Researching James Lewis

Lewis was selected for the senior Wales Sevens squad at 19 years of age for the tour to the Hong Kong Sevens and the Adelaide Sevens for legs five and six of the 2006–07 IRB Sevens World Series. He scored a try in the Plate quarter-final clash against Italy in Hong Kong; his team ultimately won the trophy by overcoming Argentina in the final.

He was the only player to represent Wales in all of the 2007–08 IRB Sevens World Series, and the three Rugby World Cup Sevens qualifying games. He scored a try in the Bowl semi-final in the Dubai Sevens against Australia (which Wales narrowly lost), and further impressed in the George Sevens; he notched a match-winning try against France in the Bowl semi-final to put his side through to the final against England, in which he also scored to gain Wales Sevens' first piece of silverware in the 2007–08 season.

In 2007-08 he was Wales and Europe's highest try scorer in the IRB World Sevens Series and the 13th highest try scorer in the World 7's with 20 tries. Lewis has accumulated 34 tries for the Wales Sevens in all tournaments.

He was one of only 5 players (his twin brother Robert was another) who were part of the London Welsh squads that won the Greene King IPA Championship in 2011-2012 and again in 2013-2014 and he played throughout both the club's seasons in the Aviva Premiership. In season 2015 - 2016 he scored a hat-trick of tries to help London Welsh beat Yorkshire Carnegie 33 - 10 at Headingley in April to win the British & Irish Cup and was awarded Man of the Match. In the final game of the season against Doncaster he made his 100th appearance for the Club.

Following the unfortunate financial situation at London Welsh and its loss of a licence to continue to play in the RFU Greene King Championship, James returned to Ebbw Vale RFC in January 2017.

Lewis was the son of Sir John Lewis of Abaernant-bychen and his wife Bridget Pryse, daughter of Sir Richard Pryse. He matriculated at Jesus College, Oxford on 14 March 1617, aged 15. In 1624, Lewis was elected Member of Parliament for Cardiganshire in the Short Parliament. He was re-elected MP for Cardiganshire in 1625, 1626 and 1628 and sat until 1629 when King Charles decided to rule without parliament for eleven years.

Lewis was re-elected MP for Cardiganshire in April 1640 for the Short Parliament. He was a Royalist at the beginning of the Civil War, but in January 1645 was appointed one of the sequestration committee for Cardigan, Pembroke and Carmarthen Counties. He was Colonel in a regiment of the parliamentary army and captured Newcastle Emlyn for parliament in December 1645. His regiment was ordered to be disbanded in March 1648 though it was retained a little longer.

Information was laid against him on 12 February 1649 that he had fought originally for the king, had protected Royalists when on the sequestration committee and his regiment had cost the state £50,000. An order was made for his discharge on 15 March 1649 under the general act of pardon for South Wales.

He was re-elected MP for Cardiganshire in 1656 for the Second Protectorate Parliament.

After the Restoration he was nominated for the honour of Knight of the Royal Oak. He was High Sheriff of Cardiganshire in 1664. He was described as "a person of inoffensive, facile constitution, forced from a Royalist to act as a colonel for King and Parliament: seldom out of publique offices, though averse to undertake any; loved more for doing no wrong, than for doing of any good".

From 1819 to at least 1834, Lewis worked in the west, what was then Michigan Territory, including present-day states of Indiana and Wisconsin. For eleven years of that time, he was working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, then within the War Department, to make portraits of Native Americans. He published copies of his work in The Aboriginal Port Folio in Philadelphia, between 1835 and 1836.

Lewis was born in the Swift Creek area of Darlington County, South Carolina on March 8, 1912. Although he began law school in 1931, economic conditions during the Depression forced him to return home to Swift Creek to run a country store owned by his father. He continued studying the law under the tutelage of a local lawyer, and he was admitted to practice on December 6, 1935. At the age of 22, he was elected to the Statehouse. Legislators were exempt from the draft during World War II, but he resigned in midterm to enter the military.

Lewis served for sixteen years as a trial court judge before he was elected as an associate justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court on February 21, 1961. He was elected chief justice on January 21, 1975 to fill the unexpired term of Joseph Rodney Moss; was sworn in on August 14, 1975; and served until his retirement in 1984. Chief Justice Lewis retired upon reaching the state's mandatory retirement age of 72.

Lewis entered the New Orleans Metropolitan Police force, but left in 1872 after more political machinations. He emerged from the immediate postwar period as a leader in the New Orleans Republican Party. For much of the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1900s, he held state and federal-level Republican-appointee government positions, usually in the United States Treasury Department. He also served for years under Republican administrations as the surveyor-general of Louisiana and Mississippi. He was a Freemason and a leader in the Grand Army of the Republic, a civil war veterans organization.