EVELYN, John (1591-1664), of Lee Place, Godstone, Surr.

Gunpowder manufacture advanced the fortunes of the Evelyns and enabled this MP’s grandfather, George Evelyn (d.1603), to establish branches of his family at Long Ditton, Godstone and Wotton. Godstone and the gunpowder monopoly descended to George’s second son, John, who in turn prospered sufficiently to provide for his elder son, another George (d.1636), through office-holding and newly-acquired estates on the Wiltshire/Hampshire border. Thus John was free to pass on Godstone and the gunpowder business to his second son, the MP.29Gunpowder Mills, eds. A. G. Crocker et al. (Surr. Rec. Soc. xxxvi, 2000), 1; Hist. of the Evelyn Family, 19-27, 197-202. The engagement of both in the enterprise for about a decade before John the elder’s death in 1627 makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly the early career of the younger man.30APC 1616-17, p. 385; 1619-21, pp. 117-18; Bowyer Diary, 131; VCH Surr. ii. 314.

It seems to have been at least partly in order to uphold his commercial interests that in 1628 Evelyn sought a seat in Parliament. Returned for Bletchingley, just two miles from Godstone, he promoted a bill to liberalise the trade in saltpetre, an essential ingredient in gunpowder production, and sought to protect his monopoly, especially from proposals put forward to the privy council by fellow Surrey Member Sir Thomas Bludder*. The crown’s failure to pay him fully for powder he had supplied led him to find an alternative market, causing friction with royal officials which remained unresolved while Parliament sat. Although he had been more visible in the chamber than his elder brother’s youthful son, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, who sat for Wilton, during the second session John of Surrey kept a low profile, perhaps to avoid provoking more trouble.31HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Evelyn, John’, ‘Evelyn, Sir John’.

Despite his difficulties, Evelyn renewed his contracts several times thereafter, before finally surrendering the monopoly to Samuel Cordwell and George Collins in 1636.32SP12/237, f. 126; SP16/150, f. 168; 184, f. 6; 267, f. 133; 279, f. 104; 284, f. 37; 286, f. 159; 289, f. 120; 291, ff. 222, 224; 292, ff. 96, 111; 332, f. 86; 342, f. 149. In petitioning the king again for payment that December he claimed – as someone who valued highly his monarch’s favour – to have delivered to the royal stores more than 1,000 barrels of gunpowder for which he might have received an extra £2,000 on the open market, and to have expended £5,000 on erecting mills for the public service.33SP16/323, f. 71. However, in 1637 the office of ordnance certified that he had not fulfilled all his contracts and in 1638 allegations surfaced that he had concealed gunpowder and saltpetre properly belonging to the king with the aim of selling elsewhere.34SP16/361, f. 18; 378, f. 226; 379, f. 12; 393, f. 93. Whatever the truth of these claims, it is clear that he had not relinquished altogether his manufacturing and trading activities.

For reasons unknown Evelyn was not elected for Blechingley in spring 1640, but he was successful in gaining one of the borough seats in the autumn. His first appearance in the Journal was on 21 November, when, like his nephew and namesake, he offered £1,000 as a loan towards the expenses of the northern campaign.35Procs. LP i. 228, 232, 235. As in 1628, he was noticeably protective of his commercial interest. When, as part of the general airing of what were perceived as the abuses of the king’s personal rule, London merchants petitioned against the gunpowder monopoly, Evelyn spoke in its defence (29 Jan., 5 Mar. 1641), although Sir Simonds D’Ewes* found his arguments ‘slender’ and ‘of no great weight’, while others condemned the monopoly as ‘most pernicious’ and ‘against the liberty of the subject’.36Procs. LP, ii. 308-9, 637.

On the other hand, in the first few months of the session Evelyn appeared as an opponent of government policies on religion. His first committee nomination was to that investigating the visitation of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the godly foundation which had produced some of the ministers who had most troubled Archbishop William Laud (17 Dec. 1640).37CJ ii. 52a. Added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers (8 Jan. 1641), he was subsequently appointed to prepare the act for abolishing superstition and idolatry (13 Feb.) and was named first to alter a Jacobean statute which seemed excessively indulgent to Catholic recusants (8 May).38CJ ii. 65a, 84b, 139a.

