LAWRENCE, SIR HENRY MONTGOMERY (18o6 18S7), British soldier and statesman in India, brother of the ist Lord Lawrence (q.v.), was born at Matara, Ceylon, on June 28, 18o6. Early in 1823 he joined the Bengal Artillery at the Calcutta suburb of Dum Dum, where Henry Havelock was stationed. Henry Lawrence served in the first Burmese campaign, where he contracted a fever which never really left him. After a short period at home he was appointed revenue surveyor by Lord William Ben tinck. At Gorakhpur he made many fast friends. He was recalled to a brigade by the outbreak of the first Afghan War towards the close of 1838. As assistant to Sir George Clerk, he administered the district of Ferozepore; and when disaster came he was sent to Peshawar in order to push up supports for the relief of Sale and the garrison of Jalalabad. The war had been begun under the tri partite treaty signed at Lahore on June 20, 1838. But the Sikhs were slow to play their part after the calamities in Afghanistan. No one but Henry Lawrence could manage the disorderly contin gent which they reluctantly supplied to Pollock's avenging army in 1842. He helped to force the Khyber Pass on April 5, playing his guns from the heights, for 8 and 20 m. He then became assist ant to the envoy at Lahore, at Umballa, where he reduced to order the lapsed territory of Kaithal. Soon he received the office of resident at the protected court of Nepal, where, assisted by his wife, née Honoria Marshall, he began a series of contributions to the Calcutta Review, a selected volume of which forms an Anglo Indian classic. There, too, he elaborated his plans which resulted in the erection and endowment of the Lawrence military asylums at Sanawar (on the road to Simla), at Murree in the Punjab, at Mount Abu in Rajputana, and at Lovedale on the Madras Nilgiris.
Lawrence had published the results of his experience of Sikh rule and soldiering in a vivid work, the Adventures of an Officer in the Service of Ranjit Singh (1845). After the doubtful triumphs of Moodkee and Ferozshah, Lawrence was summoned from Nepal to take the place of Major George Broadfoot, who had fallen. Aliwal came; then the guns of Sobraon chased the demoralized Sikhs across the Sutlej. Throughout, Lawrence was at the side of the new governor-general, Lord Hardinge. He gave his voice, not for annexation, but for the reconstruction of the Sikh government, and was himself appointed resident at Lahore, and president of the council of regency till the maharaja Dhuleep Singh should come of age. Soon disgusted by the "venal and selfish durbar" who formed.
his Sikh colleagues, he summoned to his side assistants like Nichol son, James Abbott and Edwardes, till they all did too much for the people, as he regretfully confessed. But "my chief confidence was in my brother John, . . . who gave me always such help as only a brother could." Wearied out he went home with Lord Hardinge, when he was made K.C.B. The second Sikh War summoned him back at the end of 1848, to see the whole edifice of Sikh "recon struction" collapse. Lord Dalhousie proclaimed the Punjab up to the Khyber British territory on March 29, 1849. But still another compromise was tried. Henry Lawrence was made president of the new board of administration with charge of the political duties, and his brother John was entrusted with the finances. John could not find the revenue necessary for the rapid civilization of the new province so long as Henry would, for political reasons, insist on granting life pensions and alienating large estates to the needy remnants of Ranjit Singh's court. Lord Dalhousie therefore re moved Sir Henry Lawrence to the charge of the great nobles of Rajputana, and installed John as chief commissioner.
In the comparative rest of Rajputana he wrote two important articles (March–Sept., 1856) on army reform, the outcome of conversations with Lord Dalhousie at Calcutta. Henry Lawrence pointed out the latent causes of mutiny, and uttered warnings to be too soon justified. In March 1857 he took the helm at Luck now, but it was too lat.:. In ten days his magic rule put down administrative difficulties indeed, as he had done at Lahore. But what could even he effect with only 700 European soldiers, when the epidemic spread after the Meerut outbreak of mutiny on the loth of May? In one week he had completed the preparations for the defence of the Lucknow residency, and he was appointed provisional governor-general. On May 3o, mutiny burst forth in Oudh, and he was ready. On June 29, he led 336 British soldiers with I 1 guns and 220 natives out of Chinhat to reconnoitre the insurgents, when the natives joined the enemy and the residency was besieged. On July 2, a shell struck him, and he died two days later. A baronetcy was conferred on his son. A marble statue was placed in St. Paul's as the national memorial of one who has been declared to be the noblest man that has lived and died for the good of India.
His biography was begun by Sir Herbert Edwardes, and completed (2 vols. 1872) by Herman Merivale. See also J. J. McLeod Innes, Sir Henry Lawrence ("Rulers of India" series) , 1898.