The Lewkenor Circle · Family, law and patronage
Sir Richard Lewkenor: Family, Law and Cowdray
Lewes’s uncle, his sponsor at the Middle Temple, and a host to Elizabeth I during her Sussex progress.
A family connection to the law
Richard Lewkenor of West Dean was Lewes Lewkenor’s uncle and an important figure in the family’s legal and political life. His career connected Sussex households with the Middle Temple, Parliament and the administration of justice. For Lewes, that connection became a practical means of entering the legal world.
On 14 October 1579, Lewes was admitted to the Middle Temple from Lyon’s Inn. The admission register describes him as:
“Mr. Lewis Lewkner, late of Lyons Inne, gent., son and heir-apparent of Thomas Lewkner of Shelly.”
Middle Temple admission register, 14 October 1579. “Shelly” is the register’s rendering of the family’s place-name.
His admission was under Richard Lewkenor’s bond. Richard therefore appears in Lewes’s early career as the relative who stood behind his entry into the Inn, where legal training brought young men into contact with the literary, political and social life of London.
The Brownes of Cowdray
before the fire of 1793.
Image and source.
The Lewkenors’ relationship with the Brownes of Cowdray included legal service and parliamentary patronage. Richard drew up or witnessed business for Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montagu, while Lewes’s father, Thomas, represented Midhurst in Parliament in 1586. Lewes would represent the same borough in 1597.
Cowdray also connects this Sussex network with Shakespeare’s dedicatee, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. Southampton’s mother, Mary Browne, was Montagu’s daughter. The family at Cowdray was therefore his maternal family.
Richard’s legal work and the Lewkenors’ parliamentary service place them within this named network of households and patronage.
The Queen dines at Richard’s house
Portrait source.
On Friday, 20 August 1591, Elizabeth left Cowdray and dined at Richard Lewkenor’s house at West Dean before continuing to Chichester.
The royal household’s preparations identify the purpose of the stop:
“For her Majesty to dine at betwixt Cowdray and Chichester.”
Royal progress preparations, 1591, quoted in Mary Hill Cole and Marion E. Colthorpe’s The Elizabethan Court Day by Day, entry for 20 August.
The account of the Cowdray entertainment describes the Queen’s departure towards her dining place:
“So departed her Majesty to the dining-place, whither the Lord Montague and his sons, and the Sheriff of the Shire, attended with a goodly company of gentlemen, brought her Highness.”
Account of Elizabeth I’s entertainment at Cowdray, 1591; spelling modernised.
Richard was still Mr Lewkenor at the time of this visit. The later title “Sir Richard” belongs to his subsequent career.
From the Sussex household to court entertainment
The royal dinner gives the family connection a precise place and date. The progress that brought Elizabeth to the entertainments at Cowdray also brought her into Richard Lewkenor’s household.
That sequence matters to the study of aristocratic entertainment. Cowdray’s speeches, songs and woodland figures belonged to a royal visit in which Lewes’s own family participated as hosts. Richard’s place in the itinerary helps reconstruct the social setting explored in the A Midsummer Night’s Dream investigation.
The Browne connection also leads towards Southampton and the patronage surrounding Shakespeare’s early poetry, explored further in the Romeo and Juliet investigation.
Documentary sources
Middle Temple admission register, 14 October 1579: admission of Lewis Lewkner from Lyon’s Inn, under Richard Lewkenor’s bond.
Accounts of Elizabeth I’s entertainment at Cowdray, 1591; royal household preparations for the progress from Cowdray to Chichester.
The Elizabethan Court Day by Day: 1591, p. 23, entry for 20 August, identifying Richard Lewknor’s house at West Dean as the Queen’s dinner stop.
People in this circle
Thomas Lewkenor ·
Anthony Browne, Viscount Montagu ·
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton