Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/235

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Law
229
Law

and were retained to the end of his long life. Besides a large number of tracts, leaflets, &c., Law wrote: 1. 'Christ is All:' vols. i–iv.—'The Gospel in the Pentateuch,' London, 1854–8. Of this work more than 120,000 copies were sold; vol. v. 'Gleanings from the Book of Life,' London, 1877. 2. 'Beacons of the Bible,' London, 1868. 3. 'Family Prayers,' London, 1868. 4. 'The Forgiveness of Sins,' London, 1876. 5. 'Family Devotion; the Book of Psalms arranged for Worship,' 2 vols. London, 1878. 6. 'The Song of Solomon, arranged for Family Reading,' London and Gloucester, 1879. 7. 'Meditations on the Epistle to the Ephesians,' London and Gloucester, 1884.

[Record, 28 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1884; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 29 Nov. 1884; autobiographical notes in the same in 1885; private information; personal knowledge.]

J. R. W.

LAW, HUGH, LL.D. (1818–1883), lord chancellor of Ireland, only son of John Law of Woodlawn, co. Down, by his wife Margaret, youngest daughter of Christopher Crawley of Cullaville, co. Armagh, was born in 1818. He was educated at the Royal School at Dungannon and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was elected to a scholarship in 1837, and in 1839 graduated B.A., having obtained the first senior moderatorship in classics. In 1840 he was called to the bar and joined the north-eastern circuit, but he practised principally in the courts of equity in Dublin and in Irish appeals in the House of Lords. In 1860 he became a queen's counsel. Until the disestablishment of the Irish church was proposed, he took little part in politics, though generally he was believed to be a conservative, but he then sided with the liberal party, drafted the Irish Church Act, a monument of his knowledge and skill; he was also the draftsman of the Irish Land Act of 1870. He had been appointed legal adviser to the lord-lieutenant at Dublin in 1868; in 1870 he became a bencher of the King's Inns, Dublin, and solicitor-general for Ireland in 1872 in succession to Palles, who became attorney-general. In December 1873 he was sworn of the Irish privy council, and was appointed attorney-general, which office he held until the fall of the Gladstone ministry a few weeks later. He entered parliament for Londonderry in 1874, was re-elected in 1880, and became Irish attorney-general in Mr. Gladstone's second administration in April 1880. He conducted the prosecution in December 1880 of Mr. Parnell and the other traversers for conspiracy in establishing the Land League. In committee on the Land Bill of 1881 he was the premier's chief assistant, and proved himself very ready and conciliatory. It was he who, almost without discussion, accepted the 'Healy' clause (T. P. O'Connor, Gladstone's House of Commons, p. 212; and Parnell Movement). He succeeded Lord O'Hagan as lord chancellor for Ireland in 1881, and resigned his seat in parliament. As chancellor he and his decisions commanded universal respect. After a very brief illness he died of inflammation of the lungs on 10 Sept. 1883, at Rathmullen House, co. Donegal. He married in 1863 Ellen Maria, youngest daughter of William White of Shrubs, co. Dublin, who predeceased him in 1875.

[Law Times, 15 Sept. 1883; Law Journal, 15 Sept. 1883; Irish Law Times, xvii. 489; Solicitors' Journal, 15 Sept. 1883; Times, 4 Sept. 1883.]

J. A. H.

LAW, JAMES (1560?–1632), archbishop of Glasgow, son of James Law of Spittal, portioner of Lathrisk in the county of Fife, and Agnes Strang of the house of Balcaskie, graduated at the university of St. Andrews in 1581, and was ordained and admitted minister of Kirkliston in Linlithgowshire in 1585. During his incumbency there, he and Spottiswood, then minister of Calder, afterwards archbishop, were censured by the synod of Lothian for playing at football on Sunday. In 1600 he was put on the standing commission of the church, in 1601 appointed one of the royal chaplains, in 1605 titular bishop of Orkney, and in 1608 moderator of the general assembly. He preached before the Glasgow assembly of 1610 in defence of episcopacy, and was consecrated bishop of St. Andrews in 1611 by the archbishop of Glasgow and the bishops of Galloway and Brechin. He supported the cause of the people of Orkney against the oppression of Earl Patrick Stewart, and succeeded in getting the lands and jurisdiction of the bishopric separated from those of the earldom. Through the influence of Archbishop Spottiswood, 'his old companion at football and condiscipulus,' he was promoted to the archbishopric of Glasgow in 1615, where he completed the leaden roof of the cathedral. In 1616 he was appointed by the general assembly one of a commission to prepare a book of canon for the church. He died in 1632, and was buried in the chancel of Glasgow Cathedral, where there is a massive monument to his memory erected by his widow.

Law was a favourite of King James, and a zealous promoter of his ecclesiastical policy. He was a man of some learning, left in manuscript a commentary on a part of scripture, and was commemorated by Dr. Arthur Johnston [q.v.] in some Latin verses. He married: (1) a daughter of Dundas of New-