BAKER OR LEWIS?

There are some who maintain that David Lewis was an alias and that his real name was Baker. This is quite erroneous! It was common practise at the time for priests assigned to the English Mission to assume an alias. This enabled them to work undercover and also afforded a certain amount of protection for their families should the priest be apprehended. David Lewis assumed the name of Charles Baker but his real name was David Henry Lewis. As well as entries in the records of the English College in Rome, we have, thanks to Brother Foley, the Saint’s own account upon his entry to the College. David Lewis wrote;

“My name is David Lewis, alias Charles Baker. My father was Morgan Lewis and my mother Margaret Pritchard, both Catholics, who lately died of fever. I lived at Abergavenny, and was educated at the Royal Grammar School in that town, of which my father was Principal. He was of the middle class. Among my chief friends I number an uncle named John Pritchard, of the Society of Jesus. Up to my sixteenth year I was a heretic; about that time, leaving England, I crossed over to France with a noble youth, the son of Count Savage, with whom I lived for about three months in Paris, when by means of the Revd Father Talbot, I embraced the Catholic faith, and on account of the war then raging (in France) I returned to England with the same nobleman, and lived nearly two years with my parents, on whose death, and assisted by the Revd Father Brown, I bade adieu to my country on 22nd of August and arrived in Rome on the 2nd November, and on the same day entered the College.”