Hugh Evans

Hugh Evans (1712-1781) was baptized at Broadmead by Bernard Foskett in 1730. He became Foskett’s assistant in March 1733/4 and co-pastor in February 1739/40, eventually becoming senior pastor and principal of the Academy, 1758-1781. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1752, this time to a member of the Broadmead church, the former Ann Brain (1720-76). The assertion by Tongue that she was the widow of the London Baptist bookseller, John Ward (he was an original trustee for the Ward's Scholars programme established by John Ward of Gresham College, a Baptist rhetorician and most likely a relation of the bookseller of the same name), does not appear to be correct. In 1756, as evidence of his tolerant approach to communion and fellowship among believers, Evans organized some sixty paedobaptists who regularly worshiped at Broadmead into an Independent congregation within the larger Broadmead congregation, serving as pastor of both congregations. The Independent congregation (what became known as the “little church”) remained a part of the Broadmead church until the mid-nineteenth century. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Bristol Education Society in 1770, attempting to provide the Particular Baptist churches of England and Wales with qualified ministers. As Roger Hayden has noted, “Hugh Evans successfully continued Foskett’s work with students, nurtured the Welsh links, and after the appointment of Caleb [Evans], worked with him to put the students programme on a denominational basis, while retaining control within it. Upon this foundation Hugh and Caleb built up the concept of an educated, able and evangelical Baptist ministry which would be vital for the missionary expansion of the denomination at home and overseas.” See Norman S. Moon, Education for Ministry: Bristol Baptist College, 1679-1979 (Bristol: Bristol Baptist College, 1979), 10-24; Roger Hayden, Continuity and Change: Evangelical Calvinism among Eighteenth-Century Baptist Ministers trained at Bristol Academy, 1690–1791 (London: Baptist Historical Society, for Roger Hayden, 2006), 116, 119; E. J. Tongue, Dr. John Ward's Trust (London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1951), 14.