Edwin Durning-Lawrence
Encyclopedia
Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, 1st Baronet (2 February 1837 - 21 April 1914) was a British lawyer and Member of Parliament
.
He is best known for his advocacy of the Baconian theory
of Shakespeare authorship, which asserts that Francis Bacon
was the author of Shakespeare's plays. He published a number of books on the subject and promoted public debates with the academic community. At his death he donated the large "Edwin Durning-Lawrence archive" to London University.
and Sir James Lawrence
were Lord Mayors of London
and also Members of Parliament. His nephew was Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
, the suffragette and pacifist MP.
Edwin studied law at London University and was admitted to Middle Temple
in 1867 as a barrister
. Later in his career he became a Justice of the Peace
(as his father had been) in Berkshire. In 1895 he was elected to the House of Commons for the Liberal Unionist Party
, becoming a Member of Parliament
for Truro from 1895 to 1906.
He married Edith Jane Smith, daughter of John Benjamin Smith
, in 1874. Their only son, Edwin, was born in 1878, but died two days later. In 1898 Edwin changed his name to Durning-Lawrence, in honour of his wife's maternal grandfather, and was created 1st Baronet Durning-Lawrence, of King's Ride, Ascot, Berkshire
in the same year. In the absence of a male heir, on his death, his baronetcy became extinct.
He was also a prominent Unitarian
. He and his brother James between them donated £5000 - equal to half of the actual building costs - to the fund for the construction of Essex Street Chapel
, the headquarters of British Unitarianism.
Lawrence became most famous as an advocate of Baconian theory, to which he was converted after reading Ignatius L. Donnelly's The Great Cryptogram. He wrote a number of books on the topic, the most notable of which was Bacon is Shakespeare (1910). He also wrote The Shakespeare Myth (1912), "Macbeth" Proves Bacon is Shakespeare (1913), and Key to Milton's Epitaph on Shakespeare (1914).
Following Donnelly, Durning-Lawrence believed that the key to proving Bacon's authorship was the discovery of cyphers within the plays which were hidden there by Bacon. His writings were also notable for the virulence with which he heaped abuse on William Shakespeare
of Stratford:
Durning-Lawrence's vehemence and assertiveness in promoting his views was widely remarked upon. He sent copies of his book to public libraries in Britain and to schools, prompting expressions of concern from Shakespeare scholars who believed unwary readers would be misled.
Durning-Lawrence's most famous original argument was his suggestion that the word Honorificabilitudinitatibus
, used in the play Love's Labour's Lost
, is an anagram
for hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi, Latin
for "these plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world". Samuel Schoenbaum
later argued that the anagram overlooks the fact that Bacon would have written the genitive of his name as Baconi (from Baconus), never Baconis (which assumes his name was Baco). John Sladek
also showed that the word could also be anagrammatized as I, B. Ionsonii, uurit [writ] a lift'd batch, thus "proving" that Shakespeare's works were written by Ben Jonson
.
Bacon and valuable collections on Shakespeare and Defoe."
He also left an endowment to the university. In the 1920s the artist Henry Tonks
, who felt the need for a stronger presence of History of Art
within the university, was able to convert the endowment into a chair in that discipline, despite the fact that Durning-Lawrence himself had no especial interest in the subject (though he had donated thirteen paintings to the Victoria and Albert Museum
in 1901). The first holder of the Durning-Lawrence chair was Tancred Borenius
.
published an article on a manuscript it contained written by James Corton Cowell, entitled "Some reflections on the life of William Shakespeare". The manuscript was a lecture delivered to the Ipswich Philosophic Society in 1805. It stated that an 18th century clergyman, James Wilmot
, had identified Bacon as the hidden author of Shakespeare's works. Wilmot's study of local history in the Stratford area convinced him that Shakespeare could not have authored the works attributed to him. He came to this conclusion in 1781, more than 80 years before the Baconian argument was first published by Delia Bacon
and W.H. Smith. Wilmot destroyed all evidence of his theory, confiding his findings only to Cowell.
The authenticity of Cowell's "Reflections" was accepted by Shakespearean scholars for many years, but was challenged in 2002-2003 by John Rollett, Daniel Wright and Alan H. Nelson. Rollett could find no historical traces of either Cowell, the Ipswich Philosophic Society, or its supposed president, Arthur Cobbold. In 2010, James S. Shapiro
declared the document a forgery based on facts stated in the text about Shakespeare that were not discovered or publicised until decades after the purported date of composition. It is not known whether the forgery was introduced to Durning-Lawrence's archive during his life or after his death, however he never refers to it in his own writings.