Otherwise, Evelyn was nominated to committees addressing a succession of private interest bills: to reverse a ruling in a long-running chancery case involving a kinsman of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke (15 Feb.), and to enable landowners to make land settlements or pay off debts (26, 27 Feb.; 13 Mar.). The latter included one for the benefit of William Copley of Surrey; here Evelyn was named first, suggesting that he was the sponsor.39CJ ii. 85b, 93b, 94a, 103b. On 18 March he was appointed to consider the politically-charged issue of granting tonnage and poundage to the king, while three months later he was placed on the committee drawing the bill for levying money.40CJ ii. 107a, 180a.

Evelyn’s allegiances were potentially contradictory, but Charles I regarded him as worth rewarding or encouraging with a knighthood, bestowed on 25 June 1641.41Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 209. Thereafter, unless he appears with the qualifier ‘of Surrey’ or ‘senior’, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish him from his nephew. The pair had committee appointments in common, shared some interests and were personally close, but Evelyn ‘junior’ ‘of Wiltshire’ was consistently the more prominent and is likely to have been the man intended in the majority of undifferentiated Journal references. For example, between 4 and 28 August ‘Sir John Evelyn’ received five committee appointments and one order, and was once a teller. Subsequent developments indicate that Evelyn of Surrey was more plausibly the MP nominated in connection with the bill for securing arrears of assistance to the Scots (5 Aug.), but the other references are either more likely to have been Evelyn of Wiltshire or defy ready ascription.42CJ ii. 233b, 235a, 239a, 242a, 250b, 271b.

This MP had been granted a brief leave of absence from the House on 1 May.43CJ ii. 131a. It seems more probable from the context that it was his nephew who was given leave on 28 August, ‘his house being visited with smallpox’, but it may be that both households were afflicted.44CJ ii. 275a. Neither appeared in the Journal again until the winter and some ten days after the end of the six-week parliamentary recess. It was Evelyn of Surrey who surfaced first, with an unprecedented burst of activity. Plausibly, as the Irish rebellion unfolded and mobilisation was proposed in England, Evelyn’s religious concern over the popish threat coalesced with his entrepreneurial interest in supply of ammunition to propel him into action. On 3 December the House accepted his suggestion that he investigate through his sister the hire of a house in Coleman Street for the use of the Scottish commissioners, so that the essential pre-requisite of negotiations with the Scots might be facilitated. As he left the chamber to expedite the matter he took the opportunity to move that the king be approached for his approval of Parliament’s measures to deal with the Irish insurrection, presumably hoping for progress there too.45CJ ii. 330a; D’Ewes (C), 223. Apparently to the same end, but perhaps also in order to secure maximum endorsement of and credibility for the Grand Remonstrance to the king, on 14 December Evelyn reminded the Commons of at least 200 absent Members and called for them to be summoned to attend.46D’Ewes (C), 287. The previous day he had had his first outing as a teller, acting with John Pym’s* ally and leading Irish Member Sir John Clotworthy* for those who narrowly lost the vote to punish further one George Long, sent to the Tower for breaching parliamentary privilege through threatening protest.47CJ ii. 340a; D’Ewes (C), 275. Evelyn was also despatched to the Lords on 23 December to desire a conference on the Scottish treaty, although D’Ewes noted that ‘he went not up presently’, possibly indicating that he had some unaccountable reservations about the choice of John Hampden* and Nathaniel Fiennes I* to manage it.48CJ ii. 354b; D’Ewes (C), 337-9.

