LEWIS, Lodowick (c.1628-bef. 1676), of Llangorse, Brec., and East Meon, Hants.

According to the licence, Lewis was about 34 years old at the time of his marriage, putting his birthdate around 1628, although the same document underestimated the age of his wife; his parents had married some time between mid-1621 and late 1622.7Mar. Lic. Dean and Chapter of Westminster, 71. Nothing is known of his early life, despite the prominence of his father, Sir William Lewis*. The existence in Wales of other namesakes – rendered Lodowick or Lewis in multiple spellings – complicates the tracing of his career. In particular, his activity in the principality is overshadowed by that of Ludovick Lewis of Carmarthenshire, justice of the peace in his native county and the king’s attorney in Pembrokeshire, who compounded in 1648; Ludovick Lewis of Montgomeryshire, assessment commissioner during the commonwealth; and even Ludovick Lewis the nephew and heir of Meredith Lewis of Brecon.8A. and O.; Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 169, 218; CCC 1826; PROB11/320/271; T. Jones, Hist. Brec. ii. 151. It is plausible that contemporaries at Westminster also confused him with others.

In spring 1647 Lewis was elected as a recruiter Member for Brecon, where several generations of his family had been notable. His father, who was a leader of the then dominant Presbyterian party in Parliament and whose influence in Wales was on the increase, was evidently instrumental in Lewis’s return. Impeachment articles levelled against Sir William that June alleged that he had fraudulently detained the election writ for eight months expressly to secure it. However, while there was possibly a motive to delay the election until Lewis was nearer full age, Sir William denied the charge. The fact that it named young Lewis as ‘Edward’ also undermines its accuracy.9A Particular Charge of Impeachment, 10-11; State Trials, iv. 901-2.

Lewis took the Covenant at Westminster with other new Members on 9 June, a week before news reached the House of the army’s charges of impeachment against Sir William and ten other Presbyterian leaders.10CJ v. 203b. He was not mentioned again in the Journal before the failure of the Presbyterian coup prompted Sir William’s flight abroad in August. On 9 October he was absent at a call of the House, but excused, for reasons unknown.

Lewis’s next appearance in the Journal was in March 1648, six days after the order was issued for writ in the by-election to replace his father, who had been disabled from sitting.11CJ v. 498a, 505b. Probably advanced by his father’s friends, Lewis was nominated on 20 March to a committee on the ordinance for settling the court of admiralty, an area in which Sir William had an interest.12CJ v. 505b. His only other committee appointment, which occurred soon after his father’s impeachment and disablement were revoked, also concerned the navy, being to deal with suppression of elements within it which had joined the recent royalist insurgency (22 June).13CJ v. 610b. Absent but excused at a call of the House on 26 September, there is no sign of Lewis before Pride’s Purge on 6 December, when he was secluded, according to the compiler of one of the earliest lists of members thus treated by the army.14CJ vi. 34b; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62). The suspicion has to be that he was not in fact present at Westminster.

Lewis was doubtless too insignificant to warrant incarceration with his father. However, the latter’s prolonged imprisonment, which ended only in December 1651, might have prompted him to spend time abroad. His life during the 1650s is as obscure as his youth. In January 1660 William Prynne* included him among secluded Members actively agitating to re-take their seats in a restored Long Parliament, but it is not known whether Lewis was among those who returned to the House in February; there is no sign of him in the Journal before the dissolution in March.15W. Prynne, A Full Declaration (1660), 30 (E.1013.22). Sir William, who did resume his seat, was involved in drafting the militia act of 12 March, under which Lodowick was named a commissioner for Breconshire.16A. and O.

Whereas Sir William was elected to both the Convention and the Cavalier Parliament, his son did not again sit at Westminster. Instead, he disappeared from public life. When he was licensed to marry in June 1662 he was described as resident at East Meon and it was as of Hampshire that he was appointed a subsidy commissioner in 1672, perhaps in place of his aging father.17Mar. Lic. Dean and Chapter of Westminster, 71. Both he and his wife, the sister-in-law of his sister Elizabeth (who had married Christopher Buckle in 1653), appear to have been dead by the time Sir William first drafted his will on 4 March 1675. The couple left three young daughters as Sir William’s co-heirs, of whom Elizabeth, who inherited Llangorse, married John Lewis† of Coedmor, who became a long-serving Member for Cardiganshire seats.18PROB11/355/313 (Sir William Lewis); ‘John Lewis’, HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.