Summary

Richard Evelyn of Woodcote, the younger brother of  George and John Evelyn, and the third son of his father  Richard, was born on November 9, 1622 (according to Diary,  December 4). On January 21, 1640, he left school to be a  chamber-fellow at Baliol College, Oxford, with his brother  John. The latter writes in his Diary :

“Came my Bro. Richard from Schole to be my chamber-  fellow at the University. He was admitted the next day, and  matriculated the 31st.”

Their father died on the following 24th of December when  Richard was nineteen. It does not appear what he did on  leaving Oxford.

Richard lived in a house called Baynards, in Surrey, which  had been left to him by his father. On January 14, 1648, Evelyn writes :

“From London I went to Wotton to