Orders, Decorations and Medals

Military General Service 1793-1814, 2 clasps, Busaco, Salamanca (Fras. Lawson, 11th Foot) edge bruising, very fine £1000-1200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the Devonshire Regiment.

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Ex Sotheby’s 1 November 1984.

Francis Lawson was born in 1788 in Newry, Co. Armagh, Ireland. He enlisted into the 11th Regiment of Foot c.1807 and was present in the operations on the Walcheren Expedition. Then posted to Portugal, he served at the battle of Busaco, 27 September 1810. With his regiment he was next heavily engaged at the battle of Salamanca, 22 July 1812. Lawson suffered a gunshot wound to the left knee in the battle in which the regiment gained the sobriquet ‘The Bloody Eleventh’. He was discharged from the 11th Foot as a result of his wound on 6 August 1813. Lawson then served for some years as a Clerk in the Custom House at Newry before becoming a Publican in the same town.

Sold with copied discharge papers and copied papers from an autobiography written by John Wesley Lawson, the recipient’s son, which provides interesting additional information on his father.