Background
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, in 1616.
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, in 1616.
He was ordained a Catholic priest on 20 July 1642. He was arrested on 17 November 1678, at Street 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. Like John Wall and John Kemble, he was then sent to London to be examined by Titus Oates (the originator of the Popish Plot) and other informers.
He was brought for trial at the Lenten Assizes in Monmouth on 16 March 1679.
He was brought to the bar on a charge of high treason – for having become a Catholic priest and then remaining in England. He pleaded not guilty to the charge of being an accessory to the Popish Plot, but five or six witnesses claimed they had seen him say Mass and perform other priestly duties.
Foreign this Lewis was found guilty and sentenced to death by Sir Robert Atkyns. The condemned priest was brought to Newgate Prison in London with John Kemble (Herefordshire) and questioned about the "plot".
Oates and his fellow informers William Bedloe, Stephen Dugdale and Miles Prance were unable to prove anything against him.
Lord Shaftesbury advised him that if he gave evidence about the "plot" or renounced his Catholic faith, that his life would be spared and he would be greatly rewarded. Lewis said in his dying speech, "discover the plot I could not, as I knew of none. And conform I would not, for it was against my conscience".
He was finally brought back to Usk in Monmouthshire for his execution by John Arnold of Monmouthshire, and was hanged on 27 August 1679 and then posthumously disemboweled.
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. After the Titus Oates affair (1679-1680), the remaining Welsh-speaking Catholic clergy were either executed or exiled.
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.