Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/236

Law , Linlithgowshire; (2) Grissel Boswell; (3) Marion, daughter of Boyle of Kelburn, Ayrshire; and had three sons: James, to whom he left the estate of Brunton in Fife, Thomas, minister of Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, George, and a daughter Isabella. Andrew Law, minister of Neilston, Renfrewshire, and ancestor of the financier, is supposed to have been a brother of the archbishop.

[Hew Scott's Fasti; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Law's Memorials; Livingstone's Characteristics; Keith's Cat.; Row and Calderwood's Hist.; Barry's Hist. of the Orkney Islands; Wood's Hist. of Cramond.]  LAW, JAMES THOMAS (1790–1876), chancellor of Lichfield, born in 1790, was eldest son of George Henry Law [q.v.], bishop of Bath and Wells, by Jane, daughter of General James Whorwood Adeane, M.P., of Babraham, Cambridgeshire (Gent. Mag. 1846, i. 531). He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1812 as second senior optime, was chosen fellow, took orders in 1814, and proceeded M.A. in 1815. On 9 April 1818 he was made prebendary of Chester (, Fasti, ed. Hardy, iii. 273), and on 18 July following prebendary of Lichfield (ib. i. 588). In 1821 he was appointed chancellor of the diocese of Lichfield, in 1824 commissary of the archdeaconry of Richmond, and in 1840 special commissary of the diocese of Bath and Wells. He took much interest in the Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery, Queen's College, Birmingham, of which he was elected honorary warden in 1846, and in the Theological College, Lichfield. He was master of St. John's Hospital, Lichfield. Law died at Lichfield on 22 Feb. 1876. On 16 Dec. 1820 he married Lady Henrietta Charlotte Grey (d. 1866), eldest daughter of George Harry, sixth earl of Stamford and Warrington, and left issue.

Law published: 1. 'A Catechetical Exposition of the Apostles' Creed,' 8vo, London, 1825. 2. 'The Poor Man's Garden, or a few brief Rules for Regulating Allotments of Land to the Poor for Potatoe Gardens,' &c., 8vo, London, 1830; 4th edit. 1831. 3. 'The Acts for Building and Promoting the Building of Additional Churches in Populous Parishes arranged and harmonised,' 8vo, London, 1841; 3rd edit. 1853. 4. 'The Ecclesiastical Statutes at large, extracted from the great body of the Statute Law and arranged under separate heads,' 5 vols. 8vo, London, 1847. 5. 'Lectures on the Ecclesiastical Law of England,' pt. i. 8vo, London, 1861. 6. 'Lectures on the Office and Duties of Churchwardens,' &c., 8vo, London, 1861. 7. 'Materials for a Brief History of ... Queen's College, Birmingham; with a Supplement and Appendices, arranged by Mr. Chancellor Law,' 4to, Lichfield, 1869. He also published 'Forms of Ecclesiastical Law,' 8vo, London, 1831 (another edit. 1844); a translation of the first part of T. Oughton's 'Ordo Judiciorum,' with large additions from Clarke's 'Praxis;' together with various charges and pamphlets.

[Guardian, 1 March 1876, p. 280; Annual Register, cxviii. 135; Crockford's Clerical Directory for 1876, p. 551.]  LAW, JOHN (1671–1729), of Lauriston, controller-general of French finance, was born at Edinburgh in April 1671. His father, William Law, great-grand-nephew of James Law [q.v.], archbishop of Glasgow, was a prosperous Edinburgh 'goldsmith,' a business which then included money-lending and banking. He acquired the estate of Lauriston, a few miles from Edinburgh, in the parish of Cramond, and died in 1684. John was educated at Edinburgh, and was early remarkable for his proficiency in arithmetic and algebra. He grew up a handsome, accomplished, and foppish young man of dissipated habits, and a great gambler. Migrating to London, he was soon deeply involved in debt, and at twenty-one sold the fee of Lauriston to his mother, who kept the estate in the family. In April 1694 he killed Edward Wilson, known as 'Beau' Wilson [q.v.], in a duel in London, and being convicted of murder, was sentenced to death. The capital sentence was commuted to one of imprisonment on the ground that the offence was one of manslaughter only; but against this decision an 'appeal of murder' was brought by a relative of his victim. While the appeal was pending Law escaped from prison and took refuge on the continent.

For a time Law is said to have acted as secretary to the British resident in Holland, and to have devoted much attention to finance, especially to the working of the bank of Amsterdam.

At the close of 1700 he was in Scotland, then in a state of collapse, due to the failure of the Darien scheme. Early in 1701 he issued anonymously at Edinburgh his 'Proposals and Reasons for Constituting a Council of Trade in Scotland,' which was to abolish the farming of the revenue and to simplify taxation. The revenue raised and administered by it was to furnish a fund from which advances should be made for the encouragement of national industries, or the council might undertake certain needful branches of production neglected by private enterprise, abolish trade monopolies, free raw materials from import duties, and set the unemployed to work. In 1709 was published, also 