was the eldest son of admiral John Milligen Laws (born 1799) of Marchfield House, Binfield, Berks., and Mary (1815 - 1899), daughter of Charles Delamotte Mathias (1777 - 1851), of Lamphey Court and Llangwaran, Pembrokeshire. His parents were married on 25 June 1836 and he was born on 17 April 1837 and christened in Lamphey church on 4 July. He was educated at Rugby and Wadham College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 28 May 1856. His wife, who died on 8 May 1897, was Georgina Elizabeth Laws, eldest daughter of the Rev. W. Nantes of Frome Vowchurch, Dorset. For some years he held a commission in the 35th (Royal Sussex) Regiment, before settling at Tenby where he was a notable public figure for half a century. He was a member of the town Council (1897) and mayor of the borough (1900), a J.P. for the county of Pembroke, and chairman for a long period of the Tenby bench. In 1899 he was high sheriff of Pembrokeshire. He devoted much of the ample leisure, which he enjoyed as a gentleman of means, to the study of the history and archaeology of Pembrokeshire. His chief works are the county history, Little England beyond Wales, 1880; Church Book of St. Mary the Virgin, Tenby, 1907; in collaboration with his adopted daughter Emily Hewlett Edwards, A Short History of the Civil War as it affected Tenby and its neighbourhood, 1887, and a number of articles in Archæologia Cambrensis, 1882-1906. With assistance from Henry Owen (1844 - 1919), before the work was completed, he produced an ' Archaeological Survey of Pembrokeshire,' 1908. He died 25 July 1913 after an accident while driving his horse and trap, and left one son, Edward Lucian Laws.
Published date: 1959
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