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 The Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, essayist and scientist, wrote the plays which were publicly attributed to William Shakespeare. Various explanations are offered for this alleged subterfuge ...

of Shakespeare authorship, which asserts that

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

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 The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree- ...

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 Sir William Lawrence and Sir James Lawrence were Lord Mayors of London and also members of parliament. His nephew was

Frederick Pethick-Lawrence Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence, PC (né Lawrence; 28 December 1871 – 10 September 1961) was a British Labour politician who, among other things, campaigned for women's suffrage. Background and education Bo ...

, the suffragette and pacifist MP. Edwin studied law at London University and was admitted to

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply 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 an ...

in 1867 as a

barrister A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...

. Later in his career he became a

Justice of the Peace A justice of the peace (JP) is a judicial officer of a lower or ''puisne'' court, elected or appointed by means of a commission ( letters patent) to keep the peace. In past centuries the term commissioner of the peace was often used with the sa ...

(as his father had been) in Berkshire. In 1895 he was elected to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

for the

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 (later the Duke of Devonshire) and Joseph Chamberlain, the party established a political ...

, becoming a member of parliament for

Truro Truro (; kw, Truru) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cornwall, England. It is Cornwall's county town, sole city and centre for administration, leisure and retail trading. Its ...

from 1895 to 1906. 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 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 when Dissenters still faced legal threat. As the birthplace of British ...

, the headquarters of

British Unitarianism The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (GAUFCC or colloquially British Unitarians) is the umbrella organisation for Unitarian, Free Christians, and other liberal religious congregations in the United Kingdom and Irelan ...

. He married Edith Jane Smith, daughter of

John Benjamin Smith John Benjamin Smith (7 February 1794 – 15 September 1879) was an English Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1847 to 1874. Life Smith was the son of Benjamin Smith, a merchant of Manchester. He was himself a merchant ...

, in 1874. Their only son, Edwin, was born in 1878, but died two days later. On 2 February 1898 Edwin changed his name by Royal Licence to Durning-Lawrence, in honour of his wife's maternal grandfather, and was created 1st Baronet Durning-Lawrence, of King's Ride, Ascot in the

County of Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...

and of

Carlton House Terrace Carlton House Terrace is a street in the St James's district of the City of Westminster in London. Its principal architectural feature is a pair of terraces of white stucco-faced houses on the south side of the street overlooking St. James's ...

in the

County of London The County of London was a county of England from 1889 to 1965, corresponding to the area known today as Inner London. It was created as part of the general introduction of elected county government in England, by way of the Local Government A ...

on 10 March the same year. In the absence of a male heir, on his death, his baronetcy became extinct.L. G. Pine, ''The New Extinct Peerage 1884–1971: Containing Extinct, Abeyant, Dormant and Suspended Peerages With Genealogies and Arms'', London: Heraldry Today, 1972, p. 217

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). Lawrence became most famous as an advocate of Baconian theory, to which he was converted after reading

Ignatius L. Donnelly Ignatius Loyola Donnelly (November 3, 1831 – January 1, 1901) was an American Congressman, populist writer, and fringe scientist. He is known primarily now for his fringe theories concerning Atlantis, Catastrophism (especially the idea of an a ...

's ''The Great Cryptogram''. He wrote a number of books on the topic, the most notable of which was ''Bacon is Shake-Speare'' (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 ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

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 argument in ''Bacon is Shake-Speare'' was his suggestion that the word

Honorificabilitudinitatibus Honorificabilitudinitatibus (''honōrificābilitūdinitātibus'', ) is the dative and ablative plural of the medieval Latin word ''honōrificābilitūdinitās'', which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours". It is ment ...

, used in the play ''

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 for a performance at the Inns of Court before Elizabeth I of England, Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and ...

'', is an

anagram An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...

for ''hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi'',

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "these plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world". He derived the argument from an earlier book by Isaac Hull Platt.

