and trial. But it may simply be an extension of the meaning of “right,” or of the sense of “leave” which is found in early uses of the French loi.
In this work the laws or uniformities of the physical universe are dealt with in the articles on the various sciences. The general principles of law in the legal sense are discussed under Jurisprudence. What may be described as “national systems” of law are dealt with historically and generally under English Law, American Law, Roman Law, Greek Law, Mahommedan Law, Indian Law, &c. Certain broad divisions of law are treated under Constitution and Constitutional Law, Canon Law, Civil Law, Common Law, Criminal Law, Ecclesiastical Law, Equity, International Law, Military Law, &c. And the particular laws of different countries on special subjects are stated under the headings for those subjects (Bankruptcy, &c.). For courts (q.v.) of law, and procedure, see Jurisprudence, Appeal, Trial, King’s Bench, &c.
Authorities.—The various legal articles have bibliographies attached, but it may be convenient here to mention such general works on law, apart from the science of jurisprudence, as (for English law) Lord Halsbury’s Laws of England (vol. i., 1907), The Encyclopaedia of the Laws of England, ed. Wood Renton (1907), Stephen’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1908), Brett’s Commentaries on the present Laws of England (1896), Broom’s Commentaries on the Common Law (1896) and Brodie-Innes’s Comparative Principles of the Laws of England and Scotland (vol. i., 1903); and, for America, Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, and Kent’s Commentaries on American Law.
LAWES, HENRY (1595–1662), English musician, was born at Dinton in Wiltshire in December 1595, and received his musical education from John Cooper, better known under his Italian pseudonym Giovanni Coperario (d. 1627), a famous composer of the day. In 1626 he was received as one of the gentlemen of the chapel royal, which place he held till the Commonwealth put a stop to church music. But even during that songless time Lawes continued his work as a composer, and the famous collection of his vocal pieces, Ayres and Dialogues for One, Two and Three Voyces, was published in 1653, being followed by two other books under the same title in 1655 and 1658 respectively. When in 1660 the king returned, Lawes once more entered the royal chapel, and composed an anthem for the coronation of Charles II. He died on the 21st of October 1662, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Lawes’s name has become known beyond musical circles by his friendship with Milton, whose Comus he supplied with incidental music for the performance of the masque in 1634. The poet in return immortalized his friend in the famous sonnet in which Milton, with a musical perception not common amongst poets, exactly indicates the great merit of Lawes. His careful attention to the words of the poet, the manner in which his music seems to grow from those words, the perfect coincidence of the musical with the metrical accent, all put Lawes’s songs on a level with those of Schumann or Liszt or any modern composer. At the same time he is by no means wanting in genuine melodic invention, and his concerted music shows the learned contrapuntist.
LAWES, SIR JOHN BENNET, Bart. (1814–1900), English agriculturist, was born at Rothamsted on the 28th of December 1814. Even before leaving Oxford, where he matriculated in 1832, he had begun to interest himself in growing various medicinal plants on the Rothamsted estates, which he inherited on his father’s death in 1822. About 1837 he began to experiment on the effects of various manures on plants growing in pots, and a year or two later the experiments were extended to crops in the field. One immediate consequence was that in 1842 he patented a manure formed by treating phosphates with sulphuric acid, and thus initiated the artificial manure industry. In the succeeding year he enlisted the services of Sir J. H. Gilbert, with whom he carried on for more than half a century those experiments in raising crops and feeding animals which have rendered Rothamsted famous in the eyes of scientific agriculturists all over the world (see Agriculture). In 1854 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, which in 1867 bestowed a Royal medal on Lawes and Gilbert jointly, and in 1882 he was created a baronet. In the year before his death, which happened on the 31st of August 1900, he took measures to ensure the continued existence of the Rothamsted experimental farm by setting aside £100,000 for that purpose and constituting the Lawes Agricultural Trust, composed of four members from the Royal Society, two from the Royal Agricultural Society, one each from the Chemical and Linnaean Societies, and the owner of Rothamsted mansion-house for the time being.
LAW MERCHANT or Lex mercatoria, originally a body of rules and principles relating to merchants and mercantile transactions, laid down by merchants themselves for the purpose of regulating their dealings. It was composed of such usages and customs as were common to merchants and traders in all parts of Europe, varied slightly in different localities by special peculiarities. The law merchant owed its origin to the fact that the civil law was not sufficiently responsive to the growing demands of commerce, as well as to the fact that trade in pre-medieval times was practically in the hands of those who might be termed cosmopolitan merchants, who wanted a prompt and effective jurisdiction. It was administered for the most part in special courts, such as those of the gilds in Italy, or the fair courts of Germany and France, or as in England, in courts of the staple or piepowder (see also Sea Laws). The history of the law merchant in England is divided into three stages: the first prior to the time of Coke, when it was a special kind of law—as distinct from the common law—administered in special courts for a special class of the community (i.e. the mercantile); the second stage was one of transition, the law merchant being administered in the common law courts, but as a body of customs, to be proved as a fact in each individual case of doubt; the third stage, which has continued to the present day, dates from the presidency over the king’s bench of Lord Mansfield (q.v.), under whom it was moulded into the mercantile law of to-day. To the law merchant modern English law owes the fundamental principles in the law of partnership, negotiable instruments and trade marks.
See G. Malynes, Consuetudo vel lex mercatoria (London, 1622); W. Mitchell, The Early History of the Law Merchant (Cambridge, 1904); J. W. Smith, Mercantile Law (ed. Hart and Simey, 1905).
LAWN, a very thin fabric made from level linen or cotton yarns. It is used for light dresses and trimmings, also for handkerchiefs. The terms lawn and cambric (q.v.) are often intended to indicate the same fabric. The word “lawn” was formerly derived from the French name for the fabric linon, from lin, flax, linen, but Skeat (Etym. Dict., 1898, Addenda) and A. Thomas (Romania, xxix. 182, 1900) have shown that the real source of the word is to be found in the name of the French town Laon. Skeat quotes from Palsgrave, Les claircissement de la langue Françoÿse (1530), showing that the early name of the fabric was Laune lynen. An early form of the word was “laund,” probably due to an adaptation to “laund,” lawn, glade or clearing in a forest, now used of a closely-mown expanse of grass in a garden, park, &c. (see Grass and Horticulture). This word comes from O. Fr. launde, mod. lande, wild, heathy or sandy ground, covered with scrub or brushwood, a word of Celtic origin; cf. Irish and Breton lann, heathy ground, also enclosure, land; Welsh llan, enclosure. It is cognate with “land,” common to Teutonic languages. In the original sense of clearing in a forest, glade, Lat. saltus, “lawn,” still survives in the New Forest, where it is used of the feeding-places of cattle.
LAWN-TENNIS, a game played with racquet and ball on a court traversed by a net, but without enclosing walls. It is a modern adaptation of the ancient game of tennis (q.v.), with which it is identical as regards the scoring of the game and “set.” Lawn-tennis is essentially a summer game, played in the open air, either on courts marked with whitewash on close-cut grass like a cricket pitch, or on asphalt, cinders, gravel, wood, earth or other substance which can be so prepared as to afford a firm, level and smooth surface. In winter, however, the game is often played on the floor of gymnasiums, drill sheds or other buildings, when it is called “covered-court lawn-tennis”;
