LAWRENCE, ' John Laird Mair, Isr BARON LAWRENCE, English viceroy and gov ernor-general of India: b. Richmond, York shire, 24 March 1811; d. London, 26 June 1879. He was a younger brother of Sir Henry Mont gomery Lawrence and of Sir George Saint Patrick Lawrence, both of whom attained dis tinction in India. He was educated at Foyle College, Londonderry, it Wraxall Hall, Clifton, Haileyberry College and the College of Fort William, Calcutta. He mastered Urdu and Per sian, and in 1830 he was appointed assistant to the collector at Delhi. With brief intermissions he was for 20 years magistrate and land rev enue collector in that district, gaining a thorough understanding of the natives and so adminis tering affairs for their comfort and prosperity that he gained a wide influence with them. He was responsible for beneficent land reforms and was also largely instrumental in preventing oppression of the people by their own chiefs. At the outbreak of the first Sikh war he was able to raise and forward supplies and muni tions of war which resulted in the victory at Sobraon. He then administered the territory of the defeated Sikhs with such success that in the second Sikh war he was able again to come to the rescue, with the result that the Punjab was annexed and Lawrence appointed commis sioner and then lieutenant-governor. In the
seven years before the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny he so pacified the territory as to be able to send troops to the relief of Delhi and other hard-pressed points, and earned for himself the title °the savior of India.' He was knighted in 1858 and upon his return to India received the thanks of Parliament and a pension of L2,000 annually in addition to his regular pension of f1,000. He became privy councillor, acting as secretary of the state's council for India. and in 1864 became viceroy and governor-general of India. His was uneventful but marked by the prudent care and wisdom upon which he had built his power in Indian affairs. Upon his return to England in 1869, after 40 years of service in Indian affairs, he was created a baron. For the last 10 years of his life he was chairman of the London School Board and of the Church Missionary Society. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Consult Smith, B., 'Life of Lord Lawrence> (1885)•; Atchison, Sir C., 'Lord Lawrence> (in 'Rulers of India Series' 1892) ; Trotter, L. J., 'Lord Lawrence' (1880) ; Gibbon, F. P., 'The Lawrences of the Punjab' (1908).