Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Evans, Philip
EVANS, PHILIP (1645–1679), jesuit, a native of Monmouthshire, studied in the college at St. Omer, and entered the Society of Jesus 7 Sept. 1665. Having completed his noviceship at Watten and made his higher studies and theology at the English College, Liége, he was ordained priest, and sent to the mission in North Wales in 1675. Being a marked victim of the Oates plot persecution he was seized four years later at the house of his friend and patron, Christopher Turberville de Skene, esq., committed to prison, tried at the spring assizes 1679, condemned to death as a traitor for his priesthood, and executed at Cardiff on 22 July 1679. John Lloyd, a secular priest, suffered at the same time, and on the same account.
‘Short Memorandums’ upon their death appeared at London in 1679. There is a portrait of Evans engraved by Alexander Voet in Matthias Tanner's ‘Brevis Relatio felicis Agonis quem pro Religione Catholica gloriose subierunt aliquot e Societate Jesu Sacerdotes,’ Prague, 1683. Another portrait is in the print of Titus Oates in the pillory.
[Florus Anglo-Bavaricus, pp. 178–81; Challoner's Missionary Priests (1742), ii. 414; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, No. 15720; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 5th ed. v. 95; Foley's Records, v. 882–91, vii. 232 (with portrait); Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 86; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 320; Kobber's Martyrer and Bekenner der Gesellschaft Jesu in England.]