EVANS
,
HUGH
(d.
1656
),
General (i.e. Arminian) Baptist
.
Details of his early life are wanting; some years before the
Civil War
he was
clothier's apprentice
at
Worcester
. He moved to
Coventry
and ostensibly made a visit to
London
to see
Jeremiah
Ives
,
minister
of the
Old Jewry Arminians
, and both proceeded to
Wales
(about
1646
), full of the new gospel of general redemption but close communion. Their sphere of labour was mainly in
Radnorshire
— the parishes of
Llan-hir
,
Cefnllys
,
Nantmel
,
Llanddewi Ystradenny
— but included districts across the
upper Wye
in
Brecknock
.
Ives
returned to
England
, but
Evans
went on propagating his doctrines, aided by half-a-dozen other
preachers
, till his death in
1656
. These
Arminians
were fortified by a confession of faith drawn up in the
Midlands
in
1651
, but applying also to
Wales
, and by the salaries paid some of their
preachers
as itinerants under the
Propagation Act
of
1650
(one of them,
John
Prosser
, was for a time
Puritan schoolmaster
at
Talgarth
). But the
Quaker invasions
wrought sad havoc in their ranks; a
Quaker
named
John
Moon
made a vicious attack upon the
Arminian Baptists
of
Radnor
in a pamphlet; and it is in a vigorous rejoinder by two followers of
Hugh
Evans
—
The Sun outshining the Moon
— that we get the most authoritative account of the dead leader's life and activities.
Bibliography:
-
Thomas Shankland
in
Seren Gomer
,
1900
, 323-4;
-
W. J. McGlothlin
,
Baptist Confessions of Faith
, 95-109;
-
Harley Manuscript in the British
Museum
6898, 219-32;
-
Bodl. J. Walker
, c. 13 (62, 66, 68);
-
Reference is made to two editions, by E. B.
Underhill, 1847, and Nathaniel Haycroft, 1865. Reference is
also made to Addenda B (pp. 511–9 in 1847 ed)
, Add. B 512, 518.
Author:
Thomas Richards, D.Litt., (1878-1962), Bangor
