Lewines, Edward Joseph (d. 1828), United Irish agent, seems to have been a close relative, most likely a son, of Laurence Lewins, who was in business as a wool-card maker at 6 Vicar Street, Dublin (1789–94), 6 Thomas Street (1795), and 38 Vicar Street (from 1796). Edward Lewines was stated in the Freeman's Journal of 23 May 1795 to have been successively a grocer, card maker, tripe merchant, and attorney's apprentice; in Wilson's Dublin Directory for 1794 and 1795 he was listed as being in business as a cotton manufacturer at 117 Thomas Street. He had, however, studied in France, probably at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Laon or Paris – Miles Byrne (qv) believed him to have been a ‘school fellow’ of Abbé Denis Frayssinous (1765–1841). Lewines was said by both Leonard MacNally (qv) and Francis Higgins (qv) to have been educated for the catholic priesthood, but did not take orders. He married, probably after returning to Ireland; his wife's uncle was Thomas Braughall (qv).
Lewines was admitted to membership of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen (9 March 1792) and attended the Catholic Convention in December 1792 as a representative of St Catharine's parish, Dublin. He was not prominent in the United Irish society until elected secretary (3 May 1793), but he was active in the months before its suppression (23 May 1794) and was one of the United Irishmen who afterwards met regularly in the house of Henry Sheares (qv) and John Sheares (qv). Though described by historians as an attorney, he was never admitted to the profession but was merely an apprentice, first to Edward Keane, then to Martin Kirwan, both of whom had been members of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen (1795–7). Lewines may have been one of those radicals who met the French agent Eleazer Oswald in Dublin in May 1793; he arranged a meeting between another French agent, William Jackson (qv), and Archibald Hamilton Rowan (qv) at Newgate jail in March 1794. He was prominent at the meeting at the Francis Street Chapel on 31 March 1795 when catholics demonstrated against the replacement of a reforming viceroy, Earl Fitzwilliam (qv), with a cautious one, Earl Camden (qv), on which occasion he spoke with hostility to the English connection as well as to Dublin Castle.
In November 1796, just before the French military expedition commanded by Lazare Hoche left Brest for Bantry Bay, Lewines met, secretly in Dublin, Hoche's emissary, Bernard MacSheehy (qv). After the failure of the expedition he was chosen and instructed by a United Irish subcommittee consisting of Lord Edward FitzGerald (qv), Thomas Addis Emmet (qv), and Richard McCormick (qv) to go to the continent as the Leinster directory's ambassador to France, the Netherlands, and Spain (February or March 1797). Having arrived in neutral Hamburg on 29 or 30 March, he met the French ambassador, Charles Reinhard, and gave him detailed information on the strength of the government forces and the United Irish. Two months later Lewines joined Theobald Wolfe Tone (qv), who had been in France on a similar mission since February 1796. He met Hoche at Friedberg in Hesse-Cassel (29 May 1797) and impressed upon him the Leinster directory's desire for an invasion led by the French general as a prerequisite for a successful rebellion. Lewines and Tone went to The Hague, met the Batavian Republic's foreign affairs committee, and in late June briefed General Herman Willem Daendels and Admiral Jean Guillaume de Winter on a planned Dutch expedition. Lewines then went on to Paris, met Talleyrand, Barras, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and introduced to the directory a more recent, temporary United Irish envoy, William James MacNeven (qv).
Until the autumn of 1797 Lewines and Tone were unchallenged as United Irish agents on the continent. The arrival in Paris of James Napper Tandy (qv) brought into existence a rival camp, to which some later United Irish agents and refugees gravitated. Lewines and Tone were increasingly out of touch with Ireland and increasingly Francophile; Lewines failed to communicate with the United Irish leaders in Ireland and dissatisfaction with him set in. The return to Ireland of James Coigly (qv), who belonged to the Tandy camp, may well have been for the purpose of bringing about Lewines's replacement, but Coigly was arrested on his way back to France with Arthur O'Connor (qv). In the months before the rebellion that eventually broke out in Ireland in May 1798, Lewines was in the Netherlands and lacking any regular communication with Ireland. The departure of Tone and Tandy in September 1798 left Lewines as undisputed United Irish ambassador, with the confidence of the French government. He was able to report to the surviving United Irish leadership in Dublin an assurance of another attempt to invade Ireland (February 1799); but he could not speak authoritatively to the French for the new United Irish leaders who emerged in Ireland in 1798, or recommend United Irish refugees he did not know who arrived destitute in France. When his Irish property was confiscated, as he claimed, under the Banishment Act, he sought money from the French government for various missions accomplished. In December 1799 he wrote a lengthy memorandum detailing his career as a revolutionary (Archives Nationales, AF IV 1671 plaq. ff. 99–105), one of several memoirs he wrote for the French authorities. In 1802–3, when followers of Robert Emmet (qv) were in Paris plotting another rebellion, Lewines was no longer communicating with his compatriots, and in 1810–12 Napoleon, planning another invasion of Ireland, sought information from Lewines in vain.
After the restoration of the Bourbons (1814), Lewines's acquaintance with Frayssinous proved highly rewarding. Frayssinous rose rapidly to be vicar general of Paris (1818), first chaplain to the king (1821), bishop of Hermopolis (1822), and minister of public instruction (‘grand maître de l'université’, 1822). Lewines was made inspector of schools (a position for which, in the opinion of Byrne, he was well suited) and his son Laurence became a professor at the Collège Stanislas and private secretary to Frayssinous. Later Laurence de Lewens (as he was called) was chef de division of personnel in the ministry of public instruction. Edward Lewines, a knight of the Légion d'honneur, died 11 February 1828 at Paris and was buried at Père Lachaise cemetery, Frayssinous conducting the funeral service. Besides Laurence, he had one other son, Hippolite, a student at Saint-Sulpice and later a priest.