count of the Rise and Progress of Shorthand, extracted from Lectures delivered at different periods by the Author, comprehending an impartial and critical Examination of the various Systems down to the present time,’ London, 1816, 8vo, with plates giving specimens of the Tironian notes and seventy-three alphabets from John Willis to Oxley. This is a valuable work, and according to Mr. Pocknell ‘it yet remains the best history which any student entering upon the theoretical aspect of shorthand can consult.’ In the correspondence between Robert Cabell Roffe and Thomas Molineux of Macclesfield, in ‘The Grand Master,’ it is asserted, on no apparent authority, that Hewson Clarke [q. v.] was the real author of this history.
Lewis made an important collection of about 240 books on shorthand, exclusive of duplicates. After his death this collection was divided among the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Birmingham Free Library, and the library of Cornelius Walford (Shorthand, i. 163, 177).
His portrait has been engraved; and an oil-painting is in the possession of his son, Mr. A. L. Lewis.
[Private information; Gibson's Bibliography of Shorthand; Edward Pocknell, in the Journalist, 5 Aug. 1887, p. 271; Palatine Note-book, i. 92; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Lewis's Hist. of Shorthand, p. 206; Snell's Brachygraphic Alphabet; Buck's Stenographic Standard; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. xii. 33; Anti-Jacobin Review, l. 288; Shorthand, i. 191, ii. 254; Anderson's Hist. of Shorthand, pp. 113, 266–76.]
LEWIS, JOHN (1675–1747), author, born in the parish of St. Nicholas, Bristol, on 29 Aug. 1675, was the eldest son of John Lewis, wine cooper, of that city. Francis Lewis, vicar of Worth Matravers, Dorset, was his paternal grandfather. His mother was Mary, eldest daughter of John Eyre, merchant, of Poole. He received an excellent education, first under Samuel Conant, rector of Lichet-Matravers, next at Wimborne grammar school, under John Moyle and afterwards under John Russel in the grammar school at Poole. He acted as assistant to Russel, who, after his removal to Wapping, obtained for Lewis admission to the free school of Ratcliff Cross, belonging to the Coopers' Company. On leaving school he became tutor to the sons of Daniel Wigfall, a Turkey and lead merchant, and afterwards, 30 March 1694, was admitted a batler of Exeter College, Oxford, under the tuition of George Verman, a friend of Conant, his first instructor. In order to supplement his slender means while at the university he became assistant in the free school of Poole in 1696. After graduating B.A. on 14 Oct. 1697 he returned to his old friend Russel at Wapping, and shortly afterwards was ordained deacon.
In April 1698 he became curate of Acrise, Kent, and was collated to the rectory of the parish on 4 Sept. 1699. In 1702, Archbishop Tenison having ordered the sequestration of the rectory of Hawkinge, near Dover, licensed Lewis to serve the cure, and in 1705 presented him to the vicarage of St. John the Baptist, Margate (Hasted, Kent, iv. 359). The archbishop collated him to the rectory of Saltwood, with the chapel of Hythe, and to the desolate rectory of Eastbridge in 1706, and subsequently removed him to the vicarage of Minster, to which he was instituted on 10 March 1708–9. Lewis was appointed to preach at the archiepiscopal visitation on 28 May 1712, when his whiggish and low-church views excited the open hostility of his hearers. He commenced M.A. in 1712 as a member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Masters, Hist. of Corpus Christi Coll. ii. 340). In 1714 he offended a former friend, John Johnson ‘of Cranbrook’ [q. v.], by attacking, in his ‘Bread and Wine in the Holy Eucharist not a proper Material Propitiatory Sacrifice,’ Johnson's ‘Unbloody Sacrifice & Altar Unvailed,’ which presented the high-church position. Archbishop Tenison, Dr. Waterland, and Dr. Bradford approved Lewis's reply, and when he re-enunciated his views in Canterbury Cathedral on 30 Jan. 1717, Archbishop Wake rewarded him with the mastership of Eastbridge Hospital, Canterbury. From this time until his death he was engaged in numerous works on biography and topography. Dying on 16 Jan. 1746–7, he was buried in the chancel of his church at Minster, where he had been vicar for upwards of thirty-seven years. Archbishop Wake characterised him as ‘vir sobrius, et bonus prædicator.’ He composed more than a thousand sermons, but he ordered his executor to destroy them, ‘lest they might contribute to the laziness of others.’
He married the youngest daughter of Robert Knowles of Herne, Kent. She died in 1720, leaving no issue.
Lewis is chiefly known by his biographies of Wiclif, Caxton, Pecock, and Bishop Fisher, in all of which his strong protestant bias is apparent. They are tedious compilations, but contain the result of much original research. The earliest was:
- ‘The History of the Life and Sufferings of … John Wicliffe. … With a Collection of Papers relating to the said History, never before printed,’ Lond. 1720 and 1723, 8vo; new edit., corrected and enlarged by the author,