As tension mounted around the Palace of Westminster, on 31 December Evelyn was appointed to the committee set up to organise the supply of powder and arms for the kingdom.49CJ ii. 364b; D’Ewes (C), 371. He became its chairman.50CJ ii. 476a. In the aftermath of Charles’s abortive attempt to arrest the Five Members, Evelyn was instructed (10 Jan. 1642), doubtless both as a Surrey justice of the peace and as an expert in the field, to search Vauxhall for stores of ordnance and ammunition.51PJ i. 28. Two days later he reported finding ‘several brass pieces and about one thousand muskets’.52PJ i. 41-2, 48. Surrey informants enabled him also to convey news (12 Jan.) that George Digby*, Baron Digby, who was now close to the king, ‘was shortly to pass into France and that he was conveying money away’ and to relate (14 Jan.) that Digby had passed through Kingston-on-Thames, where he told assembled ‘cavaliers’ (presumably the militia) that Charles appreciated their loyalty and was leaving London ‘to save them for being trampled in the mire’.53PJ i. 43, 72.

By this time Evelyn’s nephew had also returned to Parliament and the boundaries between their respective activities again become blurred. D’Ewes was perhaps confused when he recorded that ‘Evelyn of Hampshire’ (i.e. Wiltshire) took to the Lords on 17 January a message relating to removing ordnance from Vauxhall in the searches for arms, but both may have been involved.54PJ i. 92-3, 97. Both appear to have been on the committee considering further help for Ireland (24 Jan.), where Evelyn of Wiltshire, judging by his general profile, was probably at this point the more prominent.55CJ ii. 391a, 400a; PJ i. 144, 146, 149, 151. The nephew was also the man engaged with the security of Parliament and with communications with the City of London and the king, on which the uncle probably took a softer line. During debate on propositions to be sent to the king regarding the treaty with the Scots (11 Feb.), Evelyn of Surrey, our MP, objected to a militant speech from William Strode I*, taking ‘exceptions, interrupting and reproving him for it’.56Harl. 164, f. 295b. On the other hand, during a spring when Parliament continued to secure its access to armaments, Evelyn of Surrey’s role on the ‘committee for powder’ involved what were, in effect, preparations for war. It was surely he who headed a group sent to view a ship loaded with saltpetre on its arrival in the docks (19 Feb.).57CJ ii. 442b. Three weeks later (10, 12 Mar.) he reported detailed proposals for obtaining musket, pistol and cannon powder and an undertaking from Samuel Cordwell, his successor in the monopoly, to ‘furnish the House with near upon £5,000 worth’ of powder in monthly consignments; when the plans were accepted, he was in charge of obtaining from the City the wherewithal to pay for it.58CJ ii. 476a; PJ ii. 22, 31.

It is possible that at this juncture such responsibilities – still evident in the summer, when he, Cordwell and others were again sent to inspect a cargo of saltpetre – constituted the bulk of Evelyn’s parliamentary service.59CJ ii. 633b, 647a, 653b. In the intervening period the only other issue with which he can be confidently connected in the Journal and in diaries is Ireland, where he adventured a total of £1,800 between 8 April and 2 July, and here too his experience was in evidence.60CSP Ireland Adv. p. 90. In April he and Samuel Vassall* were ordered by the Commission for Irish Affairs to test powder and match stored in London ready for despatch.61PJ ii. 423, 424. By mid-May Evelyn had concluded that the committee charged with raising contribution money for campaigning in Ireland was inefficient and should be replaced and on 7 June, perhaps at the instigation of his nephew, he was substituted for commissioners for Irish affairs in talks with the City.62PJ ii. 325; CJ ii. 611a. A rare indication of direct engagement with domestic politics came the next day, when he proposed a motion regarding the circulation of the pamphlet, A True and Perfect Relation of the Particular Passages at York, a partisan account of events in and around the king’s northern headquarters.63PJ iii. 42. On the 11th, when MPs gave their pledges for the defence of Parliament, Evelyn promised two horses and riders, but apparently left it to his nephew to galvanise others into action.64PJ iii. 476.