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
.
He is best known for his advocacy of the Baconian theory
Baconian theory
The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship holds that Sir Francis Bacon, lawyer, philosopher, essayist and scientist, wrote the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare, and that the historical Shakespeare was merely a front to shield the identity of Bacon, who could not take...
of Shakespeare authorship, which asserts that Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
was the author of Shakespeare's plays. He published a number of books on the subject and promoted public debates with the academic community. At his death he donated the large "Edwin Durning-Lawrence archive" to London University.
Life
He was born Edwin Lawrence, the seventh son and last child of William Lawrence and Jane Clarke. His father, who built up his fortune in construction, held political posts in London. His brothers William LawrenceWilliam Lawrence (London MP)
Sir William Lawrence was an English builder and Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1865 and 1885....
and Sir James Lawrence
Sir James Lawrence, 1st Baronet
Sir James Clarke Lawrence, 1st Baronet was Lord Mayor of London and a Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1868 to 1885....
were Lord Mayors of London
Lord Mayor of London
The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title for the Mayor of the City of London Corporation. The Lord Mayor of London is to be distinguished from the Mayor of London; the former is an officer only of the City of London, while the Mayor of London is the Mayor of Greater London and...
and also Members of Parliament. His nephew was Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence PC was a British Labour politician.-Background and education:...
, the suffragette and pacifist MP.
Edwin studied law at London University and was admitted to Middle Temple
Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...
in 1867 as a barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
. Later in his career he became a Justice of the Peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
(as his father had been) in Berkshire. In 1895 he was elected to the House of Commons for the Liberal Unionist Party
Liberal Unionist Party
The Liberal Unionist Party was a British political party that was formed in 1886 by a faction that broke away from the Liberal Party. Led by Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain, the party formed a political alliance with the Conservative Party in opposition to Irish Home Rule...
, becoming a Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Truro from 1895 to 1906.
He married Edith Jane Smith, daughter of John Benjamin Smith
John Benjamin Smith
John Benjamin Smith was an English Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1847 to 1874.Smith was the son of Benjamin Smith, a merchant of Manchester. He was himself a merchant and was president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce from 1839 to 1841. He was the first...
, in 1874. Their only son, Edwin, was born in 1878, but died two days later. In 1898 Edwin changed his name to Durning-Lawrence, in honour of his wife's maternal grandfather, and was created 1st Baronet Durning-Lawrence, of King's Ride, Ascot, Berkshire
Ascot, Berkshire
Ascot is a village within the civil parish of Sunninghill and Ascot, in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Berkshire, England. It is most notable as the location of Ascot Racecourse, home of the prestigious Royal Ascot meeting...
in the same year. In the absence of a male heir, on his death, his baronetcy became extinct.
Writings
Durning-Lawrence was a prolific author. He wrote The Progress of a Century; or, The Age of Iron and Steam (1886), The Pope and the Bible (1888) and A Short History of Lighting from the Earliest Times (1895).He was also a prominent Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
. He and his brother James between them donated £5000 - equal to half of the actual building costs - to the fund for the construction of Essex Street Chapel
Essex Street Chapel
Essex Street Chapel, also known as Essex Church, is a Unitarian place of worship in London. It was the first church in England set up with this doctrine, and was established at a time when Dissenters still faced legal threat...
, the headquarters of British Unitarianism.
Lawrence became most famous as an advocate of Baconian theory, to which he was converted after reading Ignatius L. Donnelly's The Great Cryptogram. He wrote a number of books on the topic, the most notable of which was Bacon is Shakespeare (1910). He also wrote The Shakespeare Myth (1912), "Macbeth" Proves Bacon is Shakespeare (1913), and Key to Milton's Epitaph on Shakespeare (1914).
Following Donnelly, Durning-Lawrence believed that the key to proving Bacon's authorship was the discovery of cyphers within the plays which were hidden there by Bacon. His writings were also notable for the virulence with which he heaped abuse on William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
of Stratford:
England is now declining any longer to dishonour and defame the greatest Genius of all time by continuing to identify him with the mean, drunken, ignorant, and absolutely unlettered, rustic of Stratford who never in his life wrote so much as his own name and in all probability was totally unable to read one single line of print.
