LEWIS, DAVID (CHARLES BAKER), ST.

Welsh martyr, b. Monmouthshire, 1617; d. Usk, Wales, Aug. 27, 1679. His father, Morgan Lewis, was a Protestant; his mother, Margaret Pritchard, a Catholic; David was the only one of his parents' nine children to be brought up a Protestant. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Abergavenny, and from the age of 16, at the Middle Temple. After three years there he went abroad as tutor to the son of Count Savage. At Paris he became a Catholic, then entered the English College, Rome, on Nov. 6, 1638. He was ordained in 1642 and became a Jesuit novice two years later. In 1646 he was sent to England, but shortly afterward was recalled to become confessor at the English College. In 1648 he left again for South Wales, where he worked until his death, "a zealous seeker after lost sheep … and so charitable to his indigent neighbors that he was commonly called the father of the poor."

He went about mostly at night and on foot. His headquarters were at Cwm, a small hamlet between Monmouth and Hereford; twice he was superior of this district. During the Oates persecution Cwm was sacked, and the library there taken to Hereford Cathedral, where it is now. Lewis hid at Llanfihangel Llantarnam. He was betrayed by Dorothy James, the wife of his apostate servant: she boasted that she would "wash her hands in Mr. Lewis' blood and have his head to make porridge of, as a sheep's head." On Sunday, Nov. 17, he was found in his refuge as he was about to say Mass. He was committed to Monmouth jail, and kept there until Jan. 13, 1679, when he was taken to Usk. He was tried at the March assizes at Monmouth, and condemned for his priesthood, chiefly on the evidence of James and his wife.

Before the sentence was carried out, he was made to ride to London with John kemble, to be questioned on the oates Plot by the Privy Council. On his return, he was executed on August 27, at Usk, close to the site of the present Catholic church. The official executioner refused to perform his task and fled; a convict, a bungling amateur, was bribed to take his place with a promise of freedom. When threatened with stoning by sympathetic onlookers, he too ran away, and a blacksmith was finally employed. On the scaffold Lewis made a stirring address in Welsh. He was buried in the Protestant churchyard at Usk, where his traditional grave, outside the west door of the church, is today a place of pilgrimage. He was beatified by Pius XI on Dec. 15, 1929, and canonized by Paul VI in 1970.

Feast: Aug. 27.

Bibliography: t. p. ellis, Catholic Martyrs of Wales (London 1933). h. foley, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 v. (London 1877–82) 5.2:912–931. a. butler, The Lives of the Saints, rev. ed. h. thurston and d. attwater (New York 1956) 3:424–426. j. gillow, A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time (London–New York 1885–1902) 4:205–209. r. challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. j. h. pollen (rev. ed. London 1924).

[g. fitzherbert]