[BITList] A certain stile

[John Feltham]

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Lewis,  John  (bap. 1713, d. 1792), brewer and public access campaigner, was probably born at Richmond, Surrey, and was baptized at St Mary Magdalene's Church, Richmond, on 3 September 1713, a younger son of William Lewis (d. 1736), brewer, and his wife, Elizabeth (d. 1732); their eldest son was William Lewis, who achieved note as a physician and experimental chemist. About 1725 William senior moved his brewery from the centre of Richmond south to the Petersham Road (the site is today in the Terrace Gardens), near the Thames. John Lewis inherited the brewery from his father. He was prosperous and active in the local vestry. Reportedly in vestry disputes he gave 'frequent proofs of his oratorical powers to the admiration of his audience'  (Crisp, 261).

Adjoining Richmond town was Richmond Park, a royal park which had been enclosed and walled, despite local opposition, by Charles I, but to which local residents had long enjoyed access. It was also used by royalty and those they favoured, for hunting deer and shooting feral turkeys. In 1725 Lord Walpole, eldest son of the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, was appointed the park's ranger. He began a process of curbing public access which included removing the ladder stiles. In 1751 George II's daughter Princess Amelia succeeded Walpole as ranger and extended the restrictions. Amelia's mother, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, had similarly wished to exclude the public from St James's Park, London, while her brother William, duke of Cumberland, had prevented public access to Windsor Great Park. In the year of her appointment, Amelia closed Richmond Park to all but her favourites, who were given tickets to gain entrance; even the lord chancellor was excluded. Horace Walpole wrote in July 1752 that, in doing so, Amelia 'disobliged the whole country, by refusal of tickets and liberties, that had always been allowed'  (Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, 27 July 1752, Walpole, Corr., 20.322), and later that she and her brother 'entered more easily into the spirit of prerogative than was decent in a family brought hither for the security of liberty'  (Walpole, Memoirs, 2.21). The closure caused much inconvenience to local people. Discontent grew, though petitions and letters to the newspapers failed to prompt a change of attitude. In 1754 a group of gentlemen, backed by public subscription and also reportedly by the duke of Newcastle, took legal action. The trial, which took place in November of that year, was bungled and failed.

The restrictions also led to the publication of three anonymous pamphlets critical of Amelia's conduct and calling for the restoration of public access to the park. It is possible, but cannot be proved, that John Lewis was the author of these works: Two Historical Accounts of the Making [of] ... Richmond Park in Surrey (1751), Merlin's Life and Prophecies (1755), and A Tract on the National Interest (1757). In taking a stand against the restrictions, Lewis is likely to have been encouraged by the nearby success of Timothy Bennett  (1676/7-1756), a presbyterian cobbler of Hampton Wick, Middlesex, who in 1752 secured the public use of another royal park, Bushy Park, from its ranger, the second earl of Halifax. In 1755 Lewis went, with a friend as witness, to East Sheen gate, and attempted to enter Richmond Park. He was resisted by a gatekeeper, Martha Gray, who pushed him out. Lewis sued Gray and, after a costly legal delay, the case was finally heard at the Lent Surrey assizes at Kingston on 3 April 1758. Lewis argued from precedent for pedestrian access. The crown's defence alleged the indictment was invalid because it stated the obstruction had been in Wimbledon parish whereas it had been in Mortlake parish. The judge, Sir Michael Foster, over-ruled the defence counsel's 'little low objections'  (Dodson, 86), and summed up in favour of the prosecution. The special jury decided for Lewis, and the judge asked him if he wanted gates or ladder stiles as the means for public access to the park. As gates could be shut, Lewis chose stiles. On 16 May 1758 these were opened to the public, and 'a vast concourse of people from all the neighbouring villages' took the opportunity to enter Richmond Park (quoted in Dunbar, 122). However, the stiles had been constructed with such gaps between the rungs that children and the elderly were unable to use them. Lewis returned to court, where the judge ordered this be rectified. To E. P. Thompson, Lewis's was 'a victory of bourgeois commoners' and, though rare, 'went a long way to give popular legitimacy to the law and to endorse the rhetoric of constitutionalism'  (Thompson, Customs in Common, 113-14).

