Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/28

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DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN

for good in his native land towards the close of the tenth century. On the maternal side the Bishop is the representative of an out-and-out loyalist family. He is descended from the distinguished General Poyer, who, in common with other brave men of the time, conspicuously identified himself with efforts to resist the invasion of Cromwell's forces in South Wales, only, as it afterwards transpired, to suffer the degradation of capture in Pembroke Castle—the last fortress held for the king in Wales—and to be shot, with much ostentatious and unnecessary display, in Covent Garden Market, London.

As to the Bishop's early career, the first point to be noted after his birth in Pembrokeshire, in March, 1821, is his education at Bromsgrove, whence he proceeded to Worcester College, Oxford, and became a scholar, taking his B.A. degree in 1843, and his M.A. in 1846. He was admitted to the Diaconate a year after taking the first-named degree, and two years later was ordained priest. With ambitions akin to those of most young men whose means do not restrict them, young Lewis yearned for an acquaintance with places of interest beyond our sea-girt island, a yearning which he to some extent gratified by visits to Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Sicily, a trip up the Nile to the second cataract, a voyage across the desert to Jerusalem, and peeps at Syria, Beyrout and Constantinople. Moreover, quite early in life he was no stranger to Spain. Done with