EVELYN, Sir John (1601-85), of West Dean, Wilts.

Evelyn’s career in the Long Parliament ran at certain points in parallel with that of his uncle and namesake, John Evelyn of Surrey*, who was only a decade older. Their committee appointments overlapped; they periodically undertook similar tasks, spoke on similar subjects, and adopted identical standpoints. The frequent failure of clerks and diarists to specify which man was meant after 25 June 1641, when the uncle was knighted and hence they also shared a title, sometimes renders it impossible to distinguish their individual activity. However, there is no doubt that it was the nephew and subject of this article who was consistently the more prominent. It was ‘Evelyn of Wilts.’ who was a member of the Committee of Safety set up by Parliament in July 1642, a front-rank Independent in the Commons in the mid-1640s, and in 1648 a member of the Derby House Committee and a key negotiator for peace. Much about him remains elusive, including the extent of his wealth, the origins of his political alliances, the nature of his links with the City of London (insofar as they persisted), and the detail of his ideology (insofar as it moved him). The twists and turns of his career can be viewed as the pursuit of the narrow interests of family and friends (to whom he was evidently attached) or as a consistent, even principled, attempt to steer a middle course through treacherous seas in changeable weather. While the absence of lengthy speeches and of alternative glimpses of his mindset is problematic, there is no doubting his stature in the Commons, especially as a teller marshalling opinion and as a manager of relations with the Lords. Both in the early days of the civil war and in the later 1640s, he was widely identified as a leader of a ‘junto’ of peers and MPs whose chief goal was a negotiated settlement safeguarding traditional aristocratic liberties and lay control of the church.

Early career and associates

Evelyn’s parliamentary service, like that of his uncle, had unremarkable beginnings. Elected to the 1626 Parliament, probably on the interest of William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke, Evelyn spoke once and had one committee appointment. He does not seem to have sought a seat in 1628.35HP Commons 1604-1629. But at this juncture he was an untried youth in his twenties, with a father and paternal grandfather still living, and without experience in local government. His public life appeared to rest as much on his fortunate marriage to a co-heiress of a London merchant, on the accompanying settlement of family lands in Surrey and on expectations of further inheritance, as on any personal influence on the Wiltshire/Hampshire border area of Everleigh and West Dean, where his grandfather had acquired and his father consolidated estates.36Hist. Evelyn Fam. 489; Abstracts Wilts. IPMs Chas. I, 228-9.

By 1640 much had changed. His father had died in January 1636 leaving an estate potentially worth a substantial £2,000 a year, but for the time being burdened with about £7,000 of debts and annuities. The financial problems anticipated by at least one commentator in 1636 were probably not severe in the medium to long term, crisis being averted apparently by co-operation between Evelyn and his younger brother Arthur and by sale of some land to John Evelyn of Surrey, but even the unexpectedly prompt reversion to Arthur of their father’s Six Clerks’ office required an initial payment of £3,000 to the king.37Hist. Evelyn Fam. 489; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 269; Hants RO, 5M50/2468. Meanwhile, on the eve of the Short Parliament Evelyn had a decade of experience as a local commissioner and then a justice of the peace.38C181/4, ff. 17v, 105v; C193/13/2, f. 73v; C231/5, p. 213; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 38; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 177, 178. He was well integrated into the gentry community of south-east Wiltshire, simultaneously on good terms with neighbours like William Ashbournham* of Tidworth, with whom he served at quarter sessions, and with Walter Long* of Whaddon, his former brother-in-law. This was notwithstanding the fact that the former, with his brother John Ashburnham*, was in favour at court and that both profited from the fine imposed on Long for his opposition to it in the 1628–9 Parliament. Although by then residing with his second wife in Shropshire, Long named Evelyn as an executor in his draft will of December 1637.39CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 488; Wilts RO, 947/1676/3. It seems likely, in the light of future events, that Evelyn also had contacts on the corporation of nearby Salisbury, and that he had some association with Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, whose seat was just to the west of the city. It is possible that, at the end of the 1630s, he already had some link, independently or through Ashbournham, with the latter’s commander in the Scottish wars, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland.

On the other hand, while the Ashburnhams were close associates of the Nicholas family, a once cordial relationship between Evelyn and Dr Matthew Nicholas, rector of West Dean and other parishes where Sir John had land, appears to have soured. Nicholas had tutored Arthur Evelyn at Oxford and preached his patron George Evelyn’s funeral sermon, but when following his promotion to the deanery of Bristol he ventured to nominate a successor at West Dean, he was thwarted.40CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 585; Hist. Evelyn Fam. 489-91, 495. As he told his brother, secretary of state Sir Edward Nicholas, in September 1639, Sir John had given him ‘a flat denial’. Nicholas suspected that he meant to present ‘a kinsman of his name’, but Evelyn had replied ‘only that the contentment of his living ... will depend much on the society of the parson and therefore he is unwilling to make a change but of his own choice’.41Hist. Evelyn Fam. 503. That that choice excluded those associated (as Nicholas was) with the Laudian establishment in the church is a distinct possibility, while the reported comment provides a rare indication that religion was important to Sir John.

In company with other leading Wiltshire gentlemen, in the later 1630s Evelyn also showed himself markedly reluctant to implement government policy. He was among magistrates reproved in May 1637 for unwillingness to act on an order of the previous June to supply timber for the navy, while in February 1638 the assize judge at Salisbury summoned him to answer for non-payment of tax and in 1639 he sent excuses for not subscribing to the loan for wars against the Scots.42CSP Dom. 1637, p. 137; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 137; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 912. Since he had remained close to Long, he may also have harboured some resentment at the punishment the latter had suffered following his opposition to the crown in the Parliament of 1628-9.

Emerging ‘man of note’, 1640-2

It was probably as a local landowner standing on his own interest that Evelyn, partnered by Ashbournham, was elected to sit for Ludgershall on 23 March 1640, although some backing from Pembroke cannot be excluded.43C219/42 pt. ii, no. 58. His sole nomination was to the privileges committee (16 Apr.).44CJ ii. 4a. His two recorded contributions to debate, both concerning Ship Money, are somewhat opaque, but he seemed to be arguing that it was at least a moot point whether judgements in a particular related case − presumably he had in mind that against John Hampden* − might be applied to every other related case.45Aston’s Diary, 103, 142. At any rate, he does not seem to have made any significant impact in the chamber.

In October 1640 Evelyn and Ashbournham were again returned for Ludgershall, while John Evelyn of Surrey (still ‘Mr Evelyn’), who had not sat in the spring, was elected for the Surrey seat of Bletchingley. Both Evelyns promised £1,000 as security for the City levy for the relief of the armies in the north on 21 November and both soon gained a somewhat higher profile in parliamentary proceedings than heretofore.46Procs. LP i. 228, 232, 235. In the first five weeks of the session Sir John received six committee nominations, all related to the perceived abuses of government and its agents during the 1630s and covering religious grievances – the contrasting cases of Dr Alexander Leighton, victim of star chamber (13 Nov.), and of Dr Roger Manwaring, promoted in the face of contrary resolutions in the 1628-9 Parliament (27 Nov.) – as well as extra-parliamentary taxation, monopolies and judicial decisions.47CJ ii. 28b, 30a, 38a, 39b, 50b His two contributions to debate in this period were once again brief and revealed little more than a certain caution: on 24 November he observed that a proposed guard for Members would only protect them while in the House, while the next day he moved for summoning king’s counsel to be present as criticism of royal policy was articulated into bills and articles.48Procs. LP i. 250, 270.

For seven weeks from mid-December 1640 to 8 February 1641 there is no evidence of Evelyn’s attendance, but by the time of his return (if that is what it was) he seems to have got into his stride, with an average of half a dozen committee nominations in each of the next five months. Although some of these, like his first appearance as a teller (24 Feb.), related to land settlements and other private petitions, the majority concerned burning political issues and increased his visibility in the House.49CJ ii. 85b, 91b, 94a, 95a, 103, 108a, 128b, 151b, 187b. Added on 23 February to the committee reviewing alleged breach of privilege in the 1628-9 Parliament, he was also named to reform disorders in elections (30 Mar.).50CJ ii. 91a, 114a Having spoken for the committal of the petition against bishops (8 Feb.), he was placed on committees dealing with key aspects of religious legislation, including the disablement of clergy from holding temporal office (8 Mar.), the suppression of pluralism (10 Mar.), the punishment of participants in the late and controversial Convocation (27 Apr.) and the prosecution of recusants (26 Mar., 6 May).51Procs. LP ii. 391; CJ ii. 99a, 100b, 113b, 119a, 129a, 136b, 155a, 177b. While his uncle was more audible on such subjects as the quality of the ministry and the eradication of superstition, it was Sir John who sought expedition of the bill abolishing bishops through discussion by a committee of the whole house (27 May, ?21 July).52CJ ii. 159a; Procs. LP vi. 38. He had several committee appointments relating to past and future taxation and borrowing money (30 Apr.; 17, 18 June; 5 July); his engagement with this is suggested by a motion of 12 July related to the collection of poll tax.53CJ ii. 130b, 143a, 178b, 180a, 199a; Procs. LP v. 603, 607. One of seven MPs chosen to prepare the Protestation (23 Apr.), he took the oath on 3 May and sat on the committee entrusted with its dissemination (5 May).54CJ ii. 127a, 133a, 136a. On 10 May he revealed his concerns that there was ‘a great store of arms in Lambeth House and Croydon House belonging to the archbishop of Canterbury’, whereupon he was despatched to search them out. With significant promptness he reported before lunch that day that there were weapons for 200 men and five barrels of powder, ‘more arms than at any three noblemen’s houses’.55Procs. LP iv. 299, 299, 303, 305; CJ ii. 141a. No doubt as a result of this on the 11th he was among those delegated to prepare for a conference with the Lords on disorder.56CJ ii. 143b. Notwithstanding this and in spite of, or perhaps because of, what was to become a habitual distrust of the Scots (first recorded in debate on 27 Feb.), he sat on the committee for disbanding the armies in the north (10 June), and subsequently reported from a conference on the subject (9 July).57Procs. LP ii. 577; CJ ii. 172b, 205a..

However, the issue which brought Evelyn to prominence and from which flowed numerous other employments was the prosecution of Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, lord deputy of Ireland. It also entailed working closely with the solicitor-general, Oliver St John*, although it was to be a long time before a particular association between the pair was explicitly noted. Included in a committee which conferred with the Lords on 6 March about the earl’s prospective trial, Evelyn was despatched to the upper chamber on the 25th to seek another conference, with the first of what were to be many messages delivered to the Lords – a clear indicator of his having allies there.58CJ ii. 98a, 113a. Following the attack on the trial on 21 April by erstwhile critic of royal policy, George Digby*, Lord Digby, Evelyn sought and obtained further such consultation (22 Apr.).59CJ ii. 126a. The following day, according to Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, he initiated debate, manifesting simultaneously a keen desire to proceed on both Digby’s speech and the trial, and an awareness of the difficulties likely to be encountered from peers and the king.60Procs. LP iv. 77. Pursuing the ramifications of the speech became his particular responsibility when it was published unofficially, and the duty ran in tandem with his chairmanship of a committee reviewing printing more generally.61CJ ii. 136a, 167a; Procs. LP iv. 715. After repeated postponements – in the teeth of pressure from Digby for the evidence against him to be announced – Evelyn finally reported on 13 July.62CJ ii. 163a, 173a, 207a, 208b; Procs. LP iv. 675, 679, 682, 689, 725, 728. The committee’s conclusion, not only confirming that no Member could publish things spoken in the House without its sanction, but also asserting that the speech contained ‘matters untrue and scandalous’ and ordering that it be burnt publicly, was itself published. Evelyn’s role in it was plain to see, George Thomason’s annotation of his copy leaving no doubt that it was the Wiltshire MP.63Sir John Evelyn’s Report (1641, E.163.6). It was thus also this man who prepared a petition to the king requesting that he forbear to employ Digby (as on projected embassy; 13 July), who almost certainly sat on the committee framing a bill controlling the printing and importation of books (24 July), and who reported a conference with the Lords about a printed paper attacking the Protestation (2 Aug.).64CJ ii. 209b, 222b, 232b. It is notable that he was not, on the other hand, involved in investigation of the so-called ‘army plot’, unfolding at this juncture. At its heart, allegedly, were both Northumberland’s brother Henry Percy* and William Ashbournham: Evelyn’s absence from the those pursuing the case may be an indicator of an established or developing link with the earl, or lingering amity with Ashburnham, or both.

By 19 July it had reached William Calley in north Oxfordshire that ‘Sir John Evelyn’ had emerged as ‘a man of note’ in Parliament.65CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 54. Even if Calley knew of the creation of a second Sir John on 25 June – a new knight who must by definition have been thought more pliable to royal will – he must have been referring to the Wiltshire MP. Given his record, it was surely this man who on 28 June was named second to confer with the Lords on the ten propositions of John Pym* for parliamentary control of the militia and of government appointments, and very probably also to discuss an act to better enable Members to discharge their consciences in parliamentary proceedings (28 June), to join those investigating the former secretary of state Sir Francis Windebanke* (10 July), and to confer with the Lords (12 July).66CJ ii. 190b, 198b, 205b, 207a.

