Edward Lawrence (minister)

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Edward Lawrence (also Laurence) (1623–1695) was an English minister whoLeft the Church of England during the 1660s thanks to the Act of Uniformity.

Born in Moston, Shropshire, he was the son of William Laurence. He studied at Whitchurch and then at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he entered as a sizar on 8 June 1644, matriculated in 1645, and earned a BA (1647–48) and an MA (1654). After preaching for a time, he became the vicar of Baschurch, Shropshire, in 1648 and stayed there until 1662, when he was ejected under the Act of Uniformity for refusing to conform.

After his ejection he lived with a gentleman in Baschurch until the Five Mile Act of 1666 forced him to move, and he settled at Tilstock near Whitchurch. In February 1667–68 he and his friend Philip Henry were invited to Betley in Staffordshire to preach in the church, an incident reported to the House of Commons and contributing to a broader crackdown on nonconformists (18 February 1668). In May 1670, while living at Whitchurch, he preached at a neighbor’s house to his family and four friends and was arrested by Dr. Fowler, the local minister, under the Conventicle Act; he and others were fined.

To avoid further trouble, Lawrence took his family to London in May 1671, where he continued to preach in a meetinghouse near the Royal Exchange and elsewhere. He died in November 1695, remembered as a minister troubled by church divisions and often noted in Philip Henry’s diary. Samuel Lawrence of Nantwich was his nephew.

Lawrence and Deborah Lawrence recorded the baptisms of eight children at Baschurch between 1649 and 1661. Their son Nathaniel, born 28 April 1670, became a nonconformist minister at Banbury.