Family and Education

m., 1s. 2da.

Offices Held

Capt. in Col. Richard Sutton’s Ft. 1709; half-pay 1713; capt. of Invalids for Portsmouth 1715; lt.-gov. Sheerness 1725-d.

Biography

Evans, whose parentage has not been ascertained, was several times mayor of Queenborough, his father acting as his deputy in 1725.1 Returned for the borough on his own interest with government support at a by-election in 1729, he was able to secure the return of himself with government nominees over the next 25 years. In Pelham’s words he became ‘the means of settling the interest in Whig hands’, ‘votes well, and has his reward’.2 However, in 1750 he fell foul of some of the townsmen on the question of non-resident freemen.3 Pelham wrote to Newcastle on 26 Oct. 1753: ‘I hear Queenborough is in great danger of being lost both by jealousies and ill-management together with a strange fellow at the head of the corporation — I mean Captain Evans’.4 After Pelham’s death Evans was induced by Newcastle to withdraw,5 although he still on occasion advised Newcastle on local patronage.6 He died 22 Nov. 1762,

greatly despised by all his friends for giving all his personal estate to a Scotch girl, his tucker-in, and making her his executrix. He did not give his son a penny what he could hinder him of, and he never named his eldest daughter ... (his younger daughter died a little time before ...). The girl has pulled the house to pieces, sold all the family pictures and plate, goods, wine, etc. and gone off we don’t know whither, without paying her testator’s debts.7

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: A. N. Newman

Notes

• 1. Cal. Treas. Pprs. 1720-28, p. 360.
• 2. Pelham to Bedford, 11 June 1747, Bedford mss; Evans to Walpole, 17 Dec. 1734, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss.
• 3. See QUEENBOROUGH.
• 4. Add. 32733, f. 138.
• 5. Memo. 21 Mar. 1754, Add. 32995, f. 114.
• 6. See Evans to Newcastle, 13 Feb. 1755, Add. 32852, f. 446.
• 7. Unsigned letter to Geo. Wellard, town clerk of Queenborough, Wellard mss, Kent AO.