Henry Lawrence

Who was Henry Lawrence?

Henry Lawrence was an English statesman who served as President of the English Council of State during the Protectorate.

Lawrence was brought up as a Puritan, and educated at Queens' College, Cambridge and then Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he became an MA in 1627. He was a Huntingdonshire landowner who leased out grazing land to his distant relation Oliver Cromwell in the early 1630s. In the late 1630s Lawrence went to live in Holland where he felt freer to practice his form of Christianity, and remained there for most of the Civil War period. He published three religious books, "Of our Communion and Warre with Angels", and on the doctrine of baptism.

He entered Parliament in 1646 to fill a vacancy as Member for Westmorland. He was appointed a commissioner of Plantations in 1648 and commissioner for Ireland in 1652. In 1653 he was nominated a member of the Barebones Parliament, representing Hertfordshire.

When Oliver Cromwell was named Lord Protector, in December 1653, a new Council of State was appointed; Lawrence was its president until its dissolution in 1659.