Sir Robert Lawley, 5th Baronet (22 March 1736 – 11 March 1793) was an English landowner and politician.

The family seat was Canwell Hall, Canwell, Staffordshire

Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

 a thirty nine roomed mansion house built by Sir Francis, 2nd Baronet

Sir Francis Lawley, 2nd Baronet

Sir Francis Lawley, 2nd Baronet was a politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1660 to 1679 and a courtier.Lawley was the son of Sir Thomas Lawley, 1st Baronet of Spoonhill, near Much Wenlock, Shropshire. He inherited the Baronetcy and the estate on the death of his father in 1646...

. He rebuilt the house in grand Georgian style to a design by architect James Wyatt.

He married Jane Thompson (1743 – 9 November 1816), sister of Beilby Thompson

Beilby Thompson

Beilby Thompson was a British landowner and politician, the son of Beilby Thompson and Sarah Dawes...

, of Escrick

Escrick

Escrick is a village and civil parish in the Selby district of North Yorkshire, England. It is equidistant between Selby and York on what is now the A19 road....

, Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

 on 11 August 1764. They had eight children baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Sutton Coldfield

Sutton Coldfield

Sutton Coldfield is a suburb of Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. Sutton is located about from central Birmingham but has borders with Erdington and Kingstanding. Sutton is in the northeast of Birmingham, with a population of 105,000 recorded in the 2001 census...

 including:

• Jane Lawley (c. 1767–1852), married on 21 August 1793 Henry Willoughby, 6th Baron Middleton
  Henry Willoughby, 6th Baron Middleton
  Henry Willoughby, 6th Baron Middleton was an English nobleman, the only son of Henry Willoughby, 5th Baron Middleton....
  
  
• Robert Lawley, 1st Baron Wenlock
  Robert Lawley, 1st Baron Wenlock
  Robert Lawley, 1st Baron Wenlock was a British landowner and politician, the eldest son of Sir Robert Lawley, 5th Baronet and Jane Thompson.Attended the military school at Brienne, France, at the time Napoleon Bonaparte was there....
  
   (1768–1834)
• Anne Lawley (d. 1790)
• Sir Francis Lawley, 7th Baronet (c. 1782–1851)
• Paul Beilby Lawley
  Paul Thompson, 1st Baron Wenlock
  Paul Beilby Lawley Thompson, 1st Baron Wenlock , born Paul Beilby Lawley, was an English nobleman and Whig politician, the youngest son of Sir Robert Lawley, 5th Baronet and Jane Thompson....
  
   (1784–1852)

In 1780, he was returned as 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,...

 (MP) for Warwickshire

Warwickshire (UK Parliament constituency)

Warwickshire was a parliamentary constituency in the Warwickshire in England. It returned two Members of Parliament , traditionall known as knights of the shire, to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the bloc vote system.-Boundaries and franchise:The...

, being the choice of the Whig

British Whig Party

The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

 manufacturing interests of Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, which by this period could name one of two Warwickshire's two MPs without opposition. Despite this, he was not himself a Whig partisan but

had given the most incontrovertible indications of a sincere zeal in their cause, was unanimously selected as the voluntary object of their unbiassed preference...and at the county meeting, held a short time afterwards, he was named and accepted without any opposition. He is not likely to prove a speaker in the House, but ... it is supposed that he has no superiors in integrity.

Lawley did not vote consistently with either party. His only two recorded speeches were on matters of constituency interest (on a bill to allow brass

Brass

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...

 to be exported, and supporting a petition of some iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

manufacturers). He retained his seat until his death in 1793.