Mary Mullett Evans Moule 

Mary Mullett Evans Moule (1801-1877) boarded with her sister Jane at Sarah Norton Biggs’s school in London c. 1808-12, and in 1815 moved with her family to Melksham, where she later met Henry Moule (1801-80), the local curate. They married on 1 July 1824 and in 1830 moved to Fordington, Devon, where Moule served as vicar for the next fifty years, becoming widely known for his pronounced Evangelicalism, an indication that at Melksham the Evanses may have returned to something more akin to the evangelicalism of their forebears, Hugh and Caleb Evans, only now within the confines of the established church. The Moules had eight sons, all of whom became prominent in their respective fields, with two reflecting their Baptist heritage in their middle name (Evans). Henry (1825-1904), George, Charles, and Horace (1832-73) were friends of the novelist Thomas Hardy, who grew up just a short distance away from Fordington at Dorchester. Henry, a water colourist, maintained his friendship with Hardy for fifty years (they first met in 1854). Handley Carr Glyn Moule (1841-1920) served as Chaplain to Queen Victoria (1898-1901) before becoming Bishop of Durham (1901-20).  Charles Walter Moule (1834-1921) became a classical lecturer and tutor at Cambridge, and served as President of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from 1913 to 1921. George Evans Moule (1828-1912) and Arthur Evans Moule (1836-1916) reflected their ministerial heritage well, being sent by the Church Missionary Society to China in 1858 and 1861 respectively. George eventually became Bishop of Mid-China (1880-1907) and his younger brother served as Archdeacon of Mid-China. Arthur C. Moule, George’s son, became a Professor of Chinese at Cambridge in the 1930s, and another son, Henry W. Moule, followed in his father’s footstep, serving many years as a missionary in China. His son, Charles Francis Digby Moule (1908-2007), George Evans Moule’s grandson and, what should not be forgotten, the great-great-great-great grandson of Hugh Evans and great-great-great grandson of Caleb Evans of Bristol, became a noted New Testament scholar during his tenure as Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity at Cambridge between 1951 and 1976, a career that served as a fitting capstone to that of his ancestors at Bristol, who two centuries before him, as ministers, theologians, and educators, were instrumental in disseminating a breadth of Biblical knowledge through a surprisingly fluid Dissenting culture that eventually spread its tentacles deeper into British life than previously thought.