EVANS, John (c. 1651-1724)

John Evans was born into the same network of interconnected Anglesey and Caernarvonshire gentry as Humphrey Humphreys, his predecessor at Bangor, and whom Evans addressed as ‘cousin’. Through his mother, Evans claimed descent from the ninth-century Welsh lord Cilmyn Droed Ddu. His coat of arms as bishop impaled the arms of Cilmyn Droed Ddu with those of the see; they have also been identified specifically as the arms of the Glyn of Elernion family of Llanaelhaiarn, who also claimed descent from Cilmyn and who were seated in the parish of which Evans became rector in the mid 1690s. Ibid. 45, 52; Burlington Mag. cxii. 700. Evans was not wealthy, but his mother had enough money to support him through university on an allowance of £30 a year plus the expenses of his degrees. Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 13, f. 270. Evans’s first political patron was Sir Joseph Ashe^‡, governor of the East India Company who secured him a chaplaincy with the company in 1677. Evans immersed himself in commerce with great enthusiasm. Despite fulfilling his pastoral activities in India, he consorted with the ‘interlopers’, those who traded without licence from the company. Diary of William Hedges ed. H. Yule (1889), i. 107, 148, 163, 195-6. He was dismissed from the company in 1692 on the grounds that he had ‘betaken himself so entirely to merchandizing’. E. Chatterton, Hist. of the Church of England in India, 65.

Evans returned to England having supposedly amassed a fortune in India in excess of £30,000. T. Hyde, Syntagma Dissertationum, ii. 474-5. Having lost first his two children (in 1682) and his wife (in 1686), he then married a ‘rich widow’. Thoresby Letters, ii. 87-88. He divided his time between his London residence and Jesus College, Oxford, where he took his divinity degrees. He was appointed to a living in the diocese of Bangor by Humphreys. Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, n.s. vii. 48. Evans lived in London rather than in his Caernarvonshire parish, but by correspondence he co-ordinated the activities of the SPCK in Wales and patronized Welsh writers of moralist and devotional texts, undertaking himself a translation of A Brief Exposition of the Church Catechism by John Williams, bishop of Chichester. Ibid. 48-49. He also had a correspondent in Denmark, though whether of religious or other nature is unknown. Add. 28888 f. 231. He failed to secure the see in 1699 when Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, was facing suspension, but his career prospects benefited not only from his efforts in enhancing religious education in rural Wales, but also from his Whig politics and perhaps his cousinship with Owen Hughes^‡, Member for Beaumaris in the 1698-1700 Parliament, who had turned from client to opponent of the dominant Tory Bulkeley family. Evans was nominated to Bangor on 4 Dec. 1701. CSP Dom. 1700-2, pp. 458, 472, 473, 483. The appointment’s wider political context may lie in William III’s reconstruction of the ministry around the lay Whig leadership in the knowledge that ‘the whole moderate church party’ (as outlined by Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland) was estranged from the Tories but unwilling to support the new ministry. State Pprs. ed. Hardwicke ii. 445-6. Evans’s ties with business and with low church evangelism may have suggested he was likely to support it or at least take a pragmatic view. His appointment was greeted by Evans’s former fellow-interloper Thomas Pitt^‡ with a pun that his ‘old friend Doctor Evans’ was now bishop of ‘Bangor alias Bengal’. Add. 22846, f. 77.

On 12 Jan. 1702, two weeks into the spring session of Parliament, Evans took his seat in the House to begin an active parliamentary career. Of the 16 sessions that assembled during his tenure of Bangor, Evans attended all but four; during those 12, his attendance fell beneath 75 per cent on only two occasions. He failed to attend the 1704-5 session, that of 1709-10 which included the Sacheverell trial, the brief spring session in 1713 which saw the ratification of the peace of Utrecht, and the three week session in August 1714 after the death of Anne. While the House was in session, Evans’s comfortable material circumstances allowed him to live in his residences in Bloomsbury or Soho; he did not resume the lease of Bangor House in Shoe Lane which had been made by his predecessor Humphreys. Survey of London, 31-32, 146-54; Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, n.s. vii. 53.