Lewis's success was followed by misfortune and financial loss. His riverside premises were destroyed and his ledgers and papers washed away-presumably during the great flood of March 1774 which proved to be the worst of the century in the Thames valley. Lewis compounded his ruin through his own conduct. As one obituarist remarked, Lewis proved 'less circumspect and assiduous (though of unimpeached honesty) in his private concerns'; coming in the wake of the Richmond legal case-which had been undertaken 'at his sole expense'-Lewis 'at last became embarrassed in his circumstances'  (GM, 62, 1792, 1055). Thomas Wakefield, minister of St Mary Magdalene, initiated a subscription for Lewis from Richmond residents, which provided an annuity of about £50, and following the death of Lewis's brother William in 1781, he received the interest on £500. Nevertheless, he again fell into financial difficulty, prompting the actress Dorothy Jordan to give a benefit performance for him at Richmond Theatre on 3 October 1792. 'Full of bodily infirmities, but with unimpaired intellects'  (ibid.), Lewis died in Richmond on 22 October 1792 and was buried on 28 October in Richmond churchyard.

The biblical scholar, Gilbert Wakefield, brother of Thomas, described Lewis as having a 'strong native sense and a fund of sarcastic humour, with a promptness of elocution in serious and significant expression which has rarely been surpassed' (quoted in Crisp, 261). To the Gentleman's Magazine, financial difficulties revealed that 'in the private character of Lewis there was much to be censured'  (GM, 62 1792, 1055). Whether this was true or not, John Lewis was and remains Richmond's local hero. Engravings of a portrait by Thomas Stewart were long displayed in Richmond homes. His Richmond Park intervention has been repeatedly retold in local histories, and was commemorated by the unveiling of a plaque at Sheen Gate in May 2008. Willing to defy a member of the royal family, Lewis belongs to the long struggle by and for the common people-from the early modern anti-enclosure riots and creation of the National Trust, to the Kinder Scout trespass and 'right to roam' legislation of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Roger T. Stearn 

Sources  GM, 1st ser., 33 (1753); 35 (1755); 38 (1758); 44 (1774); 62 (1792) + parish register, St Mary Magdalen, Richmond, Surrey, 1713, 1732, 1736, 1792, Richmond Local Studies Library, London + Foster, Alum. Oxon. + Venn, Alum. Cant. + Annual Register, 1 (1758); 17 (1774) + London Magazine, 23-7 (1754-8) + M. Dodson, The life of Sir Michael Foster, kt (1811) + general vestry meeting book, 1768-85, Richmond Local Studies Library, London + The letters of Horace Walpole, fourth earl of Orford, ed. P. Toynbee, 16 vols. (1903-5); suppl., 3 vols. (1918-25), 3 (1903) + Walpole, Corr., 9 (1941); 20 (1960) + H. Walpole, Memoirs of the reign of King George II, ed. J. Brooke, 3 vols. (1985) + E. Crisp, Richmond and its inhabitants from the olden time (1866) + J. Thorne, 'Environs of London: Richmond, Kew, Petersham', 1876, Richmond Local Studies Library, London + E. B. Chancellor, The history and antiquities of Richmond, Kew, Petersham, Ham, &c. (1894) + J. Cloake, Richmond past: a visual history of Richmond, Kew, Petersham and Ham (1991) + J. Cloake, Palaces and parks of Richmond and Kew, 2 vols. (1995-6) + J. Cloake, Cottages and common fields of Richmond and Kew (2001) + E. Casaubon, 'Who wrote the Richmond Park pamplets?', Richmond History, 7 (May 1986) + VCH  Surrey, vol. 3 + E. P. Thompson, Customs in common (1991) + E. P. Thompson, Whigs and hunters (1975), ch. 8 + J. Dunbar, A prospect of Richmond, rev. edn (1979) + P. Langford, Public life and the propertied Englishman, 1689-1798 (1991)
Likenesses  T. Stewart, oils, 1758, Richmond Reference Library, Richmond, London [see illus.] · R. Field, mezzotint, 1793 (after Thomas Stewart), NPG; repro. in Crisp, Richmond (1866) · Pearson, engraving, c.1887 (after Thomas Stewart), Mary Evans Picture Library, London; repro. in The Leisure Hour (1887), 336
Wealth at death  died in poverty




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