Thomas Lawson (botanist)

Thomas Lawson (1630–1691) was an English botanist and Quaker.

Lawson was born 10 October 1630 at Lawkland, in the parish of Clapham, Yorkshire, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Lawson. Educated at Giggleswick School, the local grammar school, he was admitted sizar of Christ's College, Cambridge 25 July 1650. Lawson apparently dropped out of university, although his brother completed a course. Lawson became an adept in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

At some point in the early 1650s he became a clergyman at Rampside, a village on the Furness Peninsula. The village had a chapel of ease and was part of the parish of Dalton. During this period, although the Church of England was retained, episcopacy was suppressed and there was tolerance of independent churches. George Fox visited him at Rampside in 1652, and was invited to preach. Lawson soon after became convinced of the unlawfulness of preaching for hire, and at twenty-three gave up his living to join the Quakers. He was frequently distrained upon for non-payment of tithe, and was imprisoned. He was one of the early activists known as the Valiant Sixty.

Lawson married, 24 March 1658, Frances Wilkinson, and settled at Great Strickland in Westmorland, where he took pupils from the sons of the gentry round.

In the 1670s Lawson had to close temporarily his school in Westmorland because of problems with the authorities. In 1674 he taught botany to the daughters of Margaret Fell at Swarthmore. (Margaret Fell, who was by this time married to George Fox, had seven daughters from her first marriage). According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, this is our "earliest firm evidence" of Lawson's interest in botany.

...
Wikipedia