Thereafter disentangling the careers of nephew and uncle becomes more problematic. It may be that for some scribes ‘Sir John’ remained for some time the Member for Ludgershall, but there are sufficient instances where a diarist specified ‘of Surrey’ where the Journal does not to enjoin caution. It is even possible that the pair were occasionally regarded as so alike in their interests and capabilities as to be interchangeable. Of five committee nominations (three involving private cases), an order and a division between 4 and 28 August 1641, for example, none can be ascribed with certainty. It can only be suggested that (on the strength of constructive action a few months later) Evelyn of Surrey was the Member nominated in connection with the bill for securing arrears of assistance to the Scots (5 Aug.), while Evelyn of Wiltshire was more likely to have been ordered to take the names of those who lingered in the Painted Chamber during the impeachment of the bishops (3 Aug.) and (in view of his later membership of the Admiralty Committee) delegated to review the state of the navy (25 Aug.).67CJ ii. 233b, 235a, 239a, 242a, 250b, 271b. On 28 August ‘Sir John Evelyn’ was given leave to go into the country, ‘his house being visited with smallpox’.68CJ ii. 275a. That south Wiltshire Member Michael Oldisworth*, Pembroke’s secretary, was granted leave the same day might be some slight indicator towards the nephew, but in view of the subsequent prolonged absence of both men it may be that their households were similarly afflicted.

There is no record of Evelyn of Surrey’s attendance until 2 December, when D’Ewes noted his offer to negotiate a house in Coleman Street as lodging for the Scottish commissioners.69D’Ewes (C), 223; CJ ii. 330a. He linked the older man to several activities that month, rendering it possible that the nephew returned only by the 20th or 27th (to nominations relating to disarming recusants, receipts from contested levies and propositions for Ireland) or alternatively not until mid-January 1642.70D’Ewes (C), 275, 287, 337-9; CJ ii. 340a, 349b, 354a, 354b, 357b, 357b, 360b. Their respective form indicates that it was more likely to have been Evelyn of Wiltshire who sat on the most politically-charged committees justifying Parliament, proclaiming the present dangers to the kingdom and conferring with the Lords on safety (12, 14, 17 Jan.) and almost certainly Evelyn of Surrey, a gunpowder monopolist, who was active on and eventually chaired a committee arranging supply of powder and arms.71CJ ii. 364b, 372a, 379b, 383b, 384b. However, D’Ewes appears to have been confused about which of them was responsible for searching for ammunition and arms in and around Vauxhall: two entries referring to ‘Evelyn of Hampshire’ could well be a mistake for ‘Wiltshire’, but, in the light of others, they were not incontrovertibly so.72CJ ii. 372b, 375b, 381a, 383b, 384b, 385a; D’Ewes (C), 397; Procs. LP i. 92, 93, 97. Perhaps both men were involved.

Between this time and mid-August there are a few references to Evelyn in the Journal that defy an obvious attribution; several relate to relatively uncontroversial economic matters or individual petitions.73CJ ii. 390b, 414b, 441b, 461a, 475a, 533b, 605a. It is conceivable that some nominations concerning finance and religion were more likely to have intended Evelyn of Surrey, but it was probably Evelyn of Wiltshire who sat on a small committee addressing the king’s response to the exclusion of clergy from temporal office (8 Feb; having worked on the measure 11 months earlier); his colleagues in this included William Pierrepont* and Nathaniel Fiennes I*, in whose company he was to be found increasingly over the life of the Parliament.74CJ ii. 409a, 419b, 448b, 496b, 500b, 565b, 576b, 591a, 598b, 622b, 623b, 629b; PJ i. 135-7, 261. Indeed, the bulk of references are almost certainly to Evelyn of Wiltshire, whose participation in proceedings emerges as narrowly focussed but of critical importance.

On his motion a committee was established to investigate the failure to intervene more effectively in Ireland in the aftermath of the rebellion and he was one of a trio of MPs who presented new intelligence to the lord deputy, the 2nd earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Sidney†, 24 Jan.).75CJ ii. 391a; PJ i. 144, 146, 149, 151. Although unsuccessful in an attempt to limit the proposed commissioners for Irish affairs to a manageable ten (4 Feb.), he appears to have been a key figure among the group appointed by Parliament on 24 February confirmed by the king on 21 April, and was still active in June.76CJ ii. 414a, 453b, 536b, 627b, 628a; PJ iii. 363. During this period he was often involved in Parliament’s negotiations with Charles over Ireland, was frequently a manager or reporter of associated conferences with the Lords and was among those who prepared the bill for reducing the rebels to obedience (5 Mar).77CJ ii. 400a, 450b, 458a, 461a, 468b.

In what began to look like a personal crusade, but was probably also another indication of his membership of a grouping around Northumberland, now increasingly alarmed at the tactics of ‘evil counsellors’, Evelyn continued to spearhead the proceedings against Lord Digby, who had fled to the Netherlands in January after his presumed coup attempt.78Cf. J. Adamson, ‘Of armies and architecture’, in Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution ed. I Gentles, J. Morrill, B. Worden (1998), 42. Among the leading Members present at the opening of intercepted letters from Digby urging those close to Charles to advise against compromise with Parliament (10, 14 Feb.), Evelyn moved for the examination by the House of several suspected of assisting in the correspondence. Notable among these was Digby’s elder half-brother Sir Lewis Dyve*, another convert from opposition to royal policy who had already been in the sights of Evelyn and others for electoral malpractice (2 Mar. 1641), for promoting the publication of Digby’s speech in support of Strafford and for suspected popery.79CJ ii. 95a, 424b, 431a, 433a, 439a; PJ i. 390, 404. Evelyn was involved in communicating with the king on the matter (18 Feb. 1642) and reported the conclusion of investigators that Digby had not only ‘made a strange progress of inveterate malice upon this House’ but also been an instigator of Charles’s attempt on 4 January to arrest the Five Members.80CJ ii. 439b, 443a; PJ i. 421-4. It was Evelyn who was despatched to the Lords to accuse Digby of high treason (22 Feb.) – which he could not have carried off without supporters there – and he who subsequently presented the articles of impeachment (25 Feb.), investigated the escape from the tower of Digby’s servant O’Neill (6 May), and kept proceedings on course until August, when they were interrupted by preparations for war.81CJ ii. 449a, 455a, 535a, 548a, 548b, 553b, 560b, 707a; PJ i. 439, 440, 465; ii. 243, 244.

Evelyn was also prominent in pursuing others considered to have maligned Parliament and its Members, disseminated inflammatory propaganda, encouraged the king to intransigence or otherwise undermined peace and Protestantism.82CJ ii. 393a, 394a, 404b, 501a, 501b, 512b; PJ ii. 126, 130. He overrode more moderate voices to press that Sir Ralph Hopton* suffer not only temporary imprisonment but also permanent disablement from sitting in the House for entertaining the introduction of popery and subversion of the kingdom (4 Mar.).83PJ i. 503. He was the chief prosecutor of Sir William Wilmore, sheriff of Northamptonshire, accused of promoting defiance of Parliament (28 Mar., 7 Apr.), and he advanced the impeachment of Attorney General Sir Edward Herbert* (14, 23 Apr.; 18 May).84CJ ii. 502a, 502b, 515b, 516a, 539b, 578a; PJ ii. 99, 169. It was probably he who was appointed to the committee considering what to do with those who refused the Protestation (16 Apr.) and more likely he than his uncle who reported (from a committee established on 25 Mar.) on the increasing number of Members absent without leave (19 May; 2, 30 June; division, 16 June); with Sir Arthur Hesilrige* he prepared a letter instructing sheriffs to command their appearance (1 June).85CJ ii. 496b, 530a, 579a, 598a, 626b, 627a, 644b; PJ ii. 345; iii. 1, 153.

‘One of the ringleaders to bring us to this present war’, 1642-3

All this activity would have been sufficient by itself to mark him out as a committed Parliament man. But throughout the spring and early summer he was also prominent on Commons’ and joint committee negotiating with the king, issuing justifications of parliamentary measures and sifting evidence of royal preparations for war.86CJ ii. 467a, 468b, 480b, 484b, 504b, 525b, 535b, 549a, 562a, 589a. An interest in the navy evinced in a division approving appointments (10 Mar.) and the chairmanship of a committee reviewing the Portsmouth garrison (24 Mar.) underlay his involvement in securing command of the navy for Parliament’s nominee, Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick (2, 4 Apr.).87CJ ii. 474b, 494b, 509a, 510b; PJ ii. 78. A participant in conferences and a messenger to the Lords in connection with Parliament’s removal of arms from Hull (and thus from proximity to the king) to London, he was among MPs deputed to refine a vote of indemnity for those executing the Houses’ Militia Ordinance, and to confer with the Lords about raising military companies while preventing their formation at York (12, 13, 16 May).88CJ ii. 531a, 550b, 551b, 568b, 570b, 574a.

Although Evelyn of Surrey was also visible in defence of Parliament, drawing attention to a printed account of events at York (4 June), in the estimation of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Evelyn of Wiltshire was ‘one of the ringleaders to bring us into this present war’.89PJ iii. 42; Harl. 165, f. 157. He reported from the committee set up to consider the defence of the kingdom the proposed response to news of the king’s mustering in the north and with Denzil Holles*, John Pym*, Sir Henry Vane II*, Fiennes and a handful of others he worked closely with the Lords (6, 8 June).90CJ ii. 608b, 609b, 612b, 614a, 615a, 615b, 616a, 616b, 617b; PJ iii. 49, 51. On 10 June he headed the list of Members registering promises of support (£200 and four horses in his case); his brother-in-law Walter Long was named second.91PJ iii. 57, 466. In a period of intense activity over the rest of June and early July, Evelyn of Wiltshire seems to have carried the burdens of committee work responding to the king’s declaration from York and devising measures to raise troops (on both of which he reported more than once and made several motions), of regular conferences with the Lords, and of carrying frequent messages to and from the Lords.92CJ ii. 620a, 622a, 623a, 625b, 630a, 632b, 633a, 633b, 635b, 636a, 646a, 647b, 648a, 651b, 654b, 662a; PJ iii. 81, 87, 88, 93, 94, 95, 195, 106, 111, 153. It was probably he who on 9 July with Denzil Holles told for the large majority supported a proposition for raising 10,000 volunteers in the City of London.93CJ ii. 663a.

On 11 July Evelyn and fellow Wiltshire deputy-lieutenant Sir Edward Hungerford* were ordered to go and oversee the execution of the Militia Ordinance and the raising of money in the county.94CJ ii. 664b. Hungerford stayed to command of the forces which assembled locally, but within a fortnight Evelyn seems to have returned to London, where he became in effect a liaison officer for the war in the west as well as a co-ordinator of more general preparations. He was a teller in support of proposals for bringing in arrears of money due upon acts passed during the Parliament (26 July) and took to the Lords instructions for payment (1 Aug.); the fact that one order was noted as being like that carried by William Pierrepont for Salop hints at their co-operative activity.95CJ ii. 691b, 699b, 700a. He reported the Lords’ agreement to the appointment of Sir Henry Vane as treasurer to the navy (8 Aug.) and probably, since it seemed to stem from his earlier work, on Members who had defaulted on their promises to provide money, horse and plate (10 Aug.).96CJ ii. 709b, 712b. As a member of the standing committee to investigate the proceedings of the king’s commissioners of array (25 July), he was a manager of a conference with the Lords over the receipt from Yorkshire of a justification of compliance with royalist demands (8 Aug.), subsequently reporting the Lords’ opinion ‘that this was one of the highest and most insolent petitions that ever came to Parliament’.97CJ ii. 689b, 710a. He probably chaired the standing committee since he also reported not only (and in detail) on hostile acts of the mayor of Salisbury but also on those of the mayors of St Albans and Hertford (29 July).98CJ ii. 696a, 696b. Meanwhile, his regional profile, if not a pre-existing association, made him an ally of Pembroke, Parliament’s lord lieutenant of Wiltshire. With Bulstrode Whitelocke*, John Selden* and a few others he drafted the ordinance making the earl governor of the Isle of Wight (6 Aug.) and it was probably he rather than his uncle who brought from the Lords agreement to the earl’s nomination as lord lieutenant of Kent (10 Aug.).99CJ ii. 706b, 708a, 713b.

For over two months Evelyn was then absent from the Journal. Plainly, he was not idle. Perhaps he was in again in Wiltshire raising men for Parliament.100Bodl. Rawl. D.942, f. 27. Perhaps he was in Westminster gathering funds: D’Ewes noted ‘Sir John Evelyn’ on 12 September as chairing the committee for contribution money, although the fact that it was specifically Evelyn of Surrey who was later nominated to the committee of accounts for this (28 Oct.) raises a doubt.101PJ iii. 351; CJ ii. 825b. At any rate, from the time Evelyn of Wiltshire reappeared on 19 October to prepare with Pym, Whitelocke and the Lords a commission for Pembroke as captain general of forces in the west, he enjoyed a high profile at Westminster which lasted until late the following summer.102CJ ii. 814a, 815b, 817a.

