Sir Nicholas Lawes (c. 1652 – 18 June 1731) was a British judge and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Jamaica from 1718 to 1722.
[1] In his capacity as Governor during the Golden Age of Piracy he hunted down or tried many pirates, among them "Calico Jack" Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Robert Deal,[2] Captain Thompson,[3] Nicholas Brown, and Charles Vane.
He signed an arrangement with Jeremy, king of the Miskito, to bring some of his followers over to Jamaica to hunt down runaway slaves and Jamaican Maroons in 1720.
[6] Lawes later married Elizabeth Lawley (1690-1725), widow of Thomas Cotton, and daughter of Sir Thomas Lawley, 3rd Baronet and his first wife Rebecca Winch, daughter of Sir Humphrey Winch, 1st Baronet.
[5] At Temple Hall Lawes experimented with a variety of crops and introduced the very lucrative coffee growing into the island in 1721 according to some sources[6][7] or 1728 according to others.