For three months from early July, Evelyn of Surrey was absent from any parliamentary record. On 8 October he promised £200 towards the war effort, encouraged perhaps by the fact that his nephew was chairman of the committee managing contributions.65CJ ii. 801b; PJ iii. 351. But on the 25th he requested more time to consider whether to agree to the vote endorsing Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as commander-in-chief of the parliamentary armies. Since refusal to give an immediate answer was held to ‘destroy the course of the proceedings of Parliament’, he was initially sentenced to suspension from the House and imprisonment in the Tower of London. But following ‘the mediation of his nephew and some other friends’ he was allowed a second chance and became persuaded not only to affirm the vote but also offer to lend £100, whereupon the sentence was revoked.66CJ ii. 822b; Add. 31116, p. 7. In a development which appears to confirm the influence of Evelyn of Wiltshire, only three days later ‘Sir John Evelyn the elder’ was appointed to a new standing committee to review money, plate and horse arriving at Westminster from the counties.67CJ ii. 825b. Within the week he was also nominated as a deputy lieutenant for Surrey – where he had possibly been reinstated as a justice of the peace following dismissal by the king – and, although there is no trace of formal approval of this in the Lords’ Journal, it was presumably he who acted in this capacity to oversee the placing of ‘very sufficient guards’ in Southwark and Lambeth as royalist forces threatened the capital in mid-November.68CJ ii. 831a, 833a, 850a.

Yet it seems that Evelyn’s qualms were not dispelled. After a winter with no certain or even likely committee appointments, in contrast to his nephew, he seemed to reveal the anxieties of a sizeable number of Members on 21 April 1643, when he ‘moved that it was fit the House did know the state of our armies and what my lord general did at Reading’.69Harl. 164, f. 376b. It might have been he who was appointed to the committee investigating information that certain inhabitants of Reading had taken a protestation against Parliament (6 May), but the balance of probability is weighted towards Evelyn of Wiltshire, who had a high profile.70CJ iii. 74b.

What emerged a few months later may thus have been less of a surprise in relation to Evelyn the uncle than Evelyn the nephew, and commensurately to have engendered less outrage. On 24 August John Pym* revealed to the Commons a communication from Colonel Harbert Morley* containing a letter ‘of dangerous consequence’ from Evelyn of Wiltshire to his uncle which seemed to imply that the pair had discussed going to the king’s headquarters at Oxford. Morley was quartered around Petworth, Sussex, where Evelyn of Wiltshire and other MPs were staying with Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, and may have been primed to intercept messengers leaving a residence suspected of nurturing potential political defectors. Both Evelyns were immediately summoned to Westminster in custody in order that they could not communicate and agree a cover story.71CJ iii. 217b; Harl. 165, f. 156a-b; Add. 18778, f. 20. On examination, Evelyn of Surrey (tellingly named by one diarist, ‘Evelyn powder’) confessed that ‘there had been communication between him and his nephew about some satisfaction to be given to his Majesty at Oxford on his behalf’, but claimed that this was ‘in a particular or two of no great moment’. When it was put to him that the letter related instead to a plan to go to the Isle of Wight to seek protection or counsel from its governor, Philip Herbert, 4th earl of Pembroke – the gloss offered, unbeknown to Evelyn of Surrey, by his nephew – he ‘did utterly deny’ it. According to D’Ewes, Evelyn of Surrey ‘did upon his coming into the House carry himself as a gallant and honest man’. His version of events was found less unconvincing that of Evelyn of Wiltshire, but still deficient: on 26 August Pym, Sir Gilbert Gerard* and Sir Walter Erle* reported that Evelyn of Surrey

had not answered clearly and ingenuously to them, whereupon after some debate it was ordered that he should be sent prisoner to be kept in safe custody in the house of the lord mayor in London.72CJ iii. 218b, 219a; Add. 18778, f. 22a; Harl. 165, ff. 156b, 158a, 179b,

After further examinations and debate on 28 August ‘the House was almost fully satisfied that the answers of Sir John Evelyn, the uncle, were nearer the truth than those of his nephew’s’, but since the suspicion of intention to desert Parliament still stood, both were kept in custody of the serjeant-at-arms and suspended from the House pending investigation.73CJ iii. 221a, 222a; Harl. 165, f. 159a. Meanwhile, William Wheler*, who had been staying at Godstone, was spared further attention.