Evans attended his first parliamentary session for 85 per cent of sittings. Amongst the various committees to which he was named was that to prepare for a conference with the Commons on the encouragement of privateers, a subject with echoes of his India days. LJ xvii. 138-41. On 26 Feb. 1702 he protested against the resolution to continue the Quaker Affirmation Act. He was at the House on 20 Oct. for the start of Anne’s first Parliament during which he attended 77 per cent of sittings. On 5 Nov. he preached at the Abbey and was thanked by the House the following day. Later in the session (on 12 Feb. 1703) William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, noted that Evans had not had the sermon printed, despite the request of the House. Nicolson, London Diaries, 202. It appears that he never did so.

Evans’s attendance at Convocation in November 1702 attracted a vote of censure from the Lower House as he had not brought representatives of the diocesan lower clergy as his summons from the archbishop of Canterbury required. LPL, ms Conv. 1/2/8 f. 40a. Nicolson thought the Lower House’s attitude to Evans ‘insolent’, but he also recorded the view of the high churchman William Moore, a representative of Oxford diocese, that Evans’s reply was ‘unmannerly’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 126, 129.

Evans dined with Nicolson and Humphreys on 28 November 1702 to discuss the proposed legislation to combat occasional conformity; two Scottish peers, William Johnston, marquess of Annandale [S], and Thomas Livingston, viscount of Teviot [S], were also present. On 7 Dec. 1702, in the ‘grand debate’ and question on financial penalties, Evans and Nicolson voted against Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury, and six Whig bishops, and with the minority which included Tory bishops John Sharp, archbishop of York, Henry Compton, bishop of London, Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, and Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Exeter. He remained in London over Christmas and attended the St Stephen’s day dinner at Lambeth. Ibid. 18, 135, 140, 153. Evans’s vote in the December division on occasional conformity presumably led Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, to list him as a ‘doubtful’ supporter of occasional conformity legislation. On 16 Jan. 1703 Evans duly voted for the Whig amendment to the bill. Three days later he registered his protest against clauses in the bill settling a revenue upon Prince George, of Denmark, duke of Cumberland should he survive the queen, to serve as Privy Councillor and to sit in the Lords, on the grounds that the grants were not laid before the House and that the ‘saving clauses’ potentially preferred ‘their payment before his’.

In about November 1703, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland (a Whig ally), correctly forecast that Evans would oppose a renewed attempt at occasional conformity legislation. On 9 Nov. Evans arrived for the first day of the session. He attended 90 per cent of sittings and was also named to the standing committees. Sunderland’s second forecast that month again listed Evans as a certain opponent of an occasional conformity bill. On 14 Dec. Evans duly voted against the measure, using (according to one source) Humphreys’ proxy. Lincs. RO, Monson 13/3/9; Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, n.s. vii. 62. The claim is plausible given the relationship between the two bishops, but as the proxy book does not survive, cannot be confirmed. Evans attended the House until the end of the session on 3 Apr. 1704. He did not attend the autumn 1704 session and at a call of the House on 23 Nov., it was noted that he was excused. On 27 Nov. he entered his proxy in favour of Tenison (vacated at the end of the session on 14 Mar. 1705). In May 1705, despite Whig victories in much of England and Wales, parliamentary elections returned the Tories, Henry Bertie^‡ (son of James Bertie, earl of Abingdon) in Beaumaris, Richard Vaughan^‡ in Merioneth, and Richard Bulkeley^‡, 4th Viscount Bulkeley [I], in Anglesey, all unlikely to have been favoured by Evans. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 783, 786, 810.

Evans returned to Westminster on the third day of the session that began in October 1705. The House promptly ordered a census of Roman Catholics. Evans identified the presence of Roman Catholics in 13 parishes in the diocese of Bangor, remonstrating with his neighbour Humphreys on the inadequacy, as he perceived it, of the Herefordshire returns. Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, n.s. vii. 56, 63. Evans also criticized Humphreys for inadequate protection of diocesan revenue by letting the bishop’s claims to maritime wrecks lapse, possibly due to pressure from the competing interest of the vice admiral of North Wales, Bulkeley. During the session, Evans attended more than 90 per cent of sittings. On 6 Dec. he voted in favour of the motion that the Church was not in danger following the debate in which the Whig ministry hoped to flush out Tory critics of the Church in the presence of the queen.

On 5 Jan. 1706 Evans joined Nicolson, Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, and White Kennett^†, later bishop of Peterborough, at a Lambeth meeting with Sir Francis Masham^‡, the Whig member for Essex. On the martyrdom anniversary on 30 Jan. 1706 he attended the Abbey to hear the sermon by William Beveridge, bishop of St Asaph. Nicolson, London Diaries, 348, 367. Although by this period it was standard procedure for all those in the chamber to be nominated to committees, it is perhaps worth noting that on 16 Feb. 1706 he was named to the select committee concerning private legislation for his adversary Viscount Bulkeley. Evans had sufficient personal wealth to maintain his own coach, which was not the case with other bishops: on 2 Mar. it was Evans’s coach which came for William Wake, bishop of Lincoln, when he was sent for by Sunderland to participate in the debates on the acts of the assembly in Carolina that controversially mirrored attempts to ban occasional conformity in England. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake Diary), f. 12v. On 1 Oct. Evans was at Kensington, alongside the Whig serjeant-at-law John Hook of the North Wales circuit, presenting an address to the queen from the justices of the peace and grand jury of Merioneth that congratulated John Churchill, duke of Marlborough on his victory at Ramilles. London Gazette, 30 Sept.-3 Oct. 1706.

On 3 Dec. 1706 Evans was again in the House on the first day of the new session, and attended 86 per cent of sittings. The union with Scotland had given concern to those churchmen who perceived the prospect of closer ties with the Scottish Kirk as a threat. On 25 Jan. 1707 Evans was invited to a Lambeth meeting where Tenison showed the assembled company his draft for a bill for the security of the Church of England. Nicolson, London Diaries, 411. In a letter to Humphreys, Evans complained that the newspapers which had printed false minutes of the Lords reporting the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts had behaved ‘very wickedly’ and that a committee had been created to investigate this ‘grievous abuse’. NLW, Plas y Cefn ms 2788; LJ xviii. 233. On the last day of the session, 8 Apr. 1707, Evans was one of the managers of the conference on the vagrants bill. He remained in town and attended almost every day of the ten-day session later in April.

He spent the summer in his diocese and was reported as about to set out for London in a letter of 21 September NLW, Bodewryd letters, 294, R. Lloyd to H. Humphreys. On 23 Oct. 1707 he was again present on the first day of the autumn session and thereafter attended nearly 90 per cent of sittings. He was at Lambeth for the customary St Stephen’s day dinner, and frequently in the company of Nicolson, sharing the latter’s anxieties on his case to be heard in the Lords, and lending support by reading through the affidavits. On 27 Feb. 1708 Evans and John Hough, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, acted as messengers to Nicolson for John Somers, Baron Somers. Somers was now urging Nicolson to grant absolution to Hugh Todd, one of his adversaries in the dispute over the cathedral statutes of Carlisle. Nicolson, London Diaries, 437, 440, 457.

The session ended on 1 Apr. 1708 and Evans was back in the diocese within a week. From Bangor he communicated to Sunderland his deep concern at affairs in Wales and how ‘the general interest of the government cannot be carried on there’. The government, he asserted, must give ‘a public mark of displeasure’ to those who were remiss in carrying out their duties in order for there to be ‘two or three good elections’ in the region. Add. 61607, ff. 199-203. Enclosed were letters from one of Evans’s contacts in the diocese, Lloyd Bodvel of Bodfan, Anglesey. Bodvel, who was a kinsman of Evans, was enraged by a Bulkeley address to the grand jury in which there was no mention of the Protestant succession. Bodvel was on the point of forwarding it to another kinsman, the court Whig Hugh Cholmondley, earl of Cholmondley (who had his own territorial disputes with Bulkeley in North Wales), but sent details instead to Evans. If Evans hoped for ministerial intervention against the Tory ascendancy in north-west Wales, it was not forthcoming, as on 13 May Bulkeley enjoyed another election victory. Cheshire ALS, Cholmondley of Cholmondley mss DCH/L/32.

Evans discussed Convocation with William Wake and Hough on 14 Nov. 1708, and attended the House two days later for the first day of the new parliamentary session (in which he attended nearly 53 per cent of sittings). As was customary, he dined with many of his fellow bishops at Lambeth on 26 December. On 21 Jan. 1709, he voted with the Whig majority against the right of Scottish peers with British titles to vote in the election of Scottish representative peers. He was at Convocation for its prorogation on 25 February. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake Diary), ff. 68v, 72v. 75v.

