Hugh Evans at Bristol, to John Sutcliff, Birmingham, 28 February 1775.

Bristol Feby 28th 1775

Dear Sir

         As usefulness is the great end of life with respect to our selves and others: As I now hear that one Mr Jones (who is one of Lady Huntington[s] young men) has left Falmouth, where he has been some time and there are many in those parts like Sheep witht a Shepherd, and others thirsting for the word, as you are not engaged, I have been thinking, it would give you an opportunity of seeing more of the world, and I hope of doing much good, if you were to pay them a Visit for 2, 3 or 4 months and see what the event might be. Your expenses will be paid, as we have an Order for some allowance for it from the education Society.—If you are willing to take such a tour, let me have a line as soon as may be, that I may write to them on that head. If you are applied to from any other place you prefer, I don’t wish to prevent what may be for your advantage. 

         There is a wide door opened in Cornwall, if we could but enter in while it is open. If you go, I imagine it will be best to purchase a strong hardy horse, as you will have it to carry you round the country there as well as to go down and return. We have nothing new here but that my son is in a measure recovered of a nervous fever, wch had greatly reduced him. He has not preacht the 3 last Lord’s Days, but hopes to do it next L’ds day. He & family are at Hanham for the air. We got our Members of parliament established & yesterday Mr Cruger was introduced by a vast Number of foot Horse & carriages into our city and conducted thro’ a triumphal arch at the bottom of Corn Street erected on the Occasion, to his house in Park Street. Mr Burke declined coming down on Acct of business in the House of Commons &c—we all join in kind respects to you & Mr Turner in wch my family join. I am 

                                                                                 Your’s affecly

                                                                                                   H Evans

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 25-26 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 369, fol. 44, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. The Mr. Jones mentioned above was most likely the former assistant to Andrew Kinsman at the Plymouth Tabernacle, a congregation organized by Whitefield in the 1740s and finally established by Kinsman c. 1750. In 1763 Kinsman established a similar tabernacle in Dock, and was finally set apart to the pastoral office at Broadmead in Bristol on 4 August 1763, with Hugh Evans taking part in the service. Kinsman’s obituary in the Evangelical Magazine (1793) notes that his most distinguished assistants in the early 1770s were Dunn and Padden at Plymouth, and Jones and Lake at Dock, “each of whom continued for some time in the exercise of his talents, with success, until invited to the pastoral office at other places.” See Evangelical Magazine 1 (1793), 55.  Others mentioned in the letter  include Caleb Evans, Henry Cruger, and Edmund Burke, the latter two serving for a time as MPs for Bristol (Cruger served as Mayor of Bristol in 1781).