St. David Lewis

David Lewis (1616 – 27 August 1679) was a Jesuit Catholic priest and martyr who was also known as Charles Baker. Lewis was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales and is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. Lewis, the youngest of nine children of Protestant Reverend Morgan Lewis, the headmaster of a grammar school, and Margaret Pritchard, a Catholic, was born at Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales, in 1616. At 16 years of age, while visiting Paris, he converted to Catholicism and subsequently went to study at the English College in Rome, where he assumed the alias "Charles Baker", a common practice to avoid spies and informers in the employ of the Crown. He was ordained a Catholic priest on 20 July 1642. Three years later, he joined the Society of Jesus. He came back to his native place and worked for a year and then he was appointed "the Spiritual Director to the seminarians at the English College" in Rome. After his mission in Rome had been completed he came back to Wales and was working for 30 years in the apostolate paying much attention to the poor people and people in need. He was arrested on 17 November 1678 at St Michael's Church, Llantarnam, then in Monmouthshire, and condemned at the Assizes in Monmouth in March 1679 as a Catholic priest and for saying Catholic Masses. He was finally brought back to Usk in Monmouthshire for his execution by John Arnold of Monmouthshire, prayed at the Gunter Mansion and was hanged on 27 August 1679 and then posthumously disemboweled. It was a tribute to the great esteem in which he was held that the crowd, who were mainly Protestants, insisted that he be allowed to hang until he was dead, and that he receive a proper burial. The Sheriff, who knew and liked Lewis, registered a silent protest by refusing to attend the execution, which he had postponed for as long as he could. Together with John Wall, John Kemble and 37 other martyrs, David Lewis was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 – the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. In November 2007, a plaque was erected on the spot where Lewis was arrested near Llantarnam Abbey.  His feast is kept on August 27.