Brockville; and on 13 June 1861 was elected first bishop of the new diocese of Ontario. He was at the time the youngest bishop in the whole Anglican church, and the last in Canada to be created by royal letters patent. In 1893 he was elected by the house of bishops to the office of metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Canada, and in 1894 to the dignity of archbishop of Ontario.
In 1861, in his first address as bishop of Ontario, he advocated the incorporation of a synod board to manage the funds and direct the mission work of the diocese, a system since adopted throughout the Dominion. In his address of 1864 he spoke in favour of a national council of representatives for the whole Anglican church, to affirm the catholic doctrines. At the meeting of the provincial synod in 1865 he moved an address to the archbishop of Canterbury in behalf of the proposed council. He then visited England and urged acceptance of the scheme, and the result was the first Lambeth conference of 1867. At the same time his steady interest in scientific questions led him to be the original promoter of the first meeting of the British Association in Canada, held at Montreal 1884. He was author of some published sermons and contributor to religious periodicals in Canada and England.
Lewis was made hon. D.D. of Oxford (1897), hon. LL.D. of Dublin, and hon. D.C.L. by Trinity University, Toronto, and by Bishop's College University, Lennoxville. In 1885 the governor-general of Canada presented him with the memorial medal of the confederation of the provinces in acknowledgment of his 'important services in the cause of Hterature and science.' He died at sea in the Atlantic on his way from Canada to England on 6 May 1901, and was buried at Hawkhurst, Kent. An altar was erected to his memory in the cathedral, Kingston, Ontario, A painted portrait of Lewis is in possession of his widow; two pastels in colours are owned by his eldest son.
Lewis twice married: (1) on 22 July 1851, Annie Henrietta Margaret, daughter of the hon. Henry Sherwood, Q.C., successively solicitor-general and attorney-general for Upper Canada; she died on 28 July 1886, leaving six children, the eldest of whom, John Travers Lewis, K.C., is chancellor of the diocese of Ottawa; (2) on 20 Feb. 1889, Ada Maria, daughter of Evan Leigh, C.E., of Manchester. Lewis's second wife, by whom he had no issue, was well known before her marriage for her pious works in France, where she founded the British and American homes for young women and children in Paris and built Christ Church at Neuilly-sur-Marne.
[Private information; Kingston Daily Whig, 7 May 1901; Morgan's Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 1898.]
LEWIS, RICHARD (1821–1905), bishop of Llandaff, second son of John Lewis [d. 1834), barrister-at-law, of Henllan in the parish of Llanddewi Velfrey, Pembrokeshire, by his first wife, Eliza, daughter of Charles Poyer Calgen of Grove, Narberth, in the same county, was born at Henllan on 27 March 1821. His father was a prominent supporter of the reform bill of 1832 (cf. Nicholas, Annals of County Families, 904). An ancestor had married into the family of Col. John Poyer [q. v.], whose estate of Grove, with that of Henllan and Molleston amounting together to 3500 acres, passed to the bishop on the death of his only brother, John Lennox Griffith Poyer Lewis (1819-1886), a barrister of Lincoln's Inn and high sheriff of Carmarthenshire for 1867.
Educated at the grammar school of Haverfordwest and at Bromsgrove school (Feb. 1835 to 1839), he matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford, 18 June 1839, being Cookes scholar 1839-43. Owing to ill-health, he graduated B.A. in 1843 in the 'pass' examination with an honorary fourth class. He then travelled for two years with his brother through central and south-eastern Europe, Egypt, as far as the second cataract, and, crossing the desert, through Palestine, Asia Minor, and Greece. He was ordained deacon in 1844 and priest in 1846 by the bishop of Oxford. After serving a curacy at Denchworth near Wantage he was on 17 Sept. 1847 presented by his grandfather to the vicarage of Amroth, Pembrokeshire, a Poyer living of which he afterwards became patron. This he relinquished for a curacy at Flaxley, Gloucestershire, and in 1851 he was preferred by the lord chancellor to the rectory of Lampeter Velfry, a purely agricultural parish, with a Welsh-speaking population of about 1000, adjoining his native place and comprising a part of the family estate.
Bishop Thirlwall refused to institute him, on the ground of his inadequate knowledge of Welsh, but an appeal to the archbishop was decided in his favour (23 June 1852) (Dean Roberts of Bangor in Y Geninen, January 1906). He became rural dean of Lower Carmarthen in the same year.
