Bangor (1872-6), canon residentiary (1877-1884), and dean from 1884 till his death at the deanery on 24 Nov. 1901. He was buried at Llandegai churchyard.
He married (1) in October 1859 Anne, youngest daughter by his first wife of John Henry Cotton, dean of Bangor, at one time his vicar; she died on 24 Dec. 1860 at Aberdare, leaving no issue; (2) in 1865, Adelaide Owen, third daughter of the Rev. Cyrus Morrall of Plas lolyn, Shropshire (Burke's Landed Gentry, s. v.), she survived him with three sons and three daughters.
While at Oxford, Lewis, like his brother David, came under the influence of the tractarians, and on returning to Wales he inculcated their doctrines, by speech and pen. At Llanllechid he introduced choral services for the first time in the Bangor diocese, and gradually adopted a dignified ritual. This he supplemented by direct 'catholic' teaching as to the sacraments, being the first Anglican in the nineteenth century to preach in Wales the doctrines of apostolic succession and baptismal regeneration (Archdeacon David Evans' Adgofion, i.e. Reminiscences, 1904, pp. 35-6). Some of the younger clergy followed Lewis's lead, and the movement resulted in a latter-day Bangor controversy (Dadl Bandar). The Rev. John Phillips attacked the ritualist position in two famous lectures delivered at Bangor in November 1850 and January 1852 respectively and shortly afterwards published. Lewis replied to the first lecture in a series of Welsh letters in 'Y Cymro,' signed 'Aelod o'n Eglwys' (a member of the church), reprinted in 1852 in book form. His best work was an elaborate Welsh treatise on the apostolic succession, described as by a Welsh clergyman (Yr Olyniaeth Aposiolaidd gan Offeiriad Cymreig: Bangor, 1851, London, 1869). He also wrote, besides occasional papers on Welsh church questions, and on the Wesleyan succession (Yr Olyniaeth Wesleyaidd), under the pseudonym of 'Amddiffynydd' (i.e. Defender) in 1858. He was much interested in church music, co-operated in the production of the 'Bangor Diocese Hymn Book,' and himself translated into Welsh Faber's 'Good Friday Hymns' and 'Adeste Fideles.'
[For Dean Lewis see Western Mail (Cardiff), 26 Nov. 1901; North Wales Chronicle (Bangor), 30 Nov.; Church Times, 29 Nov. 1901; T. R. Roberts, Eminent Welshmen (1908), p. 306. See also Welsh articles in Y Geninen for March 1902, p. 37, and March 1903, p. 23, and (with portrait) in Yr Havil, 1902, p. 3; private information.]
LEWIS, Sir GEORGE HENRY, first baronet (1833–1911), solicitor, second son in a family of four sons and four daughters of James Graham Lewis, solicitor (1804-73), by his wife Harriet, daughter of Henry Davis of London, was born on 21 April 1833 at 10 Ely Place, Holborn, where, after the fashion of the day, his father resided over the offices of his firm. Educated at a private Jewish school at Edmonton and at University College, London, Lewis was articled to his father in 1851 and was admitted a solicitor in the spring of 1856, joining the firm of Lewis & Lewis, which his father had founded and in which the only other partner was his uncle, George Lewis. Their business, which strongly resembled in many ways that of Mr. Jaggers as described by Dickens in 'Great Expectations,' dealt largely with criminal matters, with insolvency, and with civil litigation arising out of fraud, barratry, and the like, and the firm was largely employed by members of the theatrical profession. Besides the general work of the office the younger George Lewis gained experience in advocacy by constant practice in the police courts. He showed remarkable ability and acuteness at the Mansion House in Jan. 1869 on behalf of the prosecutor, Dr. Thorn of the Canadian bar, who brought charges of fraud against the directors of the bankrupt firm Overend, Gurney & Co.; but his popular reputation was first established in July 1876 in connection with the so-called Balham mystery [see under Gully, James Manby], where at the coroner's inquest he represented the relatives of Mr. Charles Bravo, whose death was the subject of the inquiry. His searching and relentless cross-examination, which for the first time made clear the relationship of the various parties in the drama, though it failed to fix the guilt on any of the persons involved, brought him much notoriety and was the cause of a substantial increase in the business of the firm.
Gradually he obtained what was for more than a quarter of a century the practical monopoly of those cases where the seamy side of society is unveiled, and where the sins and folHes of the wealthy classes threaten exposure and disaster. He was the refuge, with fine impartiality, of the guilty and the innocent, of the wrong-doer and of the oppressed. But though he was employed on one side or the other in almost every cause célèbre which was tried in London for five-and-thirty years, the bulk of his practice lay in the cases
