COLONEL JAMES LAWRENCE, the third son of John Lawrence and Susanna Petgrave, belonged to a family which was amongst the earliest and most extensive landed proprietors in the parish of St. James. In 1739 they owned four out of eight sugar estates in the parish. It is said, possibly without reason, that they were descended from Henry Lawrence, President of Cromwell’s Council, to whose son Milton addressed the sonnet, “Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son.” John Lawrence emigrated to Barbados, coming on to Jamaica about 1675. James Lawrence was his grandson. In 1736 he commanded, as captain, a party raised in St. James and St. Ann to suppress rebellious negroes; the House of Assembly voting to “each white shot, twenty shillings; each black shot, ten shillings; and each baggage-negro, five shillings,” as a further encouragement to the party. He subsequently became colonel of the St. James regiment. He represented the parish of St. James in the three Assemblies which were held in Kingston (the only Assemblies ever convened in that town), which met on October 21, 1754, on January 20 and on April 8, 1755, when he supported the governor, Admiral Charles Knowles, in his scheme for the transference of the legislature, courts and public offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. Party feeling ran high. Many of the Spanish Town party rendered the formation of a quorum difficult by withdrawing themselves from meetings—the two Prices, Roger Hope Elletson, William Nedham, Thomas Beach and others, and refused to obey the summons of the Speaker for their attendance. For this seventeen members were expelled the House, but all but two were re-elected by their constituencies. The House sat usually in the court house, but once it met at Wolmer’s school house and at Hibbert house (the present Headquarters house, where the legislative council now sits), and sometimes at Dr. Clarke’s house. In 1755 Lawrence was made custos rotulorum of the parish of St. James, and in that year he erected the square in Montego Bay, which he called Charles Square, in honour of his friend and patron, the governor. His wife, Mary, was daughter of Colonel Richard James, of Hanover, who was the first child born of English parents in Jamaica. Lawrence died at Kingston in 1756, aged forty-six. Lawrence-Archer’s statement to the effect that “he was buried there 16th June” is made in error to appear as though it was part of the inscription.