Evelyn’s stature in the House rested not so much on the number of his committee appointments, which were notably fewer than those of some other leaders, as in their nature and importance, together with his activity as a teller and a messenger to the Lords. He was a significant figure in the politics of relations with Parliament’s armies, and its lord general Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex (esp. 3 Nov 1642; 14 Jan., 1 July 1643), but he escaped the burden of administration that fell to men like Northumberland’s servant Robert Scawen*, Sir Robert Pye I* and William Wheler*.103CJ ii. 817b, 833a, 882b, 928a; iii. 12a, 69a, 73a, 74b, 91b, 93b; Harl. 165, f. 106. Since his uncle hesitated whether to commit himself to the cause – and was saved from arrest only after the mediation of his nephew and other friends (25 Oct.) – it was clearly the nephew who was involved in various further initiatives towards funding the war effort, or setting guards in and around London, or other subsidiary matters, as he also retained his interest in Ireland and the navy.104Add. 31116, p. 7; CJ ii. 850a, 971a; iii. 30a, 41a, 81b, 142a. It was plausibly he who sat on the committee receiving and sifting information from Members based primarily in their counties (28 Oct. 1642), a duty which naturally generated other business, and it must have been he who addressed regional matters such as the plight of parliamentarian prisoners taken at Marlborough and kept at Oxford (7 Mar. 1643).105CJ ii. 825a, 907b, 992a. Evelyn delivered to the House the complaints of Sir Edward Hungerford at his treatment by rival Wiltshire commander Sir Edward Bayntun* (14 Jan.) and, with Holles, Whitelocke and Pierrepont, sat on the committee which later attempted to resolve the ongoing feud between the two local grandees (27 May).106CJ ii. 928a; iii. 107a; Harl. 164, f. 276.

More critical, however, was Evelyn’s presence at the centre of power. On 28 October 1642 he was added to the Committee of Safety, bringing him into closer proximity to the likes of Pembroke and Pym; he attended 51 meetings and appended his signature to 142 documents, which just placed him among the more active half of its Commons Members, though perceptions may have set him higher.107CJ ii. 825b; Add. 63788B, f. 9; L. Glow, ‘The Committee of Safety’, EHR lxxx. 313; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 445. On Christmas Eve, for instance, the imprisoned Archbishop William Laud noted in his diary that his horse had been confiscated ‘by warrant under the hands of Sir John Evelyn, Master Pym, and Master [Henry] Marten*’.108W. Prynne, A Breviate of the Life of William Laud (1644), 27. Weeks earlier, as the king set off to march on London, he had signalled recognition of Evelyn’s importance as an enemy by excluding him, with Hungerford and the other Wiltshire deputy-lieutenants Walter Long and Sir Henry Ludlowe* from the royal declaration of pardon (2 Nov.). Ironically (and revelatory of his standing among his associates), Evelyn appears to have been chiefly responsible for the petition to the king devised following Parliament’s decision the same day to re-open negotiations. On the 5th the Commons confirmed his nomination to go with Pembroke, Northumberland, Pierrepont, Lord Wenman [Sir Thomas Wenman*] and Sir John Hippisley* to present it to Charles, but Parliament’s request for safe conduct for its envoys was rejected in respect of Evelyn alone. As Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, explained to the common council on the 8th when a party of parliamentarians (including Evelyn) went to justify their actions, ‘the king would not let him have a safe conduct, because he was one that was named by him a traitor the day before, and that was (as is thought) done on purpose to take him off from being one’. 109CJ ii. 833b, 834a, 836b, 840a; The Late Letters from Both Houses of Parliament (Oxford, 1642, E.1623); Three Speeches Spoken in Guild-hall (1642), 4 (E.126.44).

Wavering allegiance and suspension, 1643-4

The perception that the king had named Evelyn among those declared traitors specifically in order to exclude him from the ranks of negotiators may or may not have been correct, but it was an ad hominem exclusion that Evelyn publicly accepted. As reported at the time and cited later, he ‘voluntarily’ relinquished this particular service for Parliament, even as he conveyed to the Lords resolutions for proceeding with peace overtures acknowledged as ‘first moved by Sir John Evelyn himself’ and even though the House granted him liberty to choose whether or not to accompany them to Oxford (9 Nov.).110Perfect Diurnall no. 22 (7-14 Nov 1642), 5 (E.242.11); T. May, The History of the Parliament (1647), 32; CJ ii. 841b; Add. 18777, f. 173v. Expressing ‘his grief and unhappiness’ that he was ‘the man that should be a means to hinder a pacification’, he noted that ‘many are not satisfied that we be put into blood upon insisting upon a particular man’.111Add. 31116, p. 14; Add. 18777, f. 53v. Possibly this was a fine-sounding excuse to cover an aversion to the risk of a personal encounter with the king, but more likely it arose from a genuine conviction of the need for peace. As apparent here and also in a later remark in the Commons about responsibility to ‘give satisfaction to the world’ (21 Nov.), Evelyn had an eye to public opinion.112Add. 18777, f. 65. But this reorientation of his political priorities probably also had roots in dismay that a conflict expected to be brief and decisive was becoming prolonged and complicated.

In succeeding weeks Evelyn was prominent both in promoting robust negotiation with Charles I and as a lynchpin of communication with the Lords (12, 14 Nov.; 26 Dec.; 20, 27 Jan. 1643).113CJ ii. 822a, 845b, 849a, 903a, 935a, 945b. On 8 February, with the Hungerford-Bayntun feud simmering and Hopton and Prince Rupert making gains for the royalists in the west, Evelyn twice acted as a teller with Holles in divisions to expedite discussion of propositions from the king.114CJ ii. 959a, 959b; Add. 18777, f. 146v. He and Holles – insisting that this was not weak capitualation – then steered votes for appointing envoys to treat (9 Feb.) and acceptance of the royal line that there should be cessation of hostilities to enable this rather than waiting for disbandment of armies; the latter took two attempts before it was successful (11, 18 Feb.), but the pair went on to get their way over the choice of envoys, this time including Whitelocke as well as Pierrepont (28 Feb.).115CJ ii. 960b, 962b, 970b, 985b; Add. 18777, f. 151v. Meanwhile, Evelyn was involved in vindicating Parliament’s position and countering aspersions cast against him and others (especially Lord Saye and Nathaniel Fiennes, also in the Northumberland grouping) following the royal proclamations of the previous November.116CJ ii. 986b; Harl. 164, f. 314v. He and Holles were tellers for the majority who refused to jeopardise the pursuit of peace by considering intercepted correspondence between king and queen (10 Mar.) or by provocatively abandoning traditional accession day gun salutes at the Tower (25 Mar.), while together they later tried to muster support for prolonging the parliamentary agents’ stay in Oxford (1, 3 Apr.).117CJ ii. 998a; iii. 18a, 27b, 28a, 28b.

This effort proved fruitless, but, having parted company with Pym, Evelyn and Holles maintained a course as leaders of a discernable peace party in the Commons, intertwined with that around Northumberland and Pembroke in the Lords.118Adamson, ‘Of Armies and Architecture’, 44. Associations emerged, for example, when the Derbyshire county committee queried an order from the Committee of Safety requiring them to return confiscated money and iron at a works which belonged jointly to the earl of Pembroke and the royalist Sir William Savile*. ‘Hot spirits’ wished to concur with the Derbyshire gentlemen’s desire to keep the property out of enemy hands, but Evelyn moved on 20 April for awaiting an explanation from the earl’s right-hand-man Michael Oldisworth, the upshot presumably intended to be to the earl’s advantage. His seconder was Hampshire Member Sir William Lewis*, who had sat with Evelyn on committees on Ireland and Digby, and who had owed to Evelyn his leave from governorship of Portsmouth to attend Parliament (21 Jan.).119Harl. 164, ff. 280, 375v. The motion was carried, but the episode reveals both tensions in the localities and developing factionalism in the House.

On 12 May Evelyn took to the Lords, among other messages, the draft of a letter to be sent to the Scottish government complaining of incendiaries stirring up emnity between the king and his people, a clear attempt to stymie any renewed Anglo-Scottish alliance against Charles launched by those who balked at the cost.120CJ iii. 81b. Three days later Evelyn and Holles told for the minority who rejected the creation of a new great seal to assert Parliament’s independent authority, although Evelyn at least was included on the committee to take the matter forward, with the possibility of exercising moderating influence.121CJ iii. 86b, 92b. Their position undermined and their freedom of action curtailed by Pym’s revelation of the alleged plot by Edmund Waller*, one after the other on 6 June they took the new oath and covenant in support of Parliament’s war, and probably thanks to anti-Presbyterian Erastians like Fiennes and Selden as well as to backers in the Lords, Evelyn was the next day named a lay member of the Westminster Assembly.122CJ iii. 118a, 119b. A fortnight later, with royalist forces threatening various parliamentarian-held positions and opinion in the House apparently on a knife-edge, Holles and Evelyn were counterweighed as managers of discussions with the Lords concerning the peace of the kingdom by Pym and his ally Sir William Armyne*, a supporter of talks with the Scots (21 June).123CJ iii. 139a. Following the earl of Essex’s attempted resignation in the face of criticism from the war party of his inadequacies as a commander, Evelyn and Sir William Lewis were despatched to dissuade him (1 July).124CJ iii. 151b; Harl. 165, f. 106. But as the military outlook deteriorated further, Evelyn’s motives were probably complex. When the general’s recommendations to seek peace were debated in the Commons on 11 July the ever-prudent Simonds D’Ewes was surprised that after he had spoken in support, ‘neither Mr Pierrepont, Sir John Evelyn of any other did second me’. Their inaction did not betoken a lack of enthusiasm. Rather, they sought peace on their own terms. As D’Ewes learned later

these men expected that the Lords, who had another letter from the lord general of the same nature, would have voted the sending of propositions to the king and so reserved themselves to speak to the matter when that vote should come down.

This proved a serious tactical miscalculation. As D’Ewes soon discovered, peers had voted nine to seven against treating with the king.125Harl. 165, f. 125.

For the time being, all was not lost. Even as Evelyn narrowly lost a division for raising extra forces along established lines against more militant voices who sought alternative and potentially more effective measures (13 July), parliamentarian troops under Sir William Waller* were facing ignominious defeat at Roundway Down and prospect opened of the total loss of the west.126CJ iii. 165b. This temporarily strengthened peace-making sentiment in the House. On 5 and 6 August it looked as though Holles, Evelyn and their friends would persuade a majority of MPs to accept peers’ propositions to this end.127CJ iii. 195b, 196a. However, in an atmosphere of recrimination between the generals and rumours of treachery extending even to Pym, the hope was extinguished. On 7 August protesting London crowds threatened that, if the propositions passed the Commons, they would seize the men identified as the chief proponents, including Holles, Pierrepont, Evelyn, Lewis and the earl of Northumberland. Sufficient waverers then changed sides for the peace initiative to be narrowly defeated.128CJ iii. 196b, 197a; Harl. 165, f. 145v.

As its advocates scattered – some to Oxford and some to consideration of their next move – Evelyn also left London. On 24 August Pym produced in the Commons information sent from Sussex by Harbert Morley* that Evelyn ‘the younger’ and some other MPs were staying with Northumberland at Petworth. Local perception that their intention was to join the king had been reinforced by the interception of a letter ‘of dangerous consequence’ from Evelyn to his uncle Evelyn of Surrey. When a copy was read to MPs it proved instantly suspicious, containing as it did an injunction to burn the missive once digested, but it was not specifically or conclusively incriminating. The original was sent for and, while Northumberland was left under discreet observation, too powerful to be accused on such intelligence, the Evelyns were arrested. Brought to London incommunicado and examined separately on the 26th, their interpretations of the letter were found ‘far dissenting from each other’. According to D’Ewes, MPs were ‘almost fully satisfied’ with Evelyn of Surrey’s account, which admitted some inconsequential communication with the king and identified as Northumberland the ‘gallant gentlemen’ to whose protection the nephew had confided himself in the message, and which hence pointed strongly to an imminent joint defection. Evelyn of Wiltshire’s explanation – that the reference was to a plan to seek the company of the earl of Pembroke on the Isle of Wight – gained little credence and seriously embarrassed the earl, vulnerable as he too was to suspicion of intent to jump ship. D’Ewes recorded a later conversation with Pembroke in which the latter ‘fell into some bitter invectives’ against Evelyn the younger, ‘as one who had much abused his name by making use of it’. Denying that there had been any approach from Evelyn, the earl condemned him as ‘a base unworthy fellow’. D’Ewes shared the disillusionment. It was such shabby behaviour from one who, having been converted from war-mongering to become ‘very constant and industrious to restore this poor wasted kingdom to peace’, and been supported to that end by many MPs like himself, had then made such a misjudgement.129CJ iii. 271b, 218b, 219a, 220a; Harl. 165, ff. 152v, 156-9v; Add. 18778, ff. 20, 22; Add. 31116, p. 147; Mercurius Aulicus no. 35 (27 Aug.-2 Sept. 1643), 477 (E.67.7); Perfect Diurnall no. 7 (28 Aug.-4 Sept. 1643), 50 (E.250.5).

