Lewis was born on 9 February 1881 in London, England. He was the son of Arthur Griffith Poyer Lewis, a barrister, and Annie Wilhelmine,
née Ellison. His grandfather was
Richard Lewis,
Bishop of Llandaff. He was educated at
Eton College and
University College, Oxford, where he took a
Third in Modern History. After reading in the chambers of
John Simon and
John Sankey, he was called to the Bar by the
Inner Temple in 1908, and began practising at
Cardiff. During World War I, he was commissioned into the
Glamorgan Yeomanry, and served as
aide-de-camp to
Sir Charles Fergusson in France. He was twice
mentioned in dispatches and appointed
OBE. After the war, he joined the chambers of
Thomas Inskip in London, gaining a large practice. In 1930, he was appointed Junior Counsel to the Treasury (Common Law) (commonly known as the '
Treasury Devil'). In 1935, in succession to
Mr Justice Avory, Lewis was appointed a Justice of the
High Court, assigned to the
King's Bench Division, and received the customary
knighthood. At Caernarfon, he heard the case of the burning of the aerodrome at
Penyberth in September 1936 by
Saunders Lewis and two other prominent members of
Plaid Cymru, the Fire in Llŷn or
Tân yn Llŷn. The jury failed to agree on a verdict. ==References==