Edward Lawrence

Edward Lawrence or Laurence (1623 – November 1695) was an English ejected minister.

Life The son of William Laurence, he was born in 1623 at Moston, Shropshire. He was educated first in the school at Whitchurch in the same county, and was then admitted as a sizar of Magdalene College, Cambridge on 8 June 1644. He matriculated in 1645, graduated BA in 1647-8, and MA in 1654.

After preaching for a time, in 1648 Lawrence was made vicar of Baschurch in Shropshire, near his native place. Declining offers of preferment, he remained there till 1662, when he was ejected under the Act of Uniformity. After his ejection he resided with a gentleman in the parish of Baschurch until March 1666, when the Five Mile Act necessitated a move, and he settled at Tilstock, a village in the area of Whitchurch. Richard Baxter wrote a preface. 'There is no Transubstantiation in the Lord's Supper,' delivered as a morning lecture at Southwark, and published as Sermon xxi in The Morning Exercise against Popery (cf. edition by James Nichols, 1845, vol. vi.), first issued by Nathaniel Vincent, London, 1675. An abstract of the sermon, with a notice of Lawrence, is in Samuel Dunn's Seventy-five Eminent Divines, pp. 222–3. 'Parents' Groans over their Wicked Children,' several sermons on Prov. xvii. 25, London, 1681. Two funeral sermons on the 'Use and Happiness of Human Bodies,' London, 1690.

Family Edward and Deborah Lawrence recorded the baptisms of eight children at Baschurch, between 1649 and 1661. The conduct of two of his children caused Lawrence distress. Nathaniel, born 28 April 1670, became nonconformist minister at Banbury.