this Dictionary (for which he wrote more than nine hundred lives). Within six months of retiring from the navy he was installed as professor of history at King's College, London, an appointment which enabled him to continue his pioneer work in search of naval documents, and to present the special knowledge thus obtained against the broader background of general history. Of the mass of documents examined by him, he edited Memoirs relating to Lord Torrington for the Camden Society in 1889; and, four years later, with the help of old shipmates who by now had risen to high positions of trust in the state, he succeeded in founding the Navy Records Society, for the publication of documents illustrating British maritime history. The first two volumes, Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1894), he edited himself; and as first secretary of the society from 1893 to 1912, he not only directed all its proceedings, but with singular and ungrudging devotion put his own vast fund of knowledge entirely at the disposal of other labourers in the same field.
Late in life honours came thickly; he was elected an honorary fellow of Caius College in 1895; he received the honorary degrees of several universities; and in 1910 he was awarded the Chesney gold medal by the Royal United Service Institution. In 1907 he received knighthood; and in 1910, on his eightieth birthday, a number of admirers, including King George V, then Prince of Wales, and all the most celebrated admirals on the flag list, presented a testimonial and an address to the ‘pioneer in the revival of naval history’.
Laughton continued to lecture at King's College until the Christmas of 1914. He then complained of ill-health, and withdrew to his house at Wimbledon where his last days were spent. He died on 14 September 1915 in his eighty-sixth year. In accordance with his own request, his ashes were conveyed to sea by H.M.S. Conqueror and buried in forty fathoms at the mouth of the Thames ‘in the track of the incoming and outgoing ships’.
Laughton married, first, in 1866 Isabella, daughter of John Carr, of Dunfermline; and secondly, in 1886 Maria Josefa, daughter of Eugenio di Alberti, of Cadiz. He had by his first marriage one son and three daughters; and by his second, three sons and two daughters. He was a man of striking personal appearance with a tall, athletic figure and handsome features.
In addition to works already enumerated, Laughton wrote two volumes about Nelson, the Life (1895) and Nelson and his Companions in Arms (1896); edited the papers of Lord Barham (1907–1911); made a selection of Nelson letters from the unmanageable mass printed by Sir Harris Nicolas (1886); and collected some of his own fugitive tracts in a volume called Studies in Naval History (1887). But it is not from these books that the full value of Laughton's labour can be estimated. It is noteworthy that the publication of Captain A. T. Mahan's Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890) approximates in date to the foundation on this side of the Atlantic of the Navy Records Society. Mahan, admittedly one of Laughton's disciples, startled the world with his complete edifice of historical philosophy in the very hour in which Laughton dug down to the foundations on which alone such an edifice could be safely erected.
[Letters and Papers in possession of the family; Greenwich archives; personal knowledge.]
LAURIER, Sir WILFRID (1841–1919), Canadian statesman, the only son of Carolus Laurier, by his wife, Marcelle Martineau, was born at St. Lin, a village near Montreal, 20 November 1841. He was of French and Roman Catholic ancestry, resident in Canada during seven or eight generations. After spending seven years at L'Assomption College he took a course in law at McGill University, and began practice in Montreal; but ill-health, linked with narrow means, led to his removal to the small town of Arthabaska. In 1868 he married Zoë, daughter of G. N. R. Lafontaine, of Montreal, who survived him. The marriage was childless.
Laurier's mind was essentially liberal, and even as a schoolboy he had expressed opinions startling to severe clericalism. In 1871 he was elected to the legislature of Quebec, and in 1874 to the parliament of Canada for Drummond-Arthabaska. In 1877 he entered the liberal cabinet of Alexander Mackenzie [q.v.] as minister of inland revenue. When the conservatives opposed the new minister's re-election he was beaten; but he soon found a seat for Quebec East, which he continued to hold during more than forty years. Laurier always avowed himself a moderate protectionist, but in 1878 the liberals went to the country on the policy of a tariff for revenue, as opposed to the conservative ‘national policy’ of protection. From 1878 to 1896 they remained in opposition.
In 1880 Edward Blake [q.v.] became
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