supper to visitors, holding it to be the only sacrament, and intended for all social gatherings, and he wished to set up a society of ‘Christo philanthropists’ to hear expositions of the authentic scriptures. He had a controversy with Priestley in the ‘Theological Repository,’ vol. v., arguing against the sanctity of the sabbath as understood by Priestley. These papers were collected and published by Evanson with a letter to Priestley as ‘Arguments against the Sabbatical Observance of the Sunday’ (1792). In 1792 he also published ‘The Dissonance of the four generally received Evangelists, and the Evidence of their Authenticity examined.’ In this he rejects the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and John, the epistles to the Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, and Hebrews, and those of James, Peter, John, and Jude, besides part of the other books of the Testament. He was again answered by Priestley (in reply to whom he published in 1794 a ‘Letter to Dr. Priestley's Young Man’), expelled from a book club, and ‘pestered by anonymous letters.’ Thomas Falconer also replied to him in a course of ‘Bampton Lectures’ published in 1811. Evanson also published ‘Reflections upon the State of Religion in Christendom,’ 1802, and ‘Second Thoughts on the Trinity,’ 1805. Evanson in 1786 married Dorothy Alchorne, daughter of a London merchant. She probably brought him a fortune, as he afterwards bought an estate at Blakenham, Suffolk. He afterwards retired to Great Bealings, near Woodbridge, thence to Lympston, Devonshire, where he preached to a unitarian congregation, and finally to Colford in Devonshire, where he died on 25 Sept. 1805. His friends testify to the excellence of his character, his engaging manners, and his liberality to the poor.
His collected sermons (2 vols. 1807) contain the obnoxious sermon of 1771, and an account of the prosecution in answer to Havard.
[Monthly Mag. December 1805, xx. 477–83; Gent. Mag. 1805, ii. 1233; Neast Havard's Origin and Progress of the Prosecution in Tewkesbury, 1778; Nichols's Anecd. vi. 483; Life (by George Rogers) prefixed to Sermons; Warburton's Letters to Hurd, pp. 450, 467.]
EVELYN, JOHN (1620–1706), virtuoso, fourth child and second son of Richard Evelyn of Wotton, Surrey, by Eleanor, daughter of John Standsfield, was born at Wotton, 31 Oct. 1620. The Evelyn family, said to have come originally from Evelyn in Normandy, had settled in Shropshire and afterwards in Middlesex. George Evelyn (1530–1603) was the first to introduce the manufacture of gunpowder into England. He had mills at Long Ditton and near Wotton (Evelyn, Misc. Works, 1825, p. 689; Camden, Britannia, ed. Gibson, i. 184); made a fortune, and had sixteen sons and eight daughters by his two wives. The sons by the first wife founded families at Long Ditton, Surrey, and Godstone, Kent. Richard, his only son by his second wife, inherited Wotton. Richard's estate was worth 4,000l. a year, and in 1633 he was sheriff for Sussex and Surrey. John Evelyn was put out to nurse in his infancy, and in 1625 sent to live at Lewes with his grandfather Standsfield, who died in 1627. He remained with his grandmother, who, in 1630, married a Mr. Newton of Southover, Lewes. Evelyn refused—to his subsequent regret—to leave his ‘too indulgent’ grandmother for Eton, and continued at the Southover free school. His mother died in 1635. On 13 Feb. 1637 he was admitted a student at the Middle Temple, and on 10 May following a fellow commoner of Balliol, where he was pupil of George Bradshaw, probably related to the regicide. His tutor was neglectful, and his studies were interrupted by serious attacks of ague, but he made some friendships and studied dancing and music. He left without a degree, but received the honorary degree of D.C.L. in 1669. In 1640 he took chambers in the Temple. His father died in December of that year. In July 1641 he went to Holland with a Mr. Caryll, and joined Goring, then in the Dutch service, for a short time just after the fall of Genep, a fort on the Waal. In October he returned to England. He stayed chiefly in London, ‘studying a little, but dancing and fooling more,’ till the outbreak of the civil war. He joined the king's army just after the fight at Brentford (12 Nov. 1642). He was ‘not permitted’ to stay beyond the 15th, and judiciously reflected that he and his brothers ‘would be exposed to ruin without any advantage to his majesty.’ He therefore amused himself at Wotton, making various improvements in the gardens which afterwards became famous; and though in July 1643 he sent his ‘black menage horse’ to Oxford, he obtained the king's license to travel. He crossed to Calais on 11 Nov., spent some time in Paris and in the French provinces, went to Italy in October 1644, and reached Rome 4 Nov. 1644. At the end of January 1645 he visited Naples, and afterwards stayed at Rome until 18 May. He then travelled to Venice. He studied for some time at Padua, where he bought some ‘rare tables of veins and nerves,’ afterwards presented to the Royal Society. They were described by William Cowper (1666-