Evelyn of Surrey remained in prison until 3 November, when in a poorly-attended Commons Sir Henry Cholmley*, Sir Edward Partheriche* and 23 others secured an eight-vote majority for his release on bail. The conditions were to be set by Isaac Penington*, the out-going lord mayor of London, with the attached proviso that Evelyn could not return to Surrey.74CJ iii. 300b, 301a. However, on the 15th he presented a medical certificate from Dr John Clerke attesting to his ‘languishing condition’ and this proved sufficient to procure liberty to go to Godstone ‘for the better recovery of his health … giving his promise to return to London again, when he shall be well recovered’.75CJ iii. 313a. When on 22 January 1644 the Commons disabled some Members for deserting to the king, Evelyn was among those respited.76CJ iii. 374b. Perhaps it was the general review of absentees which led to the revival on 7 February of the ‘committee for the examination of the two Sir John Evelyns’. Wheler – potentially a friendly face – was among those added to its membership and fresh examinations were ordered.77CJ iii. 390b. Another encouraging sign was a discharge on assessment from the Committee for Advance of Money (26 Feb.).78CCAM, 300. But it was probably a measure of the factional fighting in the chamber that, after further reports, debate and additions to the ‘Evelyns’ committee, the Commons concluded on 2 March that it had come to no resolution on a matter it deemed ‘a matter of great difficulty, and much concerning the most essential privileges of Parliament’.79CJ iii. 405a, 409a, 414a. It was only on 27 September, following a petition from Evelyn of Wiltshire to be ‘restored to the former good opinion’ – and probably on the coat-tails of a political deal brokered for Evelyn of Wiltshire by William Pierrepont* – that Evelyn of Surrey was, with his nephew, re-admitted to the House.80CJ iii. 640b.

Even then, both men kept a low profile for several months thereafter. However, the establishment of the New Model army put Evelyn of Surrey’s skills at a premium. On 17 February 1645 he and his nephew were nominated to the committee to raise the £80,000 agreed to be necessary for the purpose, while he was added to the committee for recruitment.81CJ iv. 52a. In March he was one of the half-dozen MPs selected to make contracts for provision of arms, ammunition and other stores, being re-appointed to the enlarged committee with wider powers set up in June.82CJ iv. 78a, 178b. Appropriately, he was also named to work on the ordinance for improving the taking of public accounts (26 Apr.).83CJ iv. 123b. It testified to confidence in his position or to factional backing, or both, that on 31 March he ventured to accuse radical MP Roger Hill II* of scornful words against fellow Members. When Hill denied having had said ‘that if the devil himself came in question in the House of Commons, he would find some advocate’, Evelyn ‘replied that seeing [Hill] had the impudency to deny it, he would prove it by several witnesses’.84Harl. 166, f. 196a.

Political rehabilitation was also manifest in Evelyn’s nomination on 23 June to the committee investigating the compromising royal papers seized at the battle of Naseby.85CJ iv. 183b. He had a handful of other appointments in the summer. One related to his long-term interest in the settlement of Ireland (1 July), while another reflected the important role of leading Members and militia commissioners from the home counties in supporting the campaign to capture Oxford (10 July).86CJ iv. 191a, 201a, 203b. But there then followed eight months in which there is no certain mention of him in the Journal and every likelihood that most or all of the ambiguous references to ‘Sir John Evelyn’ were to the younger man. The explanation for this is elusive, as is the degree to which Evelyn of Surrey shared the viewpoint which underpinned his nephew’s rise to prominence as an Independent grandee.

It is somewhat suggestive that the older man re-emerges from the shadows in company with the younger. On 9 March 1646 they were tellers together against Sir Arthur Hesilrige* (of whom Evelyn of Wiltshire was otherwise often a partner) in the case of the discharge from delinquency of a Sussex recusant.87CJ iv. 471a. Two days later Evelyn of Surrey alone received another nomination to review army accounts.88CJ iv. 472b. But it was not until some weeks later, after William Wheler, a stalwart of such activity, had promoted his petition for recovery of a £1,000 debt from the estate of delinquent Sir George Strode, that Evelyn attained any sustained visibility.89CJ iv. 536a. Added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers on 15 May, three weeks later he was named among the commissioners for exclusion from the sacrament, although somewhat further down the list than his nephew.90CJ iv. 545b, 562b. With the surrender of Oxford in prospect, in June and July he was three times placed on committees related to negotiations with the Scots and on the 12th made one of his rare outings as a messenger to the Lords with ordinances appointing circuit judges and the governor of Caernarfon and granting pardons for delinquency.91CJ iv. 552a, 570b, 574b, 586b, 606b.

Wheler’s ordinance for reimbursing Evelyn from Sir George Strode’s estate received its first reading on 6 July. Afterwards Evelyn was named co-chairman with John Glynne* of a committee devising means to satisfy other creditors of delinquents excepted from composition.92CJ iv. 603a. As he revealed on 27 October – the ordinance for his own benefit having duly passed (17 Sept. 1646) – he was not invariably hard on the delinquents: with Edward Bayntun* he was a teller for the majority prepared to moderate the burden on one Thomas Bradwell of Buckinghamshire.93CJ iv. 670b, 707a.

Until May 1647 Evelyn was apparently engaged fairly regularly in important business, especially in his areas of special interest. He was named to committees to raise money and to sell episcopal and delinquent lands (8 Sept., 30 Oct. 1646; 27 Feb. 1647).94CJ iv. 663a, 710b; v. 99b. He had several religious appointments: the publication of the Septuagint bible (16 Oct. 1646); the examination of objectionable passages in Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici arguing for Presbyterianism by divine right (12 Dec.); and the ordinance excluding ministers who had supported the royalist cause from church, academic and charitable office (22 Mar. 1647).95CJ iv. 695a; v. 11a, 119b. Among several other nominations implying a certain standing in the House or political influence were those to nominate sheriffs and vet lists of justices of the peace (30 Oct. 1646) and to compose differences between Algernon Sidney, 4th earl of Northumberland, and Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke (2 Dec.).96CJ iv. 709b, 735b; v. 6b, 35a.

By spring 1647, however, the confrontation between Presbyterians who sought to disband the army and recruit troops for Ireland, and Independents and New Model elements who resisted such moves, probably presented Evelyn with a difficult dilemma. He had attended the Star Chamber Committee of Irish affairs in the previous year and may have imbibed some of the enthusiasm of Sir Philip Stapilton* and Sir John Clotworthy* for the project, but his experience in establishing the New Model may equally have pulled him the other way.97CSP Ireland, 1633-47, p. 495. Placed perhaps automatically on the committee which addressed the concerns of General Sir Thomas Fairfax* and his troops at Saffron Walden on 27 March, he was named on 23 April to consider partisan papers circulating in Essex. On the latter occasion he was listed third after Denzil Holles* and Sir Robert Harley* and before Sir John Maynard*, Evelyn of Wiltshire, and then Commissary-general Henry Ireton* and Lieutenant-general Oliver Cromwell*: the positioning suggested that he had at this point lined up with the Presbyterians.98CJ v. 127b, 153a.

Whatever the truth of this, as the project to dissolve the army ran into further trouble, Evelyn seems to have chosen to absent himself from the House. There is no clear evidence that he participated in the coup, counter-coup and factional manoeuvring of 1647. His only certain committee appointment between 27 May 1647, when he was named to consider a petition from the Weavers’ Company, and 11 February 1648, was (with Wheler) to discuss the ordinance regulating the payment of tithes (15 Sept.).99CJ v. 187a, 302a. On 23 December 1647 he was one of four Surrey Members despatched to Surrey to hasten the payment of assessments.100CJ v. 400b.

The Evelyns came together in February 1648 over the declaration defending the Vote of No Addresses to the king. In three divisions on this issue (11 Feb.), the uncle told twice and the nephew once on it.101CJ v. 462a. When royalist insurrection threatened Surrey later in the spring, Evelyn of Surrey was presumably the man included among those deputed to draw up instructions for local MPs to deploy on the ground (20 May).102CJ v. 566b. A week later he was a teller with Sir Walter Erle* for the majority against an addition to the Derby House Committee: minority tellers Colonel William Purefoy I* and Thomas Scot I* doubtlessly intended this as a bid to deal more ruthlessly with the crisis.103CJ v. 576a. Instructed to find money for securing Farnham Castle (29 June) and to slight Stoborough Castle if it proved indefensible (4 July), on 7 July he arrived in Reigate ‘expecting’, according to a royalist account of the insurgency, ‘to parley with’ the rebel leader and turncoat parliamentarian Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland. It was this apparently cordial encounter between the slippery earl and ‘the sublimated parliamentarian’ which, the narrative ran, led to the collapse of the whole enterprise, with many soldiers melting away as they talked.104CJ v. 616b; SP21/24, f. 171; The Decoy, or a Practice of the Parliaments (1648), 3, 5 (E.453.40). If Evelyn consciously set out to defuse the situation through dialogue, then he succeeded. A few days later he was back in London, appointed to committees to reorganise the militia in and about the metropolis and to investigate Holland’s fellow rebels.105CJ v. 630a, 631b.

On 1 September he was nominated with Sir Walter Erle, fellow Surrey grandee Sir Richard Onslow* and others to seek a loan from the City ‘for the necessary carrying on of the Treaty’ at Newport.106CJ v. 697b. Continuing commitment to the negotiations was manifest when he was a teller (7 ?and 8 Nov.) in divisions regarding those who would be exempted from pardon and nominated to a committee attempting to satisfy the arrears of the army (22 Nov.).107CJ vi. 71a, 71b, 83b. In the meantime, he had been nominated as an elder for the Reigate classis (16 Feb. 1648) and was associated with those who had not forgotten the grievances which had first exercised the Long Parliament, being appointed (28 Mar.) to work on ordinances compensating the Feoffees for Impropriations, who had fallen foul of Archbishop Laud’s drive to assert control over parishes, and (24 Oct.) Dr John Bastwick, who had suffered in the prerogative courts.108Shaw, Hist of English Church, ii. 434; CJ v. 519a; vi. 60a.

Evelyn was named in one of the contemporary lists of Members secluded at Pride’s Purge.109A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62). The failure of the treaty signalled Evelyn’s departure from the House; he did not sit after the army had so dramatically intervened on 6 December. Over the next 11 years he lived in mostly in retirement, in close touch with his nephew Evelyn of Wiltshire and with his cousin, John Evelyn the diarist, although as early as May 1649 he was to be found visiting London.110Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, ed. W. Bray (1906), 195, 227, 558; Hist. of the Evelyn Family, 202–3. Despite provision for payment in an ordinance of 5 June 1648, he was still pursuing the debt due from Strode: the issue again came before the Commons in June 1651.111A. and O. ; CJ vi. 583b. Referred back to the Committee for Compounding and delayed by Strode’s belated appearance to compound, it was unresolved in January 1652.112CCC 525, 544, 2049–50. Evelyn drew land in Leinster in 1653, although that December he assigned it to Thomas Vincent of Peckham.113SP63/283, f. 380; SP63/291, f. 224.

Evelyn returned to the Commons in February 1660 with others excluded in December 1648. In the remaining weeks of the Long Parliament he received four committee nominations. Two related to the settlement of ministers in livings and other religious matters (29 Feb.; 15 Mar.); a third was to a new joint committee for maimed soldiers and others requiring charitable assistance (1 Mar.); and a fourth (with his nephew) was to discuss the act for calling a new Parliament (9 Mar.).114CJ vii. 855b, 857a, 868b, 877a. In the jockeying for influence, Evelyn was probably allied to both religious and political Presbyterian elements, but through his cousin the diarist he also had access to royalist networks.

Evelyn was re-elected to the Convention, where his Presbyterian sympathies were overtly expressed, but that was his last appearance in Parliament.115HP Commons 1660-1690. He remained sociable and hospitable, but managed to avoid appointment in 1663 as sheriff of Surrey.116Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, 230, 263. In his will, drawn up that April, he expressed his considerable piety and referred to Charles I as ‘the best of men’. Differences with his eldest son and namesake, who had been created a baronet at the Restoration, led to his leaving as much land as he could to his younger surviving son, George (of Nutfield), who was named his executor.117Hist. of the Evelyn Family, 204-6. He died in January 1664.118Hist. of the Evelyn Family, 203. Both his sons sat in Parliament for Surrey constituencies.119HP Commons 1660-1690.