Family and Education

Prob. of the Lewises of Watford, Northants. educ. G. Inn 1559, called 1559. m. Elizabeth, s.p.

Offices Held

Reader, G. Inn 1580, treasurer 1581-2, dean of the chapel 1584; j.p. Northants from c.1582, q. from c.1583.

Biography

Lewis had a long and distinguished career at Gray’s Inn. He may have owed his return for Stamford to Burghley, often patron there, and himself a former member of Gray’s Inn. Lewis was one of a number of Cecil nominees with local connexions, his family owning land on the borders of Northamptonshire and Rutland, a few miles from Stamford. In December 1579 Sir Henry and Philip Sidney conveyed to Lewis and his wife property in the district, including the manors of Tekesore and Manton, Rutland, with other lands in Rutland, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. This grant may have given Lewis the necessary landed qualifications for a Northamptonshire justice of the peace. He died 4 June 1584. The inquisition post mortem, taken in the following April, mentions property at Orlingbury and Earl’s Barton, Northamptonshire, as well as that covered by the Sidney grant. The heir was Lewis’s brother Clement, but the widow, who was living at Collyweston, kept her rights under the 1579 conveyance. On the day after her husband’s death she was granted letters of administration.

Bridges, Northants. i. 587; G. Inn Pens. Bk. i. 19-20, 42-3, 53, 60; C142/228/60; 207/56; VCH Rutland, ii. 78; Lansd. 35, f. 134; PCC admon. act. bk. 1581-6, f. 107.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes