Lawley was the third son of
Sir Robert Lawley, 5th Baronet, of
Canwell Priory, Staffordshire. His mother was Jane Thompson (1743 – 9 November 1816), sister of
Beilby Thompson, of
Escrick,
Yorkshire, on 11 August 1764. He was educated at
Rugby School, starting in 1792, later
matriculating to
Christ Church, Oxford, in 1800. He became a fellow of
All Souls College, Oxford, in 1803, resigning his fellowship on his marriage in 1815. Lawley served in the
Warwickshire Regiment of Yeomanry Cavalry, starting as a
cornet in 1803, reaching the rank of
lieutenant colonel in 1845 and resigning in 1848. In the year of his marriage, his sister Jane, Lady Middleton—wife of
Henry Willoughby, 6th Baron Middleton—made
Middleton Hall, near
Tamworth on the Staffordshire-Warwickshire border, available to him, where he lived for the rest of his life. He inherited a town house in
Grosvenor Square and £200,000 on the death of his maternal uncle Richard Thompson in September 1820. ==Political career==