Sir Thomas Chapman, 7th Baronet

[3] With regard to the family's origins, Debrett's Baronetage (1918) commented: John Chapman, and his brother William, through the influence of Sir Walter Raleigh, their cousin-german, received large grants of land in Ireland, and settled in that country.

Benjamin, the son of William Chapman, was an officer of cavalry in Cromwell's army, and for his services received the castle and estates of Killua, sometime the seat of the family.

[2][3][8] In the late 1870s, the Chapmans took on as a governess a capable and cheerful young woman named Sarah Lawrence.

[3] One of Chapman's daughters later recalled that her father usually had a dour manner, but whenever Sarah Lawrence entered a room, he became "all gay".

She went to live in rooms in Dublin which Chapman got for her, and in December 1885 a son was born and christened Montagu Robert.

He took her to live at Tremadog, Carnarvonshire (now Gwynedd), North Wales, and their second illegitimate son, christened Thomas Edward and later famous as 'Lawrence of Arabia', was born there in August 1888.

He was a photographer, hunted, spoke good French, was interested in medieval architecture, taught his sons carpentry, and even in old age would quote from Homer and Horace.

[8] In 1911, his widow made a will which divided the Killua estate, leaving £20,000 to her brother, Chapman, and separate large amounts to his four daughters.

The loss of the £20,000 may explain the bitterness of an allusion to the Chapmans which T. E. Lawrence added to Liddell Hart's biography of him: "The father's family seemed unconscious of his sons, even when after his death recognition of their achievement might have done honour to the name.

Chapman's eldest son, Montagu Robert Lawrence (1885–1971), became a physician and was a medical missionary in China.

Royal Flying Corps and the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry; he is buried at St Souplet British Cemetery.

[6] In 1947, she married James Macdonald Cassels,[17] who became Lyon Jones Professor of Physics in the University of Liverpool in 1960, and they had two children.