Samuel Schoenbaum Samuel Schoenbaum (6 March 1927 – 27 March 1996) was a leading 20th-century Shakespearean biographer and scholar. Biography Born in New York, Schoenbaum taught at Northwestern University from 1953 to 1975, serving for the last four years o ...

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 anagrammatised as ''I, B. Ionsonii, uurit 'writ''a lift'd batch'', thus "proving" that Shakespeare's works were written by

Ben Jonson Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...

. Durning-Lawrence also claimed that the

Droeshout engraving The Droeshout portrait or Droeshout engraving is a portrait of William Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droeshout as the frontispiece for the title page of the First Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. It is one of only tw ...

of Shakespeare contained visual codes pointing to the secret authorship. He wrote, "there is no question – there can be no possible question – that in fact it is a cunningly drawn cryptographic picture, shewing two left arms and a mask... Especially note that the ear is a mask ear and stands out curiously; note also how distinct the line shewing the edge of the mask appears."

University of London Archive

Durning-Lawrence's archive was donated to the University of London 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 Francis Bacon and valuable collections on Shakespeare and Defoe." It is still part of the University of London library,

Senate House Library Senate House is the administrative centre of the University of London, situated in the heart of Bloomsbury, London, immediately to the north of the British Museum. The Art Deco building was constructed between 1932 and 1937 as the first phase ...

. He also left an endowment to the university. In the 1920s the artist

Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British arti ...

, who felt the need for a stronger presence of

History of Art The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetic vis ...

within the university, was able to convert the endowment into a chair in that discipline at

University College In a number of countries, a university college is a college institution that provides tertiary education but does not have full or independent university status. A university college is often part of a larger university. The precise usage varies ...

, 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 The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

in 1901). The first holder of the Durning-Lawrence chair was

Tancred Borenius Carl Tancred Borenius (14 July 1885, Vyborg – 2 September 1948, Coombe Bisset) was a Finnish art historian working in England, who became the first professor of the history of art at University College London. He was a prolific author, and recog ...

Wilmot controversy

In 1932, the year after the library was opened, the Shakespeare scholar

Allardyce Nicoll John Ramsay Allardyce Nicoll (28 June 1894 – 17 April 1976) was a British literary scholar and teacher. Allardyce Nicoll was born in Partick, Glasgow, and educated at Stirling High School and the University of Glasgow, where he was the G. A. Cl ...

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 (1726 in Warwick – 1807 in Barton) was an English clergyman and scholar from Warwickshire. During his lifetime, he was apparently unknown beyond his immediate circle. After Wilmot's death, his niece, Olivia Serres, claimed that he ...

, 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 Salter Bacon (February 2, 1811 – September 2, 1859) was an American writer of plays and short stories and Shakespeare scholar. She is best known for her work on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, which she attributed to social reformer ...

and

W.H. Smith WHSmith (also written WH Smith, and known colloquially as Smith's and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son) is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and m ...

. 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 Cowell, the Ipswich Philosophic Society, or its supposed president, Arthur Cobbold. In 2010,

James S. Shapiro James S. Shapiro (born 1955) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specializes in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakes ...

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.Shapiro, James. ''Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?'', Faber, 2010, pp. 11–14 . 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.

Notes

References

* Rowe, Mortimer, B.A., D.D. ''The History of Essex Hall''. London:Lindsey Press, 1959. Full text reproduced her

* Williams, Raymond. ''Essex Church in Kensington 1887–1987: History of a Unitarian Cause''. Full text reproduced her

External links

The Durning-Lawrence library at Senate House Library, University of London
*
Edwin Durning-Lawrence archives
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Durning-Lawrence, Edward 1837 births 1914 deaths Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom English Unitarians Liberal Unionist Party MPs for English constituencies Members of the Metropolitan Board of Works Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Truro People educated at University College School Shakespeare authorship theorists UK MPs 1895–1900 UK MPs 1900–1906