Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Carter, Lawrence
CARTER, LAWRENCE (1672–1745), judge, was born at Leicester in 1672. His family came originally from Hitchin in Hertfordshire. His father, Lawrence Carter, married Mary, daughter of Thomas Wadland of Newark, Leicester, the solicitor to whom he was articled; was M.P. for the town in several parliaments of William III (see Luttrell, vi. 6, 11, 14), of whom he was a firm supporter, and in 1685 projected and carried out a system of water supply for Leicester. The son became a member of Lincoln's Inn, and on 1 Sept. 1697 was unanimously elected recorder of his native town in succession to Sir Nathan Wright, which office he held till 1729. He represented Leicester in parliament thrice, in 1698, 1701, and 1722, and Beeralston in 1710, 1714, and 1715; but no speeches of his are extant. In 1715 he was counsel for the crown against several of the rebel prisoners, first at Liverpool with Sir Francis Page, king's serjeant, and then at Carlisle on a special commission with Mr. Baron Fortescue. Before leaving town Fortescue was promised a fee of 500l., and as Carter had had the same fee as Page at Liverpool he applied to the treasury for the like treatment with Fortescue at Carlisle. In Dec. 1715 he became solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II, was appointed serjeant-at-law in 1724, and was made king's serjeant 30 April, and knighted 4 May in the same year. On 16 Oct. 1726 he was raised to the bench of the court of exchequer in succession to Baron Price, and continued in the office till his death. He lived in Redcross Street, Newark, Leicester, in a house built on the site of the collegiate church, which was destroyed at the Reformation. He was highly esteemed in the town, and with his half brother Thomas was a trustee of the Holbech charity. He died 14 March 1745, and was buried in the church of St. Mary de Castro. He was never married, and his estates passed to his half brother Thomas. There is a portrait of him in Thoresby's ‘Town of Leicester,’ p. 175.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Leicester Borough Records; Parl. History, 5, 219; Gent. Mag. xv. 164; Nicholls's Leicestersihre, i. 49, ii. 318; Redington's Treasury Papers, 1714, ccvii. No. 6.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.56
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 202 | ii | 14 f.e. | Carter, Lawrence: for 1717 read December 1715 |
| 206 |