John Lawes the elder

     John Lawes the elder, of Carleton Forehoe, Norfolk, England, died in 1602 in Carleton Forehoe, Norfolk.¹
     
     Carleton Forehoe is a tiny hamlet lying about six miles from Hingham and eight miles from Norwich. The Lawes family of yeomen lived in this rural parish as early as 1522, when John Lawes, possibly the grandfather or great-grandfather of John Lawes the elder, made his will, leaving his property to his wife Katherine, his sons Edmund and William, and his son-in-law William Bloke.²

     John Lawes the elder made his will 15 September 1599, and, after directing his burial in the parish churchyard, gives his lands and tenements in the parishes of Carleton Forehoe, Kimberley and Barnham Broome to his son John, and names him executor. To his daughter Agnes, wife of Edmund Webster, he leaves four acres of land and a tenement in Wymondham, from which she is to pay her daughter Agnes £10. To his grandson Jeremy Lawes, son of John Lawes, he bequeaths £4: 10 when he reaches the age of twenty-one, and to his grandson Francis, son of John Lawes, he leaves £20, a bedstead, bolsters, a brass pot, cawyson, frame-table, speete and various other articles, when he reaches twenty-one. John Lawes, Stephen Lawes and Edward Coleman, sons of the testator, are bound for the payment of £10 to his grandson, John Meys, son of George Meys, when he comes of age. George Meys, son-in-law, is named superintendent, and the witnesses are John Killingworth, Robert Harvy and Robert Colman. The will was proved 5 February 1602.³