Thomas Lawson, Sr.

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Last updated May 2015

• parents are not John Lawson, 1st Bart. and Catherine Howard

From Geni member Woodman Mark Lowes Dickinson:

Burke's Peerage and Burke's Extinct Baronetage give Sir Henry Lawson, 2nd Baronet, as 2nd son of John, and note that John had a son Roger ("died young") and "other issue". On the face of it this might not conflict with Roger the Dodger having been disinherited for marrying a Protestant. But it does.

(a) A first son might be disinherited from the family estates - if they were not entailed, which was usually the case for at least the family home and the estates most connected with it. Anyway a disinheritance of the first son would require a will, in other words a proper written source. But the eldest son could NOT be cut out of his inheritance to his father's baronetcy, even if he lost all the property.

(b) Both Roger the Dodger and his brother Thomas are shown as being born some 12 years before the 2nd Baronet. So both would have been in line for the baronetcy.

(c) John's marriage to Catherine Howard was in 1660. Roger the Dodger and Thomas can hardly have been born to this couple some ten years previously.