The name first appears around the middle of the 16th century in the Parish register of Harbledown near Canterbury, Kent spelt as Lawslet or Lauslet.
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A 1586 legal deposition by Roger Lacelett (Archdeaconry Court of Canterbury Deposition Register PRC 39/11 folio 176 verso) records that the Laslett family migrated from Nantwich in Cheshire in the mid 1540s and took up the Parsonage Farm at Harbledown.
They gained fare-paying passengers at Harbledown and began a regular if slow service between there and Canterbury, and also acquire a conductor called Hattie.