As a child, John Lawrence went with his parents from Richmond to Guernsey, thence to Ostend where the father commanded a Veteran Battalion during the Waterloo campaign, and thence soon after 1815 to Clifton near Bristol. During his childhood he suffered severely from an affection of the eyes, the very ailment which, as we shall see hereafter, overshadowed his declining years. From Clifton he went to a day-school at College Green in Bristol, walking daily over the breezy uplands that then separated the two places, in company with his brother Henry, his elder by five years. It would seem that according to the fashion of the schools of this class in those times, he received a rudimentary education with a harsh discipline. His home, being furnished with scanty means, must have been destitute of external amenities. But he enjoyed the care of one who, though forced by circumstances to be rigid, was a thoroughly good mother, and the tender thoughtfulness of his sister Letitia which he never forgot. He listened eagerly to his father’s animated tales of war, as the veteran recounted “the story of his life From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, That he had passed ... Wherein he spoke of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach.” Doubtless it was from his father’s conversation in these days of childhood that he acquired the soldierly predilections which clung to him throughout his civil career. The receptive years of his boyhood up to twelve were thus spent in English surroundings, and amidst English scenery of an attractive character. Despite the whirl and worry of his after-life, he ever remembered the beautiful Clifton of his day--before the rocks were pierced for railway-tunnels or the valley spanned by a suspension-bridge. He loved the forest-clad heights, the limestone cliffs, the bed of the tidal Avon.