Morgan Lewis was another absentee vicar, who received extra pay for not occupying a vicarage, of which he had no need as he already occupied a handsome one in Lamborne, Berkshire.
We know this thanks to some research by Janice Lingley published in 1922 by the Kipling Society, which gives a surprising amount of information about Rev. Lewis. Lingley’s note below references her earlier book The Loughton Idyll, which describes a childhood summer spent by Kipling and his cousin Stanley Baldwin on a farm in Loughton owned by the ‘avuncular’ John Dalley.
Lingley continues:
…..a John Dalley is listed in the 1841 census for Lambourne, very near to Loughton, as a member of the household of Mrs Margaret Lewis (1781-1845), her son, William, and daughter, Mary Ann, at a property called Lambourne Cottage (extant).
Mrs Lewis was the widow of the Reverend Morgan Lewis (c 1759-1834), who had been the incumbent, as an absentee vicar, of St Michael’s Church, Great Sampford, in north-east [sic] Essex, from 1801 until his death in 1834. He received an additional stipend in lieu of the provision of a parsonage. He owed his presentation to the village’s landowner, Eliab Harvey (1758-1830) of Rolls Park, Chigwell, who was then a Captain in the Royal Navy, and subsequently to distinguish himself as the courageous commander of HMS Temeraire (immortalised in the painting by Turner) at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. In 1804 Morgan Lewis was also appointed the curate of Lambourne with Abridge.
According to the 1860 edition of Crockford’s, besides glebe land of 34 acres, the rectory of
Lambourne possessed a ‘glebe-house fit for residence’. Presumably this refers to the property
formerly known as the Old Rectory, originally a timber-framed building of the 17th century;
now brick-faced and known as Lambourne Place, a listed building, privately owned…….…….According to the 1841 census, Margaret Lewis accommodated three agricultural labourers,
besides a young house maid, and appears on the tithe register as the owner/occupier of more
than 20 acres of farmland, mostly pasture but also including arable, evidence that her husband
had been a parson-farmer, and that she continued to farm following his death.Morgan Lewis was educated at Shrewsbury School and Cambridge, but it is likely that he came from a farming background. There is a record of baptism for him in the rural parish of St Harmon, Radnorshire, but his birthplace is recorded on the Cambridge Alumni database as ‘Nethy’, which appears to be a bowdlerised English spelling of Neuaddu-ddu (the double consonant is pronounced ‘th’ and the final ‘u’ as a long ‘e’), a farm (now holiday accommodation) about four miles northwest of St Harmon on the River Wye. His wife Margaret’s maiden name was Oram; prior to her marriage she was resident in Chigwell. Her sister Cordelia Oram, a witness to her wedding, was, however, a resident of Madeley, Ironbridge, Shropshire. The Reverend Lewis is buried, as is his wife, in the churchyard of Lambourne’s St Mary & All Saints.