ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST
Saints celebrated on the 27th of August
SAINT CHARLES BAKER, PRIEST AND MARTYR
(According to his own entry in the English College David Henry Lewis) [His feast day in Wales is August 26]
He was English Jesuit martyr, born in Monmouthshire in 1616; died at Usk, August 27, 1679.
His father, Morgan Lewis, was a lax Catholic, afterwards converted; his mother, Margaret Pritchard, was a very devout Catholic.
David was brought up as a Protestant, and educated at the Royal Grammar School at Abergavenny, of which his father was the head master.
AS A TEENAGER, HE WAS RECEIVED INTO THE CHURCH
In his sixteenth year, he spent three months in Paris as companion to the son of Earl Rivers, and there was received into the Church by a Father Talbot, S.J.
On returning to England he remained with his parents till their death and then, having a desire for the priesthood, went to Rome, where he was admitted as an alumnus to the English College, November 3, 1638.
He was ordained priest in 1642, and entered the novitiate of the Society at Sant’ Andrea, April 16, 1644.
HE WAS SENT ON THE ENGLISH MISSION
In 1647 he was sent to the English mission, but was quickly recalled and made Spiritual Father at the Roman College.
In 1648 he returned to England finally, and was assigned to the South Wales District, where he laboured zealously for twenty-eight years. It is told of him that to avoid the persecutors, he used to take long and dangerous journeys at night that he might be able to visit the faithful under cover of darkness, and that his devotedness gained for him the title Father of the Poor.
In the summer of 1678, Titus Oates came forward with his pretended revelations, and Parliament in a frenzy of bigotry offered fresh rewards for the discovery and arrest of priests and Jesuits.
A BIGOTED CALVINIST MAGISTRATE CAUSED HIM TO BE ARRESTED
Father David was one of the victims. A bigoted Calvinist magistrate named Arnold, who had hitherto professed friendship for him, caused him to be arrested at Llantarnam in Monmouthshire, November 17, 1678.
He was carried in a sort of triumphal procession to Abergavenny, where, in allusion to one article of Oates’ fabrications, he was shown to the people as "the pretended Bishop of Llandaff".
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO CONNECT FR DAVID WITH THE PRETENDED POPISH PLOT
He was then committed for trial, and meanwhile imprisoned, first at Monmouth and then at Usk. The trial came off at Monmouth, March 16, 1679. It was impossible to connect Father David with the pretended Popish Plot, so he was charged under the Statute of Elizabeth, which made it high treason to take orders abroad in the Church of Rome and afterwards to return to England and say Mass.
THE TRIAL WAS NOT TOO FAIRLY CONDUCTED, AND THE WITNESSES WERE OF A WORTHLESS CLASS
The trial was not too fairly conducted, and the witnesses were of a worthless class. Still the breach of the law was undeniable, and he was condemned to undergo the barbarous penalties which the law prescribed.
For the moment, indeed, he was reprieved, and taken up to London, to be confronted with Oates and his associates. It was hoped that he might be induced to save his life either by apostasy or by inculpating some others in the Plot.
HIS SENTENCE WAS CARRIED OUT AT USK
But this hope proved vain, he was sent back to Monmouthshire, and his sentence was carried out at Usk. The cause of his beatification was introduced, under the name of “David Lewis, alias Charles Baker” by the Decree of December 4, 1886. [Since his canonisation in the 20th century, Fr David is one of the Saint Martyrs of England and Wales.]
From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913
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