Family and Education

?educ. I. Temple 1576, called 1584.

Offices Held

Biography

This Member has not been identified. Cornish boroughs were accustomed to return a high proportion of outsiders, of whom Lewis was almost certainly one. He may well have been a lawyer with court or official connexions: perhaps the William Lewis who was at Gray’s Inn in 1572, or the William Lewis (s. of William Lewis^†) of Presadneth, Anglesey, who entered the Inner Temple in May 1576 at the request of George Bromley at that time attorney-general of the duchy of Lancaster, a member of the council in the marches and a prominent bencher of the Inner Temple. This Lewis was called to the bar in February 1584, with the stipulation that he satisfy the Earl of Leicester of his suitability. It may have been this occasion which introduced Lewis to court, and thus to someone capable of returning him at Helston, a few months later. Leicester himself had apparently exercised some influence in the borough in 1563, when another Inner Templar, his relative and servant John Dudley I was elected; while through Leicester or Bromley—who had himself once represented Liskeard—Lewis may have been introduced to the 2nd Earl of Bedford, an influential patron in the south-west.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Irene Cassidy

Notes