 1st of July 1906.