Evans did not follow the Whig party line in every division in the House. On 15 Mar. 1709 he voted with the Tories on the centrality of the established Church to English society and of conformity as a mark of citizenship. In the division on the motion proposed by William Dawes, of Chester, on the general naturalization bill, Evans voted against Tenison: he joined the Tory bishops who included Sprat, Nathaniel Crew, of Durham, and Offspring Blackall, of Exeter, in their insistence that citizens attend a ‘parochial church’ rather than any ‘Protestant Reformed congregation’.

On 22 Mar. 1709 Evans voted against the Scottish lords in the division on the bill to improve the Union. Nicolson, London Diaries, 486, 488. Three days later, in a division of the committee of the whole on the treason bill (on the validity of Scottish marriage settlements) Evans voted with the minority including Sunderland and Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich against a resumption of the House. Nicolson, London Diaries, 489; LPL, ms 1770 (Wake Diary), f. 77r. Uncharacteristically, he missed the last three weeks of business during April. At the start of April, Wake had reported him ‘very ill of the stone and colic’, and Edmund Gibson^†, the future bishop of London mentioned the return of the same ‘complication of distempers’ on 7 May. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake Diary), f. 78r; Wake mss 17, f. 209. Evans recovered sufficiently to leave London for his diocese. There, he was appealed to by Thomas Bulkeley to intervene against the gentlemen and clergy in Anglesey who had circulated three documents denouncing his uncle, Lord Bulkeley. Evans’s failure to respond elicited another letter from Thomas Bulkeley which accused him of sharing the views of the authors of the papers. Bangor UL, Baron Hill mss 5562, T. Bulkeley to J. Evans, 19 Aug. 1709; 5563, T. Bulkeley to J. Evans, 15 Sept. 1709. Evans failed to attend the following session of the House that assembled on 15 Nov. 1709. On 15 Dec. Nicolson reported that he was still recovering from a fall from his horse some weeks earlier, and ‘says nothing of a London journey’. Wake mss 17, ff. 215, 237.

The 1710 election in Anglesey was complicated by Evans’s dispute with Lord Bulkeley. On 25 Nov. 1709 men from Beaumaris had seized 200 oysters dredged by Evans’s servants. LPL, ms 941/22. Evans considered this one of a series of slights against him and against the bishop’s historic privileges. In return, Bulkeley complained to the dean of Bangor, John Jones, about ‘that unworthy prelate’ who had treated him as ‘an enemy to the Church and an oppressor of the rights of it’ ever since he assumed the bishopric. A note of the conversation between Bulkeley’s emissary, also named John Evans, and Bishop Evans appeared to support Bulkeley’s allegations. Jones diplomatically blamed ‘much of this melancholy variance betwixt your lordships’ on ‘misinformation and mistake’ and insisted that Evans had expressed his disapprobation of clergy who subscribed to political attacks on Bulkeley. Bulkeley’s election victory in North Wales on 26 Oct. this time shared in the national trend. In the wake of the victory, Evans apologized for the involvement of his clergy in the opposition to Bulkeley and nominated three mediators, led by Jones, to settle matters between Bulkeley and his critics in the diocese. Evans was pressed to declare his ‘dislike and abhorrence’ of the campaign against Bulkeley and communicate this to ‘those who otherwise may doubt of it’. Baron Hill mss 5568, J. Jones to Bulkeley, 16 Sept. 1710; 5566, Bulkeley to J. Jones, 12 Sep. 1710; 5571, 12 Sep. 1710; 5568, J. Jones to Bulkeley, 16 Sep. 1710; 5563, J. Evans to Bulkeley, 27 Oct. 1710; 5570, Bulkeley to J. Evans, 22 Dec. 1710.

During this storm in his diocese, Evans was in London. Wake mss 17, f. 267, T. Tenison to W. Wake, 10 Oct. 1710. In the wake of the Tory success, Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, was certain that Evans would oppose his new ministry. Evans attended a meeting at Lambeth Palace on 11 Nov. 1710 with Wake, Hough, William Fleetwood, bishop of St Asaph, and Moore, which planned the opening of Convocation, including ‘an address … that shall meddle with no state affairs.’ LPL, ms 1770 (Wake diary), f. 100v. He attended the House on 25 Nov., the first day of the session, and again attended very regularly – nearly 85 per cent of sittings. By now, Evans was often found in the company of Nicolson and Edmund Gibson. On 28 Dec. 1710, Evans took Nicolson in his coach to visit William Cowper, Baron Cowper, at his country residence, and Evans graced Nicolson with ‘a pure visit’ early in January 1711. On 9 Jan. Nicolson reported that Evans opposed the motion in a committee of the whole House that the account of the Almanza campaign given by Charles Mordaunt, 3rd earl of Peterborough, was ‘faithful and honourable’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 520, 526, 530, 531. Two days later Evans was one of ten bishops to register protests against the rejection of the petitions of Henry Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I] and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], and against the resolution that defeat at Almanza was the fault of Galway, Tyrawley and James Stanhope^†, later Earl Stanhope. On the 12th, he also protested against the censure of Whig ministry for having approved military hostilities against Spain.

On 3 Feb. 1711, Evans again supported the actions of the former ministry when he registered his protest against resolutions that the Spanish establishment had been inadequately supplied, and that the ministry had failed to remedy deficiencies in military materiel. Bodl. Clarendon 90, ff. 158-9. On the same day he was named to the committee to draw a representation to the queen concerning the war. Expressing his hostility to peace negotiations with France, on 8 Feb. Evans registered his dissent both from the resolution to present an address to the queen and from its wording. Later that month, on 27 Feb. Evans, Nicolson, Somers, Cowper, Wake and Trimnell met to agree their parliamentary strategy in the case of the Scottish episcopalian James Greenshields, prosecuted for his practice of episcopalian worship in Scotland; they resolved not to challenge the authority of the Kirk and to concentrate on the civil aspect of the case. Nicolson, London Diaries, 551. He was entrusted with the proxies, on 4 Apr., of his friend Nicolson and, on 23 Apr., of John Hough (both vacated at the end of the session on 12 June 1711).

Evans continued to serve in Convocation and in March 1711 was involved in the cross-party committee on the William Whiston heresy case. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake diary), f. 106. In July and August he visited Chichester and was embroiled in an ecclesiastical dispute when he was asked by Tenison to conduct confirmations in the diocese, an action seen as a public rebuke by Thomas Manningham, bishop of Chichester, who had intended to make no confirmations until after harvest. Evans went ahead and a piqued Manningham insisted that he would conduct his own confirmations on the same day. LPL, ms 941, f. 28; Wake mss 17, ff. 279-80. This minor affair demonstrated the trust placed in Evans by Tenison despite their occasional disagreements in parliamentary divisions. By November Evans was back in London where on 26 Nov. 1711 he attended a meeting with Wake, Nicolson, William Talbot, bishop of Oxford, and Trimnell ‘about the business tomorrow’ – presumably the prorogation of Convocation rather than of Parliament which took place the same day. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake Diary), f. 114r. On 29 Nov. 1711 he received the proxy of John Tyler, bishop of Llandaff (held for the whole session). He was again in the House at the start of the following session, which he attended for 80 per cent of sittings. About the beginning of December Nottingham listed Evans as a possible ally in his attack on the Oxford ministry’s peace policy. On 7 Dec. Evans was named to the committee to draw an address to the queen on the ‘No Peace without Spain’ address and in the abandoned division held the following day, he favoured presenting the relevant address to the queen. On 19 Dec. he was forecast as voting in line with the Junto in the peerage case involving James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S] and his rights as duke of Brandon; on the 20th he duly voted with the opposition that no Scottish peer at the time of the Union could sit in the House by right of a British title created after the Union.

On 2 Jan. 1712, after the creation of 12 new Tory peers, Evans joined ten of his fellow bishops to vote with the Whig opposition in a division against a further adjournment of the House to the 14th. Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, n.s. vii. 64. On 5 Jan., Evans joined six bishops for dinner at the Chelsea home of Jonathan Trelawny, a temporary adherent of the opposition on account of the peace. Whig strategies were co-ordinated in regular meetings outside Parliament and nine days later, Evans met Marlborough at his home together with Talbot and Trimnell before all left together for the House. Nicolson, London Diaries, 576, 578. He frequently met Wake, discussing the marriage article before the upper house of Convocation with him, Trimnell and Fleetwood on 21 February. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake Diary), f. 118r. On 26 Feb., in a division on the Scottish toleration bill, Evans and Wake together stopped Nicolson from leaving the chamber and appear to have been responsible for his somewhat surprising decision to vote against the Commons’ amendment to the bill. Nicolson, London Diaries, 574. On 31 Mar. Evans again received Nicolson’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session).

Evans’s socio-political round continued throughout the session. He dined at Lambeth on 1 Mar. 1712. On 28 Mar. 1he paid a visit to a sick Charles Montagu, Baron Halifax, with Nicolson, Maurice Thompson, 2nd Baron Haversham and John Carteret, 2nd Baron Carteret. Ibid. 591, 597. On 15 May he met with fellow bishops Wake, Fleetwood and Talbot and temporal peers Somers, Halifax and Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, at Sunderland’s house, to confirm their agreement that the archbishop of Canterbury had the power to continue the business of Convocation from session to session and that it did not begin anew with each royal writ. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake diary), f. 120v. Evans voted and registered his protest against the decision not to address the queen requesting a military offensive against France following reports of the restraining orders against such action on 28 May, and on 7 June protested against the resolution on the queen’s speech regarding the peace. Timberland, ii. 372-4. Evans was involved simultaneously in normal parliamentary business and on 2 June reported back from the May estate bill committee. He returned to his diocese in July, where ‘he meets more wise men in these parts than he expected.’ Wake mss 17, f. 330.

Little is known of his activities throughout the remainder of 1712, and he failed to attend the session of spring 1713 during the ratification of the Treaty of Utrecht, perhaps out of political distaste. On 13 June Oxford estimated that Evans’s vote would be used to oppose the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. It is possible that another election victory for Bulkeley in September 1713 added to Evans’s lack of enthusiasm for a Tory dominated House; before the spring 1714 session he sought leave to be absent, but was refused permission. Bodl. Add. A269, ff. 26-28. It was confirmed by Gibson on 12 Nov. 1713 that Evans would be in London before Parliament met. Tenison, too ill to preside over Convocation, described Evans as ‘a sure man’ when writing notes on candidates for the commission to act on his behalf to Wake. Wake 17mss , ff. 345-6; 6, f. 167. Evans appeared in the Lords on 16 Feb. 1714 for the start of the session and attended nearly 75 per cent of sittings.

Evans was present for the 5 Apr. 1714 division on the danger to the Protestant succession in which all the bishops present, ‘three courtiers only excepted’ followed Tenison’s lead.Cobbett, Parl. Hist. vi. 1335. Proxy registration in favour of Evans seems to have increased with the introduction of the Schism bill (Nottingham had rightly forecast that Evans would oppose the measure). Evans received the proxy of Trimnell on 14 Apr. (vacated on the 27th) and again on 17 May (vacated on 25 Aug.), as well as that of Talbot on 25 May (vacated 12 August). On 11 June he opposed the extension of the Schism bill to Ireland; on the 15th he opposed the passage of the bill itself, entering his protest against the resolution together with his Whig colleagues, Wake, Fleetwood and Tyler and 28 peers. Shortly before the end of the session on 9 July, Evans paid a breakfast visit to Wake before attending Convocation. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake diary), f. 147. By 5 Aug., back in Bangor, he was relieved to hear of the peaceful proclamation of George I. Sloane 4058, f. 297. He did not attend the brief parliament that same month.

Wary of possible sedition, he sent for information from Sir Hans Sloane^‡ about the political affiliations of a visitor to the diocese. If the man were ‘wrong in his notions’, Evans would be ‘civil … and no farther’. Ibid. ff. 297, 299. With John Vaughan^‡, 2nd Viscount Lisburne [I] (Whig Member for Cardiganshire), he founded the Welsh Whig political club, the Most Honourable and Loyal Society of Ancient Britons. Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, n.s. vii. 59. Evans’s political and parliamentary career after 1715, including the circumstances of his translation to the Irish see of Meath, will be examined in the next phase of this work.

After suffering from a ‘violent fit of the gout’ for over a week, Evans died suddenly in Dublin on 2 Mar. 1724. Add. 6116, f. 132; Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae (1849), iii. 121. He was supposedly a very material bishop who, it was said, understood ‘the muslin and calico part of divinity very well’. Thoresby Letters, i. 87-88. His will, as with many in this period, is uninformative and leaves it impossible to estimate the extent of his real and personal estate at the time of his death. A memorial tablet was installed in the Welsh parish church of Llanaelhaiarn, near to the remains of the Glyn family of Elernion whose arms Evans had adopted. Evans’s episcopal wand survives in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. Burlington Mag., cxii. 700.