Note 138 — JOURNAL (PART II)

Thomas Law, sixth son of the Right Reverend Edmund Law, D.D., lord bishop of Carlisle, was born at Cambridge, England, October 23, 1756. In 1794, after acquiring some wealth in India, he came to America. Within a year he met Elizabeth Parke Custis, granddaughter of Martha Washington, whom he married (March 21, 1796). In 1802 Law went abroad, and returned in April, 1804. In the following August a legal separation was secured. Law denied Faux's hint of impropriety of conduct on the part of his wife in a signed article, "A Reply to Certain Insinuations," published in the Quarterly Review, No. 58. He attributed the unfortunate occurrence to "a disagreement in disposition." For outline of Law's life, and of his unhappy marriage, see Allen Cullings Clark, Greenleaf and Law in the Federal City (Washington, 1901), pp. 236-244; 285-290.—Ed.