A combination of unexceptionable political opinions and diligent public service enabled Evans, a moderate Liberal, to represent a constituency previously dominated by the Conservatives for two long spells on either side of the second Reform Act. The extensive business interests of his family had originated with his great-grandfather Thomas Evans (1723-1814), who founded Derby Bank, inherited lead mines at Bonsall, and married the daughter and heiress of William Evans (no known relation), gaining possession of watermills used to produce iron, which he converted to spin cotton in 1783. His eldest son, and grandfather of the subject, William Evans (d. 1796) married the daughter of the pioneering textile capitalist, Jebediah Strutt. Evans’s father, William (1788-1856), inherited the banking, lead, and cotton interests accrued by his forefathers, as well as Derby waterworks, purchased land in Derbyshire, including the Allestree estate in 1825, and became lord of the manors of Parwich, Brailsford, Alkmonton and Newton Grange.1F. Boase, Modern English Biography, Supplement (1912), ii. 250-51; M. Boyes, Allestree Hall (n.d.), 6-14; Burke’s landed gentry (1847), i. 383; HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 63-6; G. Turbutt, A history of Derbyshire (1999), iv. 1430, 1455, 1503, 1514-15. He also expended considerable sums on pursuing a political career, and was MP for East Retford, 1818-26, Leicester, 1830-35, and North Derbyshire, 1837-53.2HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 63-6. Evans’s mother was the eldest daughter of Rev. Thomas Gisborne, of Yoxall Lodge, prebendary of Durham, whose heir, Thomas Gisborne the younger, represented North Derbyshire (1832-37), as well as Stafford (1830-32), Carlow (1839-41) and Nottingham (1843-47).3Ibid.; Burke’s landed gentry (1847), i. 470.
After leaving Cambridge, Evans married the daughter of another uncle, Thomas John Gisborne, and was appointed as a magistrate for the county and borough. In 1853, his father unexpectedly resigned as MP for North Derbyshire, apparently so that Evans would succeed him unopposed.4Derby Mercury, 13 July 1853. The electors, however, incensed by his father’s arrogance and presumption, demanded a choice, and a popular local Liberal had little difficulty in defeating young Evans, 22 July 1853.5Ibid., 20, 27 July 1853.
In 1857 he offered for South Derbyshire, where Allestree was situated. Displaying a vagueness which irritated some electors, he favoured a moderate extension of the franchise, civil and religious liberty, and supported Palmerston, but was evasive on the ballot.6Ibid., 25 Mar. 1857, 1, 8 Apr. 1857; Dod’s Parliamentary companion: new Parliament (1857), 187; C. Hogarth, ‘Derby and Derbyshire elections, 1852-1865’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal (1981), ci. 151-72 (at 164). He was returned in first place alongside the former Conservative Charles Robert Colvile, and topped the poll again in 1859.
A general support of the Liberal party, he endorsed 1858 county franchise bill, and the county and borough franchise bills of 1864, having finally came out against the ballot in the previous session.7House of Commons Divisions Lists, 1857-58 session, 10 June 1858; ibid., 1863 session, 16 June 1863; ibid., 1864 session, 12 Apr. 1864, 11 May 1864, 21 June 1864. Although he was an Anglican, he consistently supported the abolition of church rates.8House of Commons Divisions Lists, 1857-58, 17 Feb. 1858, 8 June 1858; ibid., 1859 session 1, 15 Mar. 1850; ibid., 1859 session 2, 3 July 1859; ibid., 1860 session, 8 Feb. 1860, 27 Apr. 1860; ibid., 1861 session, 27 Feb. 1861, 19 June 1861. He favoured the expansion and opening up of Oxford and Cambridge to Dissenters, as ‘whether the Universities were national institutions or not, they ought to be as national as possible; [and] it was desirable that many should go to them who did not’.9Hansard, 5 June 1867, vol. 187, c.1628; see also his brief intervention in favour of the test abolition (Oxford) bill of the previous session: ibid., 13 June 1866, vol. 184, c.332. During his first decade of service, he also chaired four election committees, as well as serving on the 1864 inquiry into the registration of county voters.10The committees dealt with the 1859 Norwich and Beverley elections, and Lisburn and Rye by-elections of 1863 and 1866 respectively. He had sat on an earlier inquiry on Beverley in 1857: PP 1857 session 2 (243), v. 160; 1859 session 2 (140), iv. 361; 1860 (224), xi. 2; 1863 (343), vii. 49; 1864 (203), x. 409; 1866 (211), xi. 335.
At the 1865 election, Evans based his appeal to electors on the record of Palmerston’s government, particularly Gladstone’s financial policy, and was again returned in first place alongside Colvile. Thereafter, he seems to have spoken more often in the chamber, especially on cattle disease, and twice questioned ministers as to why a report about the outbreak in Derbyshire, which had been severely afflicted, had not been made public.11Hansard, 16, 19 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 611, 790; ibid., 13 May 1867, vol. 187, c.391; ibid., 10 Mar. 1868, vol. 190, c.1287. He offered steady support for the enfranchising clauses of the 1867 reform bill, and spoke in favour of Colvile’s proposal to lower the copyholder franchise to £5.12Hansard, 20 May 1867, vol. 187, c.847. He supported Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish church the following year.13House of Commons Divisions Lists, 1867-68 session, 3 Apr. 1868.
Having topped the poll at three consecutive elections, in 1868 Evans suffered the indignity of finishing last, behind Colvile, and two Conservatives. He unsuccessfully contested by-elections in South Derbyshire and Stafford in 1869, but was compensated by a variety of elected and unelected local offices, serving as mayor of Derby in 1869, and high sheriff of the county three years later.14McCalmont’s poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1971), 77, 274. He was increasingly involved in education; he was a member of the council of University College London, was on the governing bodies of Derby and Repton Schools, and Trent College, served as president of Derby Ragged School, and in 1871 was elected chairman of Derby school board, a position he held for six years.15English Journal of Education (1863), xxii. 138; Derby Mercury, 12 Oct. 1892. He returned to the Commons in 1874, and retired at the 1885 general election, only to unsuccessfully contest Derby as a Liberal Unionist the following year.16Derby Mercury, 12 Oct. 1892; McCalmont’s poll book, 77; ibid., pt. II, 59.
Deteriorating health prevented Evans from taking an active part in national political life thereafter, but he was the inaugural chairman of Derbyshire County Council from 1889 until his death three years later. One of the jubilee baronets created in 1887, Evans, who was childless, was succeeded by his brother-in-law, William Gisborne (1825-98), who had served as the Colonial Secretary of New Zealand, 1869-72.17Boyes, Allestree, 16-34; The Times, 11 Jan. 1898; Turbutt, iv. 1514-15. After changing hands a number of times, the Allestree estate was converted into a golf club, but the Hall has been unoccupied for many years and is in a state of disrepair.18Boyes, Allestree, 34. The Hall is currently on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk Register: http://risk.english-heritage.org.uk/default.aspx?id=289&rt=0&pn=1&st=a&ctype=all&crit=allestree.