David Parkes, the Shropshire antiquarian. Everitt early showed that he had inherited all the artistic faculties of his parents. He received lessons in early life from David Cox [q. v.] His special talent soon showed itself to be the illustration of old buildings and interiors. Taking Birmingham as a centre, he made careful drawings of almost every spot in the midlands which possessed archæological or historical interest. Between the age of thirty and forty he made painting tours in the old towns of Belgium, France, and Germany. After this he devoted himself more especially to studies of interiors, his work being executed mainly in water-colour.
In 1857 Everitt joined the Royal Society of Artists of Birmingham, of which he became in 1858 hon. secretary, a post which he held till his death. He had an important connection as drawing-master in the midlands. For many years he taught drawing at the Birmingham Deaf and Dumb Institution, of which he was also virtually the secretary. In 1870 the archæological section of the Midland Institute was formed, and Everitt was appointed one of the hon. secretaries, contributing papers to its ‘Transactions’ on ‘Aston Church,’ ‘Handsworth Church and its Surroundings,’ ‘Archæological Researches Ten Miles round Birmingham,’ ‘Northfield Church,’ ‘Hampton-in-Arden,’ ‘Old Houses in the Midlands,’ &c. Everitt was also for some time a member of the general council of the institute. In June 1880 he accepted the post of honorary curator of the Birmingham Free Art Gallery, a municipal institution which has since become one of the most important in England.
In 1854 Everitt completed an important series of drawings of Aston Hall, which were used to illustrate Davidson's ‘History of the Holtes of Aston, with a Description of the Family Mansion,’ published in the same year. He also illustrated J. T. Bunce's ‘History of Old St. Martin's,’ the parish church of Birmingham (1875).
In 1880 Everitt married Miss Hudson of Moseley. He died at Edgbaston, of congestion of the lungs, on 11 June 1882. His very large collection of sketches has become invaluable as a memorial of places many of which have already passed away.
[Birmingham Daily Post, 12 June 1882; Birmingham Gazette, same date; private information from friends.]
EVERSDEN or EVERISDEN, JOHN of (fl. 1300), chronicler, was presumably a native of one of the two villages of the name near Caxton, Cambridgeshire. He entered the Benedictine order, having been tonsured in 1255 (Chron. MS. in Luard, pref. to Bartholomæi de Cotton Historia Anglicana, p. lvii, 1859), and became a member of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. He was cellarer there in 1300, when he made a ‘valida expeditio’ into Northamptonshire (ib.) to carry out a claim of his monastery on the manor of Werketon (Warkton). In the following year, 1 June, he is mentioned in a bull of Boniface VIII confirming the election of Abbot Thomas (Prynne, Records, iii. 920), and in January 1307 he attended the parliament at Carlisle as proctor for his abbot (Parliamentary Writs, i. 186, ed. F. Palgrave, 1827). Nothing further is known of his life, and although for centuries he was remembered as a chronicler, his chief work was published merely as a continuation of Florence of Worcester (ii. 136–279, ed. B. Thorpe, 1849), without a suspicion of its authorship, except that it was apparently written by some one connected with Bury (Thorpe, pref. p. x). The edition was taken from a manuscript at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, No. 92, which stopped short at 1295. Another manuscript, unknown to the editor, though mentioned by older biographers of Eversden, is preserved in the College of Arms (Norfolk MS. 30), and extends as far as 1296 in one handwriting; it is thence continued until 1301, after which date there is a break until 1313, ‘when a few slight notices occur, 1334, in another hand, and in a third an entry of 1382’ (Luard, l. c.). The inference is that the work of Eversden himself ended in 1301, if not in 1296, and this chronicle is only original for the last portion. Down to 1152 it is a transcript of Henry of Huntingdon and his continuator, and thenceforth to 1265 it is a transcript of John of Taxster, likewise a monk of St. Edmunds. The chronicle thus only possesses an independent value for the last thirty-six years; but during these years the work of Eversden seems to have been in considerable demand, since it was evidently borrowed and largely made use of both by Bartholomew Cotton (ib. pp. lv–lviii) and John of Oxnead (Chron. Johannis de Oxenedes, ed. Sir H. Ellis, 1859). Some considerable extracts made from Eversden by Richard James are preserved in the Bodleian Library (James MS. vii. ff. 58–73).
Besides this main chronicle, which bears the title ‘Series temporum ab initio mundi,’ Eversden was the author of ‘Regna pristina Angliæ et eorum episcopatus,’ a list of names compiled about 1270, and preserved in manuscript at the College of Arms (xxx. 42; see Sir T. D. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscript Materials, iii. 176 et seq., 1871). To these writings Bale adds (Selden MS.