Durning-Lawrence's vehemence and assertiveness in promoting his views was widely remarked upon. He sent copies of his book to public libraries in Britain and to schools, prompting expressions of concern from Shakespeare scholars who believed unwary readers would be misled.
Durning-Lawrence's most famous original argument was his suggestion that the word Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the dative and ablative plural of the mediæval Latin word honorificabilitudinitas, which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours". It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost...
, used in the play Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s, and first published in 1598.-Title:...
, is an anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
for hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
for "these plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world". Samuel Schoenbaum
Samuel Schoenbaum
Samuel Schoenbaum was a leading 20th century Shakespearean biographer and scholar.Born in New York, Schoenbaum taught at Northwestern University from 1953 to 1975, serving for the last four years of this period as the Frank Bliss Snyder Professor of English Literature. He later taught at the City...
later argued that the anagram overlooks the fact that Bacon would have written the genitive of his name as Baconi (from Baconus), never Baconis (which assumes his name was Baco). John Sladek
John Sladek
John Thomas Sladek was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels.- Life and work :...
also showed that the word could also be anagrammatized as I, B. Ionsonii, uurit [writ] a lift'd batch, thus "proving" that Shakespeare's works were written by Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
.
University of London Archive
Durning-Lawrence's archive was donated to London University library in 1929, and established there in 1931. It has been described as "a very important collection of about 7,000 volumes largely of seventeenth-century literature containing one of the best collections in the world on Sir FrancisBacon and valuable collections on Shakespeare and Defoe."
He also left an endowment to the university. In the 1920s the artist Henry Tonks
Henry Tonks
Henry Tonks, FRCS was a British draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist...
, who felt the need for a stronger presence of History of Art
History of art
The History of art refers to visual art which may be defined as any activity or product made by humans in a visual form for aesthetical or communicative purposes, expressing ideas, emotions or, in general, a worldview...
within the university, was able to convert the endowment into a chair in that discipline, despite the fact that Durning-Lawrence himself had no especial interest in the subject (though he had donated thirteen paintings to the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
in 1901). The first holder of the Durning-Lawrence chair was Tancred Borenius
Tancred Borenius
Carl Tancred Borenius was a Finnish art historian working in England, who became the first professor of the history of art at University College London...
.
Wilmot controversy
In 1932, the year after the library was opened, the Shakespeare scholar Allardyce NicollAllardyce Nicoll
John Ramsay Allardyce Nicoll was an English literary scholar and teacher.Allardyce Nicoll was born and educated in Glasgow. He became a lecturer at King's College London in 1920 and took the chair of English at East London College John Ramsay Allardyce Nicoll (28 June 1894 – 17 April 1976) was an...
published an article on a manuscript it contained written by James Corton Cowell, entitled "Some reflections on the life of William Shakespeare". The manuscript was a lecture delivered to the Ipswich Philosophic Society in 1805. It stated that an 18th century clergyman, James Wilmot
James Wilmot
James Wilmot was an English clergyman and scholar from Warwickshire. During his lifetime, he was apparently unknown beyond his immediate circle....
, had identified Bacon as the hidden author of Shakespeare's works. Wilmot's study of local history in the Stratford area convinced him that Shakespeare could not have authored the works attributed to him. He came to this conclusion in 1781, more than 80 years before the Baconian argument was first published by Delia Bacon
Delia Bacon
Delia Bacon was an American writer of plays and short stories, a sister of the Congregational minister Leonard Bacon...
and W.H. Smith. Wilmot destroyed all evidence of his theory, confiding his findings only to Cowell.
The authenticity of Cowell's "Reflections" was accepted by Shakespearean scholars for many years, but was challenged in 2002-2003 by John Rollett, Daniel Wright and Alan H. Nelson. Rollett could find no historical traces of either Cowell, the Ipswich Philosophic Society, or its supposed president, Arthur Cobbold. In 2010, James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specialises in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period...
declared the document a forgery based on facts stated in the text about Shakespeare that were not discovered or publicised until decades after the purported date of composition. It is not known whether the forgery was introduced to Durning-Lawrence's archive during his life or after his death, however he never refers to it in his own writings.