Evelyn was spared committal to the Tower, but was kept in the custody of the serjeant-at-arms pending further investigation of the case (as indeed of the threats made against him and others in July) and ordered to defray the expenses of those who had arrested him (28 Aug.).130CJ iii. 221a, 222a; Harl. 165, f. 159v. Within a few weeks (23 Sept.) he was allowed, under supervision, to visit his wife and attend church, but it took over a year to gain his full liberty and (in contrast to fellow Petworth guest William Wheler*) to recover his place and reputation.131CJ iii. 254a; Add. 31116, p. 240-1. Despite the efforts of Pierrepont, Lewis and Holles, on 2 March 1644 a vote for his release ultimately collapsed amid chaotic scenes in the Commons.132CJ iii. 390b, 405a, 409a, 414a; Harl. 166, ff. 18v, 20, 20v; Add. 31116, pp. 240-1; Mercurius Aulicus no. 11 (10-16 Mar. 1644), 876 (E.40.6). Only on 27 September 1644, on a motion from Pierrepont, were both Evelyns readmitted to the House.133CJ iii. 640b; Harl. 166, f. 194; Add. 31116, f. 324.

Independent grandee and factional politics, 1644-6

‘For a month or three weeks after’, according to D’Ewes, Evelyn of Wiltshire ‘sat silent’.134Harl. 165, f. 157. Understandably, notwithstanding support from friends, he required time to re-establish himself in the House at large. Of only eight occurrences of ‘Sir John Evelyn’ in the Journal between 18 October (the next mention) and the end of the year, perhaps three out of the five committee appointments fell to the younger Evelyn (relating to shipping or probably chaired by close friends: 14 Nov.; 12, 19 Dec.).135CJ iii. 668b, 676a, 695b, 722a, 729a. Given his previous involvement in Irish affairs, it is likely to have been he who was dispatched to the court of king’s bench on 23 October to deliver an order expediting the trial of rebels from 1641, and almost certainly he who with Lewis was a manager of a conference with the Lords on 19 December and who with Oliver Cromwell told for the majority who rejected the Lords’ recommendation to spare the life of the turncoat Sir John Hotham*.136CJ iii. 673b, 728a; iv. 4b. Unequivocally, the Journal specified that on 17 December it was ‘Evelyn junior’ who, with Sir Henry Vane ‘junior’, was a majority teller against excluding the earl of Essex from the Self-Denying Ordinance; their defeated opponents were Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton*.137CJ iii. 726a. By this time Evelyn had given costly proof of his own good faith. A few days earlier the Committee of Both Kingdoms had ordered the continuation of a garrison comfortably quartered at his house at West Dean and strategically placed to harry enemy horse round Salisbury, explaining to its commander that Evelyn was very willing to venture his property for the service of the state.138CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 192, 194-5; Ludlow, Mems. i. 107.

Evelyn had gone beyond rehabilitation to realignment. Having parted company with Holles and Lewis, this period saw him, like Pierrepont, gravitate towards the growing force becoming known as Independency, and naturally to that section coalescing around Northumberland, himself now a hawk since an Irish-backed royalist resurgence threatened. D’Ewes’ claim that Evelyn’s change of tack was a necessary preliminary to his re-admittance and that he had sold himself to the war party with a promise to ‘do what they would have him to do’ looks too simplistic: the logic of the change was the same as that of many of his friends, and the existing war party needed its new allies as much as Evelyn needed them. Moreover, D’Ewes’s own perception of Evelyn hereafter argues for a man of conviction. Whereas his uncle carried ‘himself as a gallant and honest man’, the nephew

always did his uttermost not only to hinder all means of peace in this kingdom but to kindle a fire also and to raise a war betwixt the two nations of England and Scotland and to hinder the reformation of religion which was desired to be effected by the setting up of the Presbyterian government.139Harl. 165, f. 157.

This partisan observer may have exaggerated the extent of such destructive intent and ignored the fact that the two Evelyns occasionally still worked together, but this analysis withstands scrutiny. 140E.g. CJ iv. 52a.

In the first four months of 1645 Evelyn of Wiltshire appeared in the Journal on as many as 50 occasions and on as many as 40 different days, as often as not in delicate and demanding reporting and messenger roles resting on trust. Since his two overwhelming preoccupations were the creation of what became the New Model army and (in the short term) the new round of negotiations with the king and the Scots which opened at Uxbridge on 29 January, it may be assumed that (in common with the earl of Northumberland) his goal was now a peace dictated on stiff terms from a position of strength. On 14 January he took to the Lords nominations (including Pierrepont) for Parliament’s commissioners for the forthcoming talks.141CJ iv. 20a. He reported at considerable length on associated preparations (22 Jan.) and also on last-minute conferences between the Houses (24, 28 Jan.).142CJ iv. 27a, 27b, 29b, 32b, 32a, 34a. On the 29th, in company with Pierrepont’s longstanding friend Sir John Potts*, he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant – a necessary price for any dialogue with the Scots, but not necessarily a sign of optimism as to the outcome.143CJ iv. 35b. Three weeks later he reported that the Lords had concluded there was ‘small or no hope’ of the treaty, and he was one of the MPs delegated to prepare for a further conference with peers a statement of the satisfaction of the Commons at the commissioners’ handling of their brief.144CJ iv. 60a, 60b, 62b.

Meanwhile, Evelyn’s association with military matters accelerated. Among a variety of other messages, he twice took to the Lords business related to martial law (1, 13 Jan.) and sat with Pierrepont on a committee which attempted to persuade the Lords not to challenge the Self-Denying Ordinance (8 Jan.).145CJ iv. 7a, 13b, 18a, 19a He enquired into the dispute between Oliver Cromwell and Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, reporting the latter’s answer (8, 10 Jan.), and sat on committees addressing local military problems (24, 28, 31 Jan.).146CJ iv. 13b, 16a, 28b, 33b, 38a. More critically, his activity as a reporter and teller placed him at the centre not only of measures for recruiting and funding the new army (13, 17 Feb.; 27 Mar.) but also (and especially) of efforts to accord Sir Thomas Fairfax*, as commander-designate, some autonomy in naming the officers to serve under him. Evelyn and his new ally Cromwell could not prevent an initial vote to insert in the ordinance a proviso requiring parliamentary approval of appointments down to the level of captain (7 Feb.). However, he and Cromwell successfully marshalled voices to reject the requirement for officers to take the Solemn League and Covenant (which would have ruled out some important religious Independents; 13 Feb.) and Evelyn had a pivotal role in subsequent action to promote Fairfax’s professional independence and omit from his commission the responsibility to protect the king’s person.147CJ iv. 42b, 43b, 46a, 48a, 48b, 50a, 51a, 52a, 64b, 73b, 77a, 81b, 89a-93a, 102b; Harl. 166, ff. 194v, 195v, 196v. The confirmation of his importance came in his appointment late in March to the New Model’s financial executive, the Independent-dominated Committee for the Army, chaired by Northumberland’s secretary, Robert Scawen*.148Supra, ‘Committee for the Army’; Adamson, ‘Of armies and architecture’, 46. As opposition to the Self-Denying Ordinance rumbled on, one of Evelyn’s particular responsibilities was to soothe MPs and peers deprived of military office and jealous of their privileges: in March and early April, probably acting in tandem with Northumberland in the Lords and with Pierrepont in the Commons, he was a key figure in the ‘preservation of good correspondence’ between the Houses.149CJ iv. 83a, 83b, 87b, 88a, 100a, 104a; Harl. 166, f. 194; Weekly Account no. 12 (19-25 Mar. 1645), sig. Mmmm3v (E.274.23); Perfect Diurnall no. 87 (24-31 Mar. 1645), 688 (E.260.5).

Evelyn continued to be busy over the late spring and early summer, his place on the Army Committee probably the origin of a greater proportion and variety of committee work than heretofore. Evelyn of Surrey played a part in raising money, supplying arms and ammunition, and fining delinquents, and both Evelyns eventually sat on the committees preparing the ordinance for improving the efficiency of taking accounts (18, 26 Apr.) and raising additional forces to cope with unrest (10 July), but Evelyn of Wiltshire was specifically named to prepare ordinances to find money for urgent payment of the New Model (8 May), the forces in Hampshire (24 May), for the siege of Oxford (27 May), and for furnishing match and bullet (14 July); for his own contribution, he apparently ‘said he will live upon credit’, while he also promoted a petition for money ‘in a malignant’s hands’ from Fairfax’s mother-in-law Lady Vere (12 June).150CJ iv. 116a, 123b, 135a, 153b, 155b, 203b, 207a; Add. 18780, ff. 29, 36. It is likely that it was also he who sat on committees addressing the problem of deserters (19 Apr.), and the military situation in the north, where Northumberland had his estates (19 Apr.; 10, 12 May; 3 July).151CJ iv. 117a, 138b, 140a, 194b.

With Northumberland, Evelyn was one of the men named on 19 April to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports – Parliament’s naval excutive for replacing the earl of Warwick.152CJ iv. 112a; A. and O. Over the summer he was several times a reporter of conferences and a teller in divisions on naval affairs.153CJ iv. 143a, 143b, 144b, 228a; Harl. 166, f. 209. It may have been to Northumberland, as guardian of the royal children, that he owed the unaccustomed duties of viewing and reporting on the pictures at York House (23 Apr.) and fixing pensions for the royal children’s servants (8 Nov.).154CJ iv. 121a, 335b. It was in company with the earl that from July, if not several months earlier, he appeared on the committee of the west.155Add. 22084, ff. 6, 25; CJ iv. 168b. That Pembroke was often also present posits the possibility of a reconciliation between the two men, driven if nothing else by common political purpose. There may have been tension, but sessions could be constructive: on 19 September, for instance, Evelyn to took to the Lords an ordinance for regulating abuses in Wiltshire.156CJ iv. 278b. Meanwhile, an insight into how far Evelyn had come since the spring of 1643 may be supplied by his remarks as recorded on 13 May 1645 – in French, presumably owing to their extreme sensitivity – by parliamentary diarist Walter Yonge*. According to this, Evelyn said he had learned from several aristocratic sources, including the earl and countess of Pembroke, that Tycho Brache had supplied Anne of Denmark with a horoscope indicating that the future Charles I would eventually be banished and also that the young prince had had nightmares about losing all three of his kingdoms.157Add. 18780, f. 19. Perhaps this was mischief-making by one party or another, but in other circumstances verbalising such ideas would have been prosecuted as treason.

As a grandee Evelyn was a party to and an adjudicator on political quarrels between Members of both Houses which erupted that summer. He sat on the committee investigating an assault on fellow Army Committee activist, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* (21 May) and later pressed the Lords to proceed on the impeachment of the attacker, Hesilrige’s Leicestershire rival Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford (20 Nov.), a Presbyterian whose status as a parliamentarian commander had long been controversial.158CJ iv. 150b, 349b, 352b; ‘Henry Grey, 1st earl of Stamford’, Oxford DNB. On 4 June Evelyn reported from a conference with the Lords over disputes and misunderstandings between MPs and peers from the east midlands, while on the 11th he informed the Commons of the shocking allegations made the previous day by Presbyterian minister James Cranford that Independents were secretly negotiating for peace with royalists at Oxford.159CJ iv. 162b, 163a, 172a; ‘James Cranford’, Oxford DNB; Crawford, Denzil Holles, 114-15. It was thus almost certainly he who chaired the committee rapidly set up to quash this and rumours to the same effect spread by Clement Walker*, and who was nominated to examine information given by Presbyterian grandee Sir Philip Stapilton against Peregrine Pelham* (11 June).160CJ iv. 172b, 173a. As part of the counter-attack he carried to the Lords on the 16th the resolution that the quondam royalist lord treasurer Thomas Savile†, 1st earl of Sussex, be examined over his claim to have received intelligence that Holles and Whitelocke were also engaged in clandestine peace talks; he was later on the committee which pursued the investigation after the revelation of new ‘information’ (4 July).161CJ iv. 176a, 195b. In the meantime he was added with his uncle and Holles to look into letters captured by Fairfax at the decisive battle of Naseby (23 June) and, in what must have been uncomfortable proximity to Holles and Whitelocke, was with them and Pierrepont among MPs delegated to oversee the production by parliamentarian apologists John Sadler* and Henry Parker of a retrospective on the royalists’ breach of the treaty of Uxbridge (25 June).162CJ iv. 183b, 187a.

Holles and Whitelocke escaped condemnation thanks partly to Evelyn’s former associate Lewis and partly to the Scottish commissioners’ opportune ‘discovery’ of Savile’s unreliability, but factional battles continued and entwined with Anglo-Scottish relations despite or because of both parliamentarian and Scottish victories over royalist forces.163P. Crawford, ‘The Savile affair’, EHR xc. 76-93; M. Mahony, ‘The Savile affair and the politics of the Long Parliament’, PH vi. 212-27. A stumbling block to the Scots was the insistence of Parliament on retaining control over the proposed reformed English church and here Evelyn, whose precise theological views remain obscure, was evidently in the vanguard of the Independents as regards ecclesiology. Among his interventions in debate in this area, he drew MPs’ attention to a sermon at Covent Garden by Dr Samuel Rutherford, one of the Scottish delegates to the Westminster Assembly, which ‘affirmed that Parliament had nothing to do with the church’, evidently anticipating a hostile reaction (28 Oct.).164Add. 18780, ff. 154, 162v. He was a teller on 29 August for the small majority who succeeded in postponing discussion of church government, while with Pierrepont (12, 16 Sept.) and Fiennes (20 Sept.) he sat on committees hearing and answering the Scots’ objections and justifying Parliament’s line.165CJ iv. 257a, 273a, 274b, 280a. Although with Hesilrige he lost a vote against the inclusion in the ordinance for ordination of a clause prescribing that ministers take ‘the Covenant of the three kingdoms’ (24 Oct.) he had an opportunity, in company with the Erastian Selden, to frame the bill for exclusion from the sacrament in a more liberal direction (8 Oct.).166CJ iv. 300b, 319a.

In October and November 1645 Evelyn’s profile in the Journal lessened somewhat, although he was added to the committee of privileges and (probably) took to the Lords a variety of messages, including a request to expedite dealings with the Scots (20 Oct.) and an order for continuing Cromwell in his military command (21 Oct.).167CJ iv. 300a, 315b, 316b, 317b. But this was a period when the influx of recruiter MPs swelled the ranks of Independents in the House and Evelyn soon regained his prominence, if he had ever lost it. His name occurred 17 times in the Journal in December, and although these references are by no means all conclusively attributable to the Wiltshire man, there is every reason to suppose that – in tandem with continuing Army Committee and Wiltshire/Hampshire business – it was he who played a major and recurrent role (as manager, reporter and teller) in liaising with the Lords over instructions to parliamentarian armies and to its commissioners with the Scots, and over the response to approaches from the king.168CJ iv. 362b, 364a, 366b, 367a, 367b, 368b, 369b, 370a, 371b, 374a, 375b, 378b, 383b, 386a, 392a.

During 1646 Evelyn was consistently prominent. He was named to at least 29 committees and probably to up to 20 more. He was certainly a teller on 16 occasions (13 of them with Hesilrige; one each with Fiennes, fellow Wiltshire MP Sir John Danvers*, and Evelyn of Surrey – the last against Hesilrige) and probably up to another 26 times (including 19 with Hesilrige and at least one against him). A hardening of party lines is indicated by the fact that easily his most common opponents in divisions were the Presbyterians Holles and Stapilton. Meanwhile, with Hesilrige, Fiennes or Pierrepont, Evelyn drafted important documents, and he doubtless accounts for the majority of a total of nearly 50 reports, messages or conferences with the Lords which fell to an unspecified Evelyn.169CJ iv. 395b-396b, 399a-b, 402b, 403b, 404a, 409b, 413b, 417a-418b, 422a, 424b, 428a, 437a, 438a, 439a, 441a, 442b, 448a, 449a, 457a-b, 461a, 462a-463a, 465b, 476b, 468b, 471a-b, 477a, 478b, 479b, 480b, 481b, 483b, 485a-b, 490a-491a, 495b, 496a, 498b, 506a, 508a, 511a-513a, 518b, 520a, 521a, 523a, 524b, 530a-532a, 534a, 538b, 540a, 541a-b, 542b, 545a-b, 548a-556a, 558b, 560b, 561b, 562b, 570b, 571b, 573a-b, 574b, 576a, 579b, 581a-b, 584b, 592a, 603a, 611b, 613b, 615b, 632a, 641a, 644b, 650b, 651a, 655b, 659a, 663a, 665a, 666b, 673b, 675a, 687b, 690a, 694a-b, 696a, 699b, 703b, 708b, 713b, 721b, 725a, 730a, 735a, 738a; v. 1b, 6b, 11a, 12a-b, 14a-17b, 24a, 25a, 27a-28a, 30a, 31b, 32a.

A relatively small but significant element in this was his activity in religious matters. With Selden and Fiennes he was appointed to a committee discussing the placing within a Presbyterian classical system of various London parishes previously exempt (21 Jan.), but this clearly did not indicate commitment to Presbyterianism per se.170CJ iv. 413b. On 4 March Evelyn and Fiennes told for the majority who rejected an additional clause in the ordinance on church government supported by Holles and Stapilton, while Evelyn and Hesilrige twice defeated this pair in establishing that the Westminster Assembly had committed a breach of privilege in a petition criticising a lay-controlled religious settlement (11 Apr.).171CJ iv. 463a, 506a. Dispatched to present Parliament’s case to the assembly, Fiennes displayed his rhetorical skills and theological education, but Evelyn, who was also responsible for delivering ‘certain questions which [the Houses] desired to be satisfied in’, apparently spoke more straightforwardly to deflate clerical pretensions.172Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly ed. C. van Dixhoorn and D.F. Wright (Oxford, 2012), iv. 83-4. Emphasising that several days had been spent in careful deliberation on the petition, he declared that MPs had found in it ‘things … that did strike at the foundation and roots of privileges of Parliament’. They appreciated the ‘faithful and useful endeavours’ of assembly members, but since Parliament too had gone to much trouble over religious reform he insisted that the clergy concede ‘the freedom of our reason and liberty of our judgement’. Courteously, but firmly, he declared that, while Parliament was willing to ‘submit their yoke to Jesus Christ’, its Members would not bear ‘a galling, vexing yoke’ dictated by others.173CJ iv. 511a, 518b; Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly, iv. 85, 95. Doubtless he approached in the same Erastian spirit committee appointments to review the jurisdiction over St Paul’s cathedral (7 May: probably the Wiltshire man), discuss the final stages of the ordinance for exclusion from the sacrament (23 May – for which he was a commissioner, 3 June), and evaluate Jus divinum regiminis ecclesiastici, in which some London ministers advocated a divinely-authorised Presbyterian church settlement (12 Dec.).174CJ iv. 538b, 552a, 553b, 562b; v. 11a. It is difficult to assess the extent of his involvement in the sale of church lands owing to the overlapping interests of the two Evelyns, but he was more likely than not a manager of a conference with the Lords on episcopal estates on (13 Nov.).175CJ iv. 721b. He certainly profited at clerical expense. On 16 June the Committee of the West, ‘in regard of the great spoil of his house in the county of Wilts’, authorised him to occupy the property in Salisbury cathedral close which had formerly belonged to his father’s one-time client Matthew Nicholas.176Add. 22084, f. 9.

Fluctuating fortunes and the Scots, 1646-7

This order was signed not just by those who might be regarded as partisans – men like John Dove*, Salisbury alderman and recruiter MP – but by others of a different hue like Sir Edward Hungerford. The evidence of Evelyn’s engagement with local affairs in this period indeed serves to modify somewhat the picture of hardline party politics. While he might enlist Hesilrige to support him, as in the unsuccessful attempt to convey to Sir Edward Bayntun an interest in a delinquent estate at Bishops Cannings (19 Mar.), they were found on opposite sides when Evelyn supported his uncle in a division over treatment of a Sussex recusant (9 Mar.).177CJ iv. 471a, 480b. Obliged on the Committee of the West to work with colleagues as diverse as Holles, Hungerford, Clement Walker, Dove and Danvers, Evelyn presents a different face there: in company with them and others he signed orders restoring goods seized from delinquents, curtailing the demands of parliamentarian troops and, most notably, in February 1647 signed a testimonial for the former dean of Windsor Dr Christopher Wren, credited with organising clubmen in their resistance to those same forces during the previous summer.178Add. 22084, ff. 8v, 11, 19v, 21, 26; ‘Christopher Wren (1589-1658)’, Oxford DNB.

On the subject of Ireland Evelyn’s position was probably similarly complex: like others in his circle he wished to defeat royalist interests there without compromising the strength of the New Model in England. His uncle preceded him as a member of Parliament’s new Irish executive, the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs (SCCIA), but Evelyn the younger took related messages before being added, with other leading Independents, to the SCCIA on 7 May, probably as an adjunct to his work on the Army Committee. It is not clear which man opposed Hesilrige in a division over money for Ireland on 24 April, but the nephew and Hesilrige united in a division on 31 July over dispatching six regiments of the New Model across the Irish Sea.179CJ iv. 418a, 418b, 465b, 521a, 532a, 549a; LJ viii. 305a.

In the most important business before the Commons in 1646, Evelyn’s status as a leading advocate of peace only on Parliament’s terms, without unpalatable concessions to the Scots, was consistent and widely recognised (putting some ambiguous Journal entries beyond reasonable doubt). Added with others to the Committee of Both Kingdoms on 3 January specifically to consider the latest letter from the king, he reported the draft answer and carried it to the Lords.180CJ iv. 395b, 396a, 396b. He reported a week later from the committee tasked with preparing reasons why Parliament could not accede to the Scottish commissioners’ request to bring additional cavalry into England (10 Jan.), although gaining approval for the response took at least two more visits to the Lords (11, 13 Feb.).181CJ iv. 399b, 402b 438a, 438b, 439a. Dealing with the king and the Scots accounted for three further committee appointments in these two months, as well as management of a conference with the Lords (with Sir Henry Vane II* and Holles: 20 Feb.) and a. report (28 Feb.).182CJ iv. 417a, 422a, 424b, 428a, 448a, 457a, 457b. Evelyn and Hesilrige also tried hard to bring into the open (for its potentially damaging effect) a report made to the House by Army Committee treasurer Francis Allein* of a letter to London’s Common Council which quoted a Scottish nobleman as saying that anyone who spoke against the Scottish army quartered at Newark was a malignant (21 Feb.).183CJ iv. 449a. While the king and the Scots negotiated for the former to seek refuge with that army, aided by foreign ambassadors, Evelyn investigated suspect agents and papers.184CJ iv. 462a, 462b, 479b, 481b. He was also one of the varied group of leading MPs who issued an invitation to Charles’s nephew, Charles Louis, prince elector of the Rhine, to come into Parliament’s quarters as a potential figurehead or political bargaining counter (18, 19 Mar.).185CJ iv. 478b, 479b.

Evelyn and his friends gathered strength in the spring. Following Fairfax’s defeat of Ralph Hopton*, Lord Hopton, in Cornwall, Evelyn went to the Lords seeking a deputation to inform the City of the disbanding of enemy forces in the south-west and with orders for days of thanksgiving; he and Hesilrige prepared Parliament’s letter of thanks to the victorious general (21, 23 Mar.).186CJ iv. 483b, 485a, 485b. At the end of March and beginning of April he was several times the reporter and messenger to the Lords in connection with deliberations which rejected the king’s offer to come to London to negotiate, while a few weeks later he was similarly active in suppressing the published proposals of the Scots. With Hesilrige he marshalled support for the counter-declaration ‘taking off the misrepresentations of Parliament to the people’ which reiterated that a Presbyterian settlement would be subservient to Parliament and that there would be limited toleration for religious Independents (17 Apr.).187CJ iv. 490a, 490b, 491a, 495b, 496a, 508a, 511b, 512b, 513a. As parliamentarian forces closed in on Oxford and Cromwell reappeared in the Commons, Evelyn and Hesilrige joined him and Henry Marten* in preparing orders for Colonel Henry Ireton* (25 Apr.).188CJ iv. 523a. He and Hesilrige won a division denying the Scots news of an approach made by the king to the officers who had just taken Woodstock, and they worked with Marten and Fiennes to persuade the Lords to ignore the overture too (27 Apr.).189CJ iv. 542b. After Charles’s escape from Oxford that day – a move which simultaneously vindicated their implacable stance and reduced their negotiating options – Evelyn communicated to the Lords orders concerning those royalists who had taken the opportunity to submit to Parliament.190CJ iv. 530a, 530b. With Hesilrige and Marten, as well as Presbyterians caught temporarily on the back foot, he drafted a declaration against anyone harbouring the king (4 May).191CJ iv. 531b.

In the days of frenetic activity which ensued Evelyn sat on a committee which discredited the London-based Scots commissioners’ disclaimer of prior knowledge of the king’s flight (8 May).192CJ iv. 540a He discussed with the Lords the flurry of communications from Newark and was one of the MPs who prepared a justification of the Commons’ adherence to their vote that the king should be handed over and confined in Warwick Castle (9 May).193CJ iv. 541a, 541b. After eventually winning vigorous skirmishing in the Commons with Holles and Stapilton, on the 12th he carried the vote to the Lords in belligerent mood, only to return and lose to the same pair the next round, which conceded to the Scots some interest in peace negotiations pertaining to England (14 May).194CJ iv. 542b, 545a, 545b. The Lords then took exception to Evelyn’s alleged intimation that, should peers not agree to the Commons’ line on the king, the latter would take unilateral action: ‘we the House of Commons being trusted for the kingdom must do it’.195Add. 31116, p. 538. It appears to have been thanks to the diplomacy of Nathaniel Fiennes – and by extension his father – that the Commons both defended Evelyn’s statement (as within his brief) and soothed the Lords’ pride (by asserting that his words had been construed to have a more threatening meaning than intended).196CJ iv. 548a, 548b, 550b-551b, 553a; LJ vi. 315a, 315b, 321a, 324b, 338a.

For the time being, Evelyn quickly recovered his standing. Named to the committee to prepare a declaration to be sent to the Scottish commissioners asserting Parliament’s rights and privileges as they related to the determination of a settlement with the king (16 May), he reported it (11 June) and remained at the forefront of evolving discussions.197CJ iv. 548b, 573a, 584b, 613b. From 24 May he was again a regular member of committees and conferences, his stance in successive divisions pointing as before to his desire to limit concessions to the Scots and counter pressure from the City of London to treat with Charles for a Presbyterian settlement.198CJ iv. 554b, 555b, 556a, 558b, 560b, 561b, 570b. Continuing tensions and a potential for personal animosity in a context where the political stakes were high were manifest in the frequent closeness of voting, the reconfiguring of delegations to the Lords, and the switchbacks of victories and defeats in the struggle for influence. Of necessity, co-operation alternated with confrontation. Following the revelation in early June of hitherto secret royalist negotiations with the Scots – which took some of the wind out of Presbyterian sails – Evelyn worked with Hesilrige, Holles and Robert Reynolds* (11 June) to prepare letters communicating Parliament’s response.199CJ iv. 573b. Two days later he and Pierrepont were convincingly defeated by Holles and Stapilton (94 to 121) over the committal of measures for a proposed national militia, yet the setback was temporary. When Evelyn and Fiennes went from the ensuing committee with Whitelocke and Holles to manage a conference with the Lords (17 June) it was with the relatively palatable formulation that parliamentary authority over the militia might be sufficient even without royal assent.200CJ iv. 576a, 579b. Securing the disbandment of the brigade of Edward Massie* – a move over which Evelyn presided (19 June) – represented a minor triumph in both local and national terms, given the destruction the soldiers had wrought in Wiltshire and the support for Massie among Presbyterians at Westminster.201CJ iv. 581b. But alongside this went the somewhat less controversial business of the House, such as the satisfaction of delinquents’ creditors, the consideration of which was assigned to a large committee on which Evelyn sat with friends and foes under his uncle’s chairmanship (6 July).202CJ iv. 603a.

The surrender of Oxford on 24 June did nothing to relieve tensions, since the large Scottish army in England looked poised to help effect a Presbyterian settlement. As Independent influence waned, Evelyn had only a handful of committee appointments in July and August, the most notable of which was to enquire into the remonstrance against Parliament which emanated from the City (11 July).203CJ iv. 615b. On his next appearance, nearly three weeks later, he and Hesilrige marshalled by the narrowest of margins (91 to 90) votes against the sending of six New Model regiments to Ireland.204CJ iv. 632a. More decisively, the pair failed to prevent the second reading of an ordinance for punishing those who had issued pamphlets criticising the Scots and their army (14 Aug.) – although they were then named to refine it in committee – but they did just manage to dismiss an attempt to allow the Committee of Both Kingdoms power to advance extra funds to the Scottish commissioners (27 Aug.).205CJ iv. 644b, 655b.

A more frequent presence through the autumn, Evelyn nonetheless did not attain the same prominence as in the spring, and to a degree power ebbed from him and his allies. Yet the situation was volatile. He was defeated in two divisions regarding the great seal (1 Sept with Danvers; 8 Oct with Hesilrige), although as before he was still on related committees (19, 23 Oct.; 3 Nov.).206CJ iv. 659a, 687b, 699b, 703b, 713b. He and Hesilrige lost two votes (1, 5 Sept.) on payment to the Scots, but by a small margin they carried an amendment (10 Sept.), and Evelyn was still engaged on activity related to the commissioners, including as a draftsman, reporter and chairman (24 Sept.; 14 Oct., 29 Oct., 5 Dec.) as well as other important business.207CJ iv. 659a, 663a, 665a, 666b, 675a, 690a, 694a, 694b, 708b, 713b; v. 1b. According to an account of a meeting with the Scottish commissioners on 26 October, Evelyn (in concert with Northumberland, Saye and Nathaniel Fiennes) apparently challenged their current timidity over dealing with the king, and perhaps exposed his own radical thinking, with an unsettling reminder from their history of the fate of their monarchs. ‘This was not the first time they had a king of Scotland prisoner, And they might remember they had not long ago cut off their queen’s head’.208NLW, Wynnstay ms 90/16. I owe this reference to Dr Lloyd Bowen. In divisions on 18 and 28 November he and Hesilrige managed to delay the ordinance for general subscription to the Solemn League and Covenant and to defeat Stapilton and Holles.209CJ iv. 725a, 730a. But a higher profile in early December – manifest on committees chasing the payment in London of arrears of assessments for the army (4 Dec.), addressing unrest in Kent (8 Dec) and investing Presbyterian petitioning (12 Dec.) – brought trouble.210CJ iv. 735a, 738a; v. 6b, 11a. The day after he and Hesilrige had won the latest round of votes on the Scots (14 Dec.), the Commons were told that Evelyn had been heard in the Exchange advising the Speaker that he ‘should do well to send for the army to the City to quell those mechanic citizens’.211CJ v. 12a, 12b, 14a.

It is probably a testament to the perceived plausibility of this disparaging threat, as well as to the damage caused to Parliament’s relations with Londoners, that the House spent much time – ‘near three whole days’ according to one diarist – examining a succession of witnesses.212Add. 31116, p. 585. In the course of their evasive answers, many bystanders were named (Samuel Hartlib among them) and, as the nature and location of the remark transformed into an aside in the Chamber, passed on in a tavern, other Members, named and anonymous, were implicated as the source of a leak. However, once committed the matter was deferred and then disappeared, resolving nothing and doubtless allowing rumour to percolate.213CJ v. 15b-17b, 19a. That Evelyn paid no worse penalty indicates the residual strength of his party, but there may have been wider, less direct repercussions. On 22 December he and Hesilrige failed by a notably wide margin to prevent a vote for consideration of a petition from the City.214CJ v. 25a; M.A. Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge, 1979), 142. The pair were defeated in two out of three further divisions that month, and although like Pierrepont, Fiennes and Vane they were evidently too powerful to be omitted from committees dealing with the escape of the duke of York and relations with the king, it was Holles and his friends who dominated.215CJ v. 24a, 27a, 27b, 28a, 30a, 31b, 32a.

For the first five months of 1647 Evelyn’s presence in the Journal was relatively modest. Greater certainty than usual is possible owing to the more regular use of his toponym, which in turn hints at further divergence between nephew and uncle. Although Evelyn of Wiltshire’s rate of activity as a teller remained more or less constant, between January and May he was on the losing side in about 12 out of 16. Significantly, his successes were with unaccustomed partners and on questions where local interests intervened or where a greater level of support is probably unsurprising: with erstwhile ally Lewis he secured £10,000 compensation for his old patron the earl of Northumberland (19 Jan.); with the Independent Sir William Masham* he blocked the appointment of John Wilde* as circuit judge in Lincolnshire (6 Feb.); with Stapilton he (or his uncle) voted against keeping a garrison at Pontefract (26 Feb.); with Armyne he secured the retention of Fairfax as commander-in-chief of the army in England (5 Mar.).216CJ v. 57b, 76a, 99a, 107a. Only the last victory could be deemed of primary importance. His failures, on the other hand, comprehended some serious setbacks, especially in the fight to preserve the New Model. He and Hesilrige could not carry the maintenance of infantry beyond that needed for garrisons (19 Feb.), or prevent the imposition on officers of a test of conformity to church as established by Parliament (8 Mar.), or the decision to appoint commissioners to oversee the transfer of military operations to Ireland (1 Apr.). Nor could they resist the condemnation of anti-Presbyterian petitioning (4, 20 May) or enforce former resolutions on the terms of borrowing from the City (5 May).217CJ v. 45a, 90a, 91a, 96a, 108a, 131b, 154b, 162a, 163b, 179b, 183a. The eclipse of the Independents was not total: minorities were usually sizeable. Evelyn secured for Pierrepont the fine set on his royalist brother the earl of Kingston (22, 23 Mar.).218CJ v. 119b, 120b. More importantly, up to 11 committee appointments gave Evelyn the chance to participate in examining (hitherto Presbyterian-dominated) public accounts (25 Jan.), communication to the Scottish Parliament (26 Jan.), reviewing representations from the army (27 Mar.) and shaping the militia ordinance (2 Apr.). But although he was once named first (to discuss the exclusion of ‘malignant’ clergy from the practice of ministry (22 Mar.), his absence as a reporter, a messenger to the Lords and a drafter of documents indicates that his opinion counted for relatively little.219CJ v. 62b, 65b, ?87a, 90a, 119b, 127b, 132b, 153a, 162b, 166a, 167a, 181a. Granted leave to go into the country on 25 March, he seems to have taken it up between 2 and 22 April, just at a time when Pierrepont and other leading Independents, in allegedly dismal spirits, had absented themselves.220CJ v. 124a; Crawford, Denzil Holles, 140.

Manouevring for a ‘hard’ peace, 1647-8

This proved the lowest point, however. In May 1647 Evelyn was more visible in Parliament. On the 25th, in a Commons better attended than of late, he failed to prevent another vote for disbandment, but still mustered 115 votes to 136.221CJ v. 183a. By June he was again at centre stage, although the role he was playing is open to more than one interpretation. Alarmed at increasing agitation and radicalism in the army on the one hand and with the imminent prospect of a Presbyterian political and religious settlement on the other, he may have been aiming to secure the least worst outcome. On one analysis, this was a manifestation of ‘royal Independency’, as he and others occupied a position in the centre ground distinct from that of more radical figures like Hesilrige and Vane.222V. Pearl, ‘The “Royal Independents” in the English civil war’, TRHS 5th ser. xviii. 69-96. Alternatively (or additionally), Evelyn was in close contact with army grandees through the Army Committee and, with some forewarning of their intentions towards Parliament and greater or lesser sympathy with them, was deviously engaging with his Presbyterian opponents while awaiting his opportunity to strike back.223Adamson, ‘Of armies and architecture’, 56. At any rate, partnerships were reshuffled.

In the aftermath of the army’s refusal to disband (1 June), between 3 and 5 June Evelyn was added with committee of the west colleague John Dove to a committee investigating complaints against Members, carried to the Lords a vote to address army grievances and joined Presbyterians Lewis, Stapilton and John Glynne* in preparing a letter to General Fairfax.224CJ v. 196a, 198b. Cornet Joyce’s seizure of the king from Holdenby Hall and the intimidating presence at Westminster of demonstrating ‘reformadoes’ (discharged soldiers) then altered the options. Once again acting with Stapilton, but now also with allies like Vane the younger, on 7 June he prepared directions that the king be restored into the hands of parliamentary commissioners and instructions for the joint committee preparing to go to the army.225CJ v. 201a, 201b. The next day he allied with Lewis against Hesilrige and Sir Peter Wentworth* to win a tight vote (78 to 77) that the House limit its response to the army, and he reported the resulting letter to Fairfax, but he was a teller against Holles in the division that roundly rejected the latter’s contention that the Commons should concur with the Lords in removing the king to Oatlands.226CJ v. 202b, 203a. This could be construed as an uncomplicated attempt to keep both the king and the army at arms length – the former from the hands of the Presbyterians and the latter from overwhelming power. It may also have constituted playing for time while he undermined Presbyterian plans from within. On the 11th Evelyn joined Holles in preparing another letter to Fairfax, requesting that his forces retreat to at least 40 miles from London, and the same day he was placed on the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’ for the defence of the capital (11 June).227CJ v. 207a, 207b. Like Fiennes, who also seems to have been balancing on a delicate tightrope, he was named to draw the declaration of 14 June, requested by the Lords, which would justify Parliament’s proceedings, while the next day he was one of a quartet who drafted a conciliatory message to the commissioners with the army after its Representation had been presented to the House.228CJ v. 209b, 210a, 212a. With the collapse of the committee of safety’s attempt to levy soldiers in the City – an eventuality on which Evelyn may have calculated given the pacific proclivities of many in the mercantile community – he was able to rally 163 MPs to support him and Hesilrige against Holles and Stapilton to approve the immediate advance of a month’s pay to the army (16 June).229CJ v. 214a; Gardiner, Hist. Civil War, iii. 298.

Later that day The Declaration of the Army and the associated charge against 11 Presbyterian MPs – including Holles, Stapilton and Evelyn’s brother-in-law Walter Long – reached the House. In the next five weeks of uneasy manoeuvring Evelyn was most noticeable in efforts to communicate with the parliamentary commissioners to the army, to satisfy the latter’s financial demands and to neutralise the threat both from disaffected soldiers under Fairfax’s command and from demobbed troops. With new associates like William Wheler* and Richard Knightley* as well as more familiar ones like Fiennes, Selden and Whitelocke (to whom he offered support when the latter felt vulnerable to army assault), he prepared letters (18 June), collected material for the commissioners (3 July), assisted in drafting successive orders to soldiers to depart from within the lines of communication (1, 8, 10 July) and investigated abuses in payments (first named, 21 July).230CJ v. 216b, 229a, 232a, 240b, 253a; Whitelocke, Diary, 195. However, it was with Heslirige that he won a vote on 28 June for a declaration that none should leave the army (now quartered menacingly at Uxbridge) without Fairfax’s sanction – a move potentially aimed both at agitators within and Presbyterians’ inducements from without.231CJ v. 226a. The same day he took to the Lords the reassuring resolution that the House ‘declares they own this army as their army and will make provision for their maintenance’, while three weeks later, the New Model having withdrawn from the capital, he reported the House’s more cautious response to the ‘reduced’ (i.e. decommissioned) officers that it would satisfy them only once they had yielded to the parliamentary ordinance for their expulsion from the City (17 July).232CJ v. 226b, 249b.

In the meantime Evelyn had failed to stop the Commons concurring with the Lords in accepting the king’s offer to come to Richmond, losing convincingly to Holles and Stapilton (21 June), but once the Eleven Members had succumbed to pressure and withdrawn, the way towards negotiating a more congenial peace with Charles opened up; on 1 July he took to the Lords a message of encouragement to seek it.233CJ v. 219a, 228b. Having promoted discussion of penalties for MPs who had been in arms against Parliament (5 July), he led the vote for those penalties to be limited to suspension (15 July) – a useful preliminary to courting former enemies, but perhaps also a recognition of his own escape from the burdens of delinquency.234CJ v. 233b, 244b. At the end of the third week in July, vindicated by the disturbing rumours of a Scottish invasion, fortified by the efforts of Henry Ireton* to achieve peace with the king, the resolution to place all Parliament’s forces under Fairfax (19 July) and the leave of absence accorded to his Presbyterian antagonists (20 July) he may have felt in a strong position. He and Hesilrige carried somewhat narrowly a vote for expediting discussion of army proposals (21 July) but after the publication that day of the Presbyterian Solemn Engagement of the City, with its dual pledge to maintain the Covenant and restore the king, he had the satisfaction of taking to the Lords a resolution against inviting any foreign forces into the kingdom and condemning anyone who did so without parliamentary authority as a traitor (22, 23 July).235CJ v. 253b, 254a, 255a. With Selden, Pierrepont, Fiennes and others he devised a declaration against the engagement and personally went to the Lords to secure its passing (23, 24 July).236CJ v. 255b-257b.

All was then overturned by rioters in the City who, with the army now withdrawn out of reach, eventually threatened Parliament itself (26 July). Evelyn and his friends were identified in the press as at risk on account of seeking peace with Charles via the army, rather than the Presbyterians.237An answer of a letter from an agitator in the city to an agitator in the army (1647), 4. With Northumberland, Pierrepont, Fiennes and Hesilrige, Evelyn joined an exodus of MPs and peers from London. He was among those who signed the declaration of those who fled to the army, and returned only after it regained control of the City on 6 August.238LJ ix. 385; cf. HMC Egmont i. 440-1. It was short of an immediate triumph. Evelyn was placed on successive committees discussing an ordinance nullifying all votes and ordinances passed ‘since the force upon the Houses’, but had mixed fortunes (acting with Hesilrige and others) in a series of divisions to nail its details (9 to 20 Aug.).239CJ v. 270a, 271a, 272a, 275b, 278a, 279a, 279b, 280a. However, from the beginning of September, when he was added to the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs and yet another addressing the ‘late tumult’ (1 Sept.), he and his party were once again in control.240CJ v. 287b, 288a, 289a; LJ ix. 414b. It is a testament to its strength, as well as to his standing within it, that in the next few days Evelyn took to the Lords punitive measures against its leading opponents – votes for excluding fellow Members Edward Bayntun and John Glynne, recorder of London (2, 7 Sept.) and an to impeach six peers – Theophilus Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln, James Howard, 3rd earl of Suffolk, George Berkeley, 8th Baron Berkeley, John Carey†, 4th Baron Hunsdon, William Maynard*, 2nd Baron Maynard, and the Speaker, Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham.241CJ v. 290b, 295a, 296a, 296b; The charge delivered at the Lords Barre by Sir John Evelin (1647, E.406.18). Equally, the fact that Pembroke narrowly escaped impeachment at this juncture reveals the limits within which Evelyn and his allies had to operate, and the persistent complexities of relationships within and between both Houses, especially as they intersected with local administration.242‘Boys Diary’, 147-8. Long-entrenched local loyalties may underlay Evelyn’s part in taking off sequestration from the estate of Surrey peer Jerome Weston†, 2nd earl of Portland (14 Sept.), while his party allegiance surely led to his addition (15 Sept.) to the committee to recompense William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, from losses arising from the abolition of the court of wards and liveries.243CJ v. 300b, 301b.

Meanwhile, the Independents had themselves turned to treating with the king. Evelyn went to the Lords on 6 September with instructions both for those going to see Charles at Hampton Court and for the Committee of Both Kingdom’s meeting with the Scots commissioners; a fortnight later he took the votes on the king’s answer, signalling willingness to consider the army’s Heads of Proposals.244CJ v. 293b, 311b. As the House hesitated on how to proceed, Evelyn advanced multilateral negotiations in divisions and in committee, several times in partnership with Cromwell. He pressed for propositions on church government which limited the lifetime of the Presbyterian experiment and left room for tender consciences, but retained penalties on those who absented themselves from church.245CJ v. 312a, 314a, 321b, 325a, 327b, 332a, 333a. There then followed a lull in late October and early November, as all peace discussions ran into the ground and the army was preoccupied with internal debate. It was perhaps a sign of how much he had invested in the process that Evelyn’s sole appearance in the Journal during this period was on 1 November, when he was nominated a second time to the SCCIA.246CJ v. 322a, 328a, 329a, 347b; LJ ix. 506a. It may also be significant that, as Northumberland still pursued a settlement, if necessary independently of the army, Scawen also withdrew from the chamber.247Adamson, ‘Of armies and architecture’, 61.

Charles’s escape from Hampton Court inaugurated a new round of activity. Evelyn investigated the breach of security (12 Nov.), gathered votes for punishing those who harboured the king (13 Nov.), and was the messenger arranging a conference with the Lords (15 Nov.).248CJ v. 357a, 358b, 359a. Prominent once more in drafting correspondence, he resumed his particular liaison with the army grandees, congratulating Fairfax for his suppression of the Leveller mutiny (16, 23 Nov.), and considering its representations (7 Dec.).249CJ v. 358b, 359b, 363b, 366a, 368a, 376b. As a preliminary to the latest round of negotiations with the king at Carisbrooke, he allied with Northumberland’s nephew Algernon Sydney* to carry a vote for proceeding on the basis of the Four Bills, a development of the Newcastle Propositions (27 Nov.).250CJ v. 371a. Yet the next month his profile in the Commons declined again; committee work on papers from the Scottish commissioners (15 Dec.) and an unsuccessful attempt to spare James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh from subscription to the Negative Oath (20 Dec.; also an indicator of his broad Protestant sympathies) were the most obvious of his contributions to business.251CJ v. 376b, 380a, 385a, 393b. There is little doubt that his main activity took place outside the chamber. The remark in a royalist intelligence letter of 30 December that ‘Sir John Evelyn, junior, becomes a purus putus [pure and unadulterated] Independent’ reflected his involvement in secretive conferences on the feasibility of pursuing the peace process rather than any commitment to radical politics.252CCSP i. 406. Dismayed by further revelations of underhand royal dealings with the Scots, and unconvinced that the king meant to accept their own terms, the more militant Independents were about to try another tack, and for the time being Evelyn and some of his friends joined them.

The outcome was visible on 3 January 1648. A Vote of No Addresses to the king was carried by Hesilrige and Evelyn, while Evelyn and Fiennes were added to the Derby House Committee.253CJ v. 415b, 416a; C. Walker, The Hist. of Independency (1648), 74 (E.463.19). That Evelyn replaced Glynne, whom he had been instrumental in prosecuting, while Fiennes replaced Stapilton, pointed to weeks of prior deliberation. Clement Walker was a hostile witness, but made the credible assertion that ‘the faction’ had taken ‘a pretence and occasion’ of the royal denial of the Four Bills ‘to lay aside the king’. Getting their way required

many threats, and more show of force than stood with the nature of a free Parliament, the army lying near the town to back their party: the design having been laid before hand Sir Henry Vane Junior, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts., Nath. Fiennes, Solicitor Saint Johns, and a select committee of the army.254C. Walker, Anarchia Anglicana: or, the hist. of Independency. The second part (1649), 6 (E.570.4).

Yet all was not as it seemed. Between 20 January, when he took the oath, and his last recorded appearance on 27 November, Evelyn attended just over half of the meetings of the Derby House Committee.255CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 1, 5, passim. He was present even after obtaining leave from the Commons (8 June) for despatch of necessary occasions in the country.256CJ v. 589b. He occasionally reported from it (24 Mar.; 23 May, 1 July)257CJ v. 513a, 571a, 619b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 33. Suspicions that Derby House was the real centre of power are reinforced by Evelyn’s concurrent record in the Commons. Among a handful of appearances in the Journal in January and early February, he was prominent on the committee of grievances (4 Jan.), was a manager of a conference with the Lords on the safety of the kingdom (18 Jan.), and advanced the impeachment of Lord Willoughby (27 Jan.).258CJ v. 417a, 436b, 445a, 447b, 460b. Like others in his circle he seems to have recognised the necessity of renewed talks with the Scots in order to prise them from the king, and thus he joined forces again with Hesilrige to fight a settlement of Presbyterianism by divine right; the pair also united to reaffirm the engagement made by MPs with the army on 4 August 1647 (24, 26, 28 Feb.; 4, 9 Mar.).259CJ v. 471b, 472a, 473a, 479a, 489a, 489b. Evelyn remained a friend of Fairfax, bringing in the ordinance to confirm him in Yorkshire offices held by his recently-deceased father (16 Mar.), and he also chose this moment to burn some boats by concluding the purchase of former episcopal land in the diocese of Winchester.260CJ v. 500b; Bodl. Rawl. B.239, p. 9. He certainly did not escape the press’s castigation of those seen to have betrayed their previous keenness for peace.261CCSP i. 416. But there are signs that, like his uncle, he was not happy with the detail of the Commons’ declaration regarding the Vote of No Addresses (11 Feb.).262CJ v. 462a.

For four weeks from 24 March to 22 April Evelyn was absent from both Parliament and Derby House. He went first to Wallingford, where his brother Arthur was governor and where he met Lord Saye, Nathaniel Fiennes, Oliver St John and William Pierrepont.263Hamilton Pprs. 174. On 31 March the Evelyn brothers, St John and Pierrepont dined with Whitelocke at his home nearby ‘and they had much serious discourse together’.264Whitelocke, Diary, 210. The upshot was understood to be a decision to re-open negotiations with Charles, and ‘thereby (if possible) to disengage him from the Scottish interest’, a goal rendered the more feasible because of a royalist contact in the shape of Evelyn’s old friend John Ashburnham, then attending the king.265Hamilton Pprs. 174; Mercurius Elencticus no. 22 (19-26 Apr.), 167 (E.437.10); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 96. The fact that on 8 February Evelyn and others on the committee of the west had issued an order on behalf of William Ashburnham’s wife Jane, dowager countess of Marlborough, raises the possibility that lines of communication had been operating for some time.266Add. 22084, f. 40.

The ‘cabinet council of grandees’, 1648

The ‘cabinet council of grandees’ had decided to repudiate the vote of 3 January and were poised to abandon their alliance with the army.267J. Wildman, Putney Projects (1647), 43 (F3) (E.421.19). Returning to Parliament in late April – Evelyn probably had a committee appointment on the 27th – they voted with the Presbyterians for a new approach to the king.268CJ v. 546a. In an addition that reveals residual reservations, Evelyn was a teller for the subsidiary vote which inserted the fudging phrase ‘the matter of’ in the resolution that ‘the matter of the propositions sent to the king at Hampton Court shall be the ground of debate for the settlement of the kingdom.269CJ v. 547a. As a summer of alarming discontent and violence ensued and Evelyn and his allies struggled to command the middle ground in Parliament, he was relatively little in the Commons, retreating to Derby House, where he was present 17 times in May and 18 times in June.270CSP Dom. 1648-9. In the chamber there are occasional signs of his engagement with the peace process, as on 12 May when he and Pierrepont were on a committee to answer a paper from the Scottish Parliament, and with the suppression of disorder (unless this was his uncle); he also conveyed another letter of thanks to Fairfax (3 June).271CJ v. 558b, 583b, 585b, 591b. But that it was a period of uncomfortable uncertainty is suggested by a number of unaccustomed names among those with whom he worked, most notably Colonel Morley, his nemesis of 1643.272CJ v. 554a, 558b. That he considered it necessary to stay in London to keep his finger on the pulse of affairs is indicated by his signature to a warning against tumultuous meetings issued by the Hampshire committee of safety from Winchester on 9 June: given leave to go into the country for urgent occasions on the 8th, he was back at Derby House on the 10th.273A Declaration of the Committee of Safety for the County of Southampton (1648); CJ v. 589b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 117.

However, the petitioning and unrest of the early summer stiffened the resolve of Evelyn and his allies to seek peace, although still on carefully-drafted terms, steering a delicate, and to some observers evidently bewildering, course between army radicals and out-and-out Presbyterians. On 2 July Evelyn had ‘much discourse about public affairs’ with Pierrepont and Whitelocke at his Chelsea home.274Whitelocke, Diary, 217. The next day Evelyn and Sir John Trevor* were tellers for a small majority which voted that Charles should be required to assent formally to certain propositions before any treaty was ratified and that (to make doubly sure) they ‘be made acts of Parliament when the king shall come to Westminster’.275CJ v. 622a. With Whitelocke he was nominated to a committee to confer with the common council, now a fragile ally in the quest for peace, over their engagement for the safety of king and Parliament during the treaty (5 July).276CJ v. 624a. Following the vote on 20 July that those who invited Scots into the kingdom were rebels and traitors, he was with Pierrepont on the committee preparing a justification of Parliament’s efforts to maintain the Anglo-Scottish union (22 July).277CJ v. 643b. Bolstered by a Lords majority in favour of peace, on 28 July he was a teller in support of overturning former votes on settlement in return for proceeding with a treaty to be made on the Isle of Wight.278CJ v. 650a; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 103.

As Saye pursued negotiations at Newport, Evelyn remained to manoeuvre at Westminster. Absent from the Journal for the first fortnight in August he was nonetheless active at Derby House and in the chamber. As a fleet under the prince of Wales threatened not just shipping in the Downs but, if unchecked, the destruction of hopes for peace, like others in the ‘godly gang’ Evelyn was prepared to argue vigorously for declaring the prince a ‘rebel and traitor’ (4 Aug.) and to sabotage any potential alliance with the Scots by denouncing the Covenant. Although he had been working for months with St John, it was only at this juncture that some observers depicted him as the Solicitor’s ‘shadow’, ‘one that hath given up his brains in wageship to Mr Johns’.279C. Walker, The Hist. of Independency (1660), 124; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 20 (8-15 Aug. 1648), sig. Y3 (E.458.25). The imputation that Evelyn had surrendered a certain autonomy is surprising given his hitherto robust record: perhaps contemporaries thought that, left to himself, he might have compromised further and faster in the direction of peace-making than St John (whose moderate instincts were complicated by kinship to Cromwell); perhaps they misjudged the interaction of personalities among the grandees. Whatever the case, the perception that Evelyn more than others was potentially detachable from radical allies persisted. A few days later Mercurius Pragmaticus credited Evelyn and Pierrepont with carrying against the odds a vote that the king might be allowed to summon Scottish commissioners to treat on exclusively Scottish affairs, apparently a concession designed to oil the wheels of negotiation.280Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 21 (15-22 Aug. 1648), sig. Bb2 (E.460.21). At around the same time George Skutt*, a Dorset Member of Presbyterian sympathies, little seen in the chamber but possibly well acquainted with Evelyn from committees dealing with western affairs, addressed to him an appeal to disassociate himself from the pointless policies of ‘the Saturnine crew’ of hardliners (of whom Henry Marten* was evidently the worst) and to take the opportunity of peace with the king and the Scots. For Skutt at least, it was in Evelyn’s power to wreck the unholy alliance that prevented it. He called for

an end of this devouring faction, whereof you are the head, and is directed by your counsels, and maintained over us by your commands and authority: whose ends, are without end, and vary according to the liberty they take of thinking. A company of men that agree in only one resolution, of undoing of king and kingdom: and are made up of as many different opinions among themselves, as must certainly ruin them, when they have ruined everybody else.281G. S[kutt], A Letter from an ejected Member of the House of Commons (1648), 24-5 (E.463.18).

For all its criticism, the message may not have been unwelcome. Although in the third week of August, just as the exiled Presbyterian Members resumed their seats, Evelyn had three committee appointments relating to the response to royalist plots, he was otherwise absent from the Journal until the beginning of October, apparently devoting his energies to achieving a peace distinctive from that offered by Presbyterians, but none the less acceptable to them.282CJ v. 671b, 673b, 676a. For the time being army grandees still regarded him warmly, or at any rate were convinced of the advantages of retaining his co-operation: writing to St John on 1 September Cromwell sent greetings to Pierrepont, Evelyn and ‘the rest of our good friends’.283Abbot, Letters and Speeches, i. 351. However, navigating between extremes became increasingly hazardous as the exiled Presbyterians returned to Parliament. Evelyn resurfaced in the Commons on 2 October to receive an instruction to thank the commissioners on the Isle of Wight for their proceedings thus far, but talks were not going well.284CJ v. 41a. Faced with a king who ‘desired to come to London in absolute freedom’ while offering unpalatable terms on religion and giving scant indication of his trustworthiness, Evelyn had little option but to argue against it: ‘it would extremely discontent our friends on all sides, and give encouragement to malignants and delinquents’; in particular, ‘the army and well-affected abroad would think very strangely, that the king should be at liberty, and no further security given for their liberties’. Any agreement must first be enacted in Parliament.285Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 28 (3-10 Oct 1648), sig. Pp2v (E.466.11). On the other hand, when regional petitions demanding that Charles be brought to account for his conduct were presented, Evelyn risked opprobrium by moving that ‘they might be laid aside, till they saw the end of the treaty’ (10 Oct.).286Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 29 (10-17 Oct. 1648), sig. Rr3v (E.467.38).

He was under no illusions about the difficulty of the task. In the midst of preparing letters to Cromwell thanking him for his talks with Covenanter leaders in Scotland (17 Oct.) and encouraging him in his campaign to suppress royalist insurgence in Yorkshire (20 Oct.), he wrote to his friend Sir John Potts, one of the commissioners on the Isle of Wight, in the manner of one hoping against hope.287CJ v. 54a, 57a. Like Potts, he had a profound distrust of the Scots – ‘let them appear for kirk or king it is all one to me: they are still Scots’ – and scarcely less concern about the reliability of the other parties. With a hint of desperation he sought encouragement that ‘you find cause there to believe all is freely and cordially granted and resolved to be kept’, but could offer little from his end: ‘promise not yourself too much from the House on that score’. At the mercy of unsubstantiated rumours, he confessed he knew ‘nothing and hope better, else we shall be left a peely [feeble] thing, that neither will nor can keep promise with any man’.288Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 369.

Evelyn warned Potts that, in his proposals for limited episcopacy, the king had failed to appreciate what terms would be palatable. Eight days later Evelyn was appointed with Fiennes and Selden to a committee preparing a statement to Parliament’s commissioners expressing the House’s dissatisfaction with Charles’s latest proposition (26 Oct.).289CJ v. 62a. When the negotiating period was extended, he pursued treaty business in one further conference with the Lords (30 Oct.), one division successful in limiting exemptions from pardon (8 Nov.) and a final committee answering the king (13 Nov.).290CJ v. 65a, 71b, 75b. But time was running out. With the king’s bad faith revealed in yet another unsuccessful escape attempt, the army, its patience exhausted, arrived in London. The morning after the Commons, in an all-night sitting, had voted notwithstanding to continue with the treaty, on 5 December Evelyn and Pierrepont were part of a deputation sent to headquarters in a last-ditch attempt to maintain ‘good correspondence’ between Parliament and the army.291CJ v. 93b. On this occasion it was to no avail. The committee broke up in the face of army defiance, and Evelyn was among MPs formally excluded in the purge of 6 December. Such was his commitment to the now defunct Newport treaty that he would have had little option but to withdraw even if former army friends regarded him with indulgence.292A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); W. Prynne, The Curtain Drawn (1659), 4; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 146.

A tempered retirement, 1649-60

There is no sign that Evelyn attempted to return to Parliament until after the secluded Members were formally re-admitted in February 1660. However, like Nathaniel Fiennes, he did not sever all ties with those in power in the interim. It seems that he retained at least one conduit to the Commons chamber in the shape of John Dove of Salisbury, who, as their mutual antagonist Matthew Wren observed in February 1649, was ‘called by some in Parliament Sir John Evelyn’s pigeon’.293Nicholas Pprs. i. 108. Wren may have exaggerated: Dove, at least as much an ally of the maverick Sir John Danvers as of Evelyn, may in fact have been more of a periodic messenger than a client. Either way, Evelyn must have had other, more influential friends. His appointment in May 1649 as a commissioner for fen drainage is a clear indicator that he remained persona grata with some commonwealth leaders, and he was considered sufficiently loyal not only to be continued for much of the succeeding decade on the commissions of the peace in Wiltshire and Hampshire, but also to be named a commissioner for scandalous ministers in August 1654 and of oyer and terminer on the western circuit in the aftermath of Penruddock’s rising of March 1655.294C193/13/3, ff. 56v, 68v; C193/13/4, ff. 86v, 108; C193/13/6, f. 78; C193/13/5, ff. 93v, 115; The Names of the Justices, 61; A Perfect List (1660), 59; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 94, 114. Meanwhile he farmed his estates, visited his uncle and in 1658 cemented an old alliance with a marriage between his daughter Elizabeth and Pierrepont’s son.295Hist. Evelyn Fam. 500; Recs. Wilts. 350; Hants RO, 5M50/2395; Eg. Ch. 7383.

Resurgence, February-March 1660

On 22 February 1660, the day of his re-appearance in the Commons, Evelyn received three important committee nominations (two of them with Dove): to work on the bill for the continuance of customs and excise; to prepare qualifications for potential Members; and to confer with the City for the supply of army and navy.296CJ vii. 848a, 848b. Elected to the council of state on the 23rd with, among others, Pierrepont, St John, Potts and Holles, he demonstrated that he was still not prepared to capitulate to the gathering Presbyterian momentum by successfully marshalling a majority vote (against old antagonist Sir William Waller) for the appointment of John Thurloe* as an additional secretary of state (27 Feb.).297CJ vii. 849a, 855a. Placed (9 Mar.) on the committee to prepare an act for calling a new Parliament, he was also successful in preventing its being discussed in grand committee.298CJ vii. 868b.

As the council of state became the interim executive, Evelyn proved fairly active.299Add. 4197, ff. 144, 149, 150, 270; Stowe 142, f. 70. Royalist intelligence reported in late April that, like Northumberland and Manchester, Evelyn and Pierrepont could not readily be won over to the king: they ‘stick at mark’.300CCCP iv. 674. Suspicions such as these may account for the fact that ultimately Evelyn could not make good his election to the Convention for his old seat at Ludgershall. After three weeks he was unseated in favour of loyalist candidate William Thomas†. He found an alternative place at Stockbridge, a Hampshire constituency nine miles from West Dean, but probably only attended the Commons for only a few weeks, there being no evidence that he returned after being granted leave of absence on 27 June.

Final years and reputation

Although Evelyn discharged some local offices over the next 20 years, he did not sit again in Parliament.301HP Commons 1660-1690. The Restoration regime almost certainly remained wary of him. By December 1661 claims were being made not only that he was £20,000 in debt but also that he had slandered the king at the London home of Sir John Wray [John Wray*], who had recently married his daughter Sarah. Allegedly he had said that ‘the old king was an arrant juggler and loved dissembling as his life, and that he was altogether false in his dealings’, compounding the offence by declaring that ‘the war against the king was just by the law of God and man’ and that ‘if occasion offered [Evelyn] would sit in council and do as [he] then did’. The new king, furthermore, ‘was an idle ignorant man minding his own pleasure more than his business at the council’.302Hist. Evelyn Fam. 504. As Evelyn’s accuser threatened, such remarks would have been sufficient ground for committal to the Tower, and call to mind the alleged defamation of 1645 as well as other instances of his reported speech. But whatever form his comments may have taken on this occasion, no prosecution ensued.

Evelyn survived into old age, dying in June 1685. By his will, drafted nine years earlier, he left the bulk of his estate to his widowed daughter Elizabeth Pierrepont, with remainder to her youngest son Evelyn Pierrepont†. The latter followed his grandfathers into Parliament.303Misc. Gen. et Her. ser. 2, iv. 329-31; PROB11/381/445.

During his mid-century parliamentary career and beyond, Evelyn’s reputation was evidently such that he could be readily credited with harbouring subversive sentiments, yet it was never proven that he aired them publicly or even certain that he voiced them at all. His actions proclaimed a man prepared to work hard, and to manage men and situations, to achieve the goal of a political settlement acceptable to himself and his friends. Sustained by those associations, he weathered suspicion and controlled business. But beyond his robust assertion of the interests of aristocratic and gentry leaders against those of the crown and of the right of lay Parliament-men to determine religious questions, the detail of his political thinking remains a mystery.