college; during four years he acted as tutor, and in 1834 was one of the public examiners. In 1832 he went to Canada as secretary to Sir John Colborne, the governor-general, and as tutor to his sons, and on his return in 1834, became head-master of King Edward's School, Birmingham, an establishment which he largely remodelled. In 1838 he was appointed dean of Jersey and rector of St. Heliers, upon the recommendation of Lord John Russell. He worked zealously, and took an active part in the establishment of Victoria College at St. Heliers. There he remained until 1843, when he was recalled to Oxford as master of Pembroke College, to which office a canonry at Gloucester Cathedral is attached. Shortly afterwards he was appointed rector of Taynton, Gloucestershire. His services to his college and as subdean of Gloucester were justly very highly esteemed. His fame as a liberal had preceded him at Oxford, and it is said that there was consternation in the hebdomadal board when he took his seat. He justified his reputation by strongly recommending to the government the appointment of a commission of inquiry at Oxford, and on becoming a member of the commission in 1850 he took a very prominent part in its proceedings. He wrote the greater part of the report which the commissioners presented to her majesty, and from that time forward there was not a well-considered measure of progress and reform introduced at Oxford in which he did not take a leading share. He was probably the ablest man of business in his day at Oxford. To him are to be largely ascribed the examination statutes which established the schools of natural science and of law and modern history, and though the original idea of a middle-class local examination was suggested by Dr. Frederick Temple, now bishop of London, it was mainly worked out under his auspices and by his zeal and energy. He was vice-chancellor of the university from 1858 to 1862, during the residence of the Prince of Wales. In 1862 he preached a sermon in French in Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the International Exhibition. His opinions were of the evangelical order, and he was a determined opponent of Dr. Pusey and of the conductors of the ‘Tracts for the Times,’ and equally of the advanced broad church party. On 18 Jan. 1864, on the nomination of Lord Palmerston, he became dean of Lincoln, but soon vacated the office on his elevation to the bishopric of Peterborough, to which he was consecrated on 27 June following. He died at Whitby 21 Aug. 1868, and was buried in Peterborough cathedral-yard on 28 Aug. He published several single sermons, and his primary charge as bishop of Peterborough. On 15 Dec. 1836 he married Margaret Dyne, only child of Henry Symons of Axbridge, Somerset. His eldest son, Sir Francis Henry Jeune, was in 1891 made a judge of the high court.
[Times, 22 Aug. 1868, p. 7; Guardian, 26 Aug. 1868, p. 956, 2 Sept. p. 979; Peterborough Advertiser, 22 Aug. 1868, p. 4, 29 Aug. p. 4.]
JEVON, THOMAS (1652–1688), actor and dramatist, born in 1652, was a dancing-master, but worked his way on to the stage, and played leading low-comedy parts in London between 1673 and 1688. He appeared as Sneak in D'Urfey's ‘Fond Husband’ in 1676, and made a brilliant success as Harlequin in Mountford's farcical ‘Dr. Faustus.’ His only published play, and probably, as a contemporary manuscript note on one of the British Museum copies says, ‘the only dramatick performance of Mr. Thos. Jevon,’ was ‘The Devil of a Wife; or a Comical Transformation,’ which was licensed by Roger L'Estrange on 30 March 1686, and was produced immediately afterwards at Dorset Garden, where Jevon usually acted. Jevon and George Powell [q. v.] played the two leading rôles, Jobson and Noddy, and the piece, in which it is possible, as Baker suggests, that the author had the assistance of his brother-in-law, Thomas Shadwell [q. v.], achieved a great success, passing through eight editions between the date of its appearance and 1735, and forming the groundwork of Coffey's opera, ‘The Devil to Pay,’ produced in 1731. The plot of the play is borrowed from the story of Mopsa in Sidney's ‘Arcadia’ (Langbaine, Lives and Characters of English Dramatick Poets, p. 76). Jevon wrote the prologue for and acted in Mrs. Behn's ‘Emperor of the Moon’ in 1687, and in 1688 he played Sir William Belford in Shadwell's ‘Squire of Alsatia,’ and Toby in D'Urfey's ‘Fool's Preferment.’ The latter was his last part. Jevon died in the same year, and was buried in Hampstead churchyard on 24 Dec. An infant named Thomas Jevon, probably Jevon's son, was buried near the same spot on 13 Sept. 1684 (Lysons, ii. 545).
Jevon seems to have been long remembered. Colley Cibber is made to say in ‘The Egotist’ (1743): ‘My modesty is like that of Jevon the comedian, who coming into a club of his acquaintance with dirty shoes, contentedly took a clean napkin from the table to wipe them, when the waiter desired him to stay till he could fetch him a coarse cloth. Jevon gently replied, “No! no! thank you, my good lad; this will serve me well enough.”’ Another anecdote is told of him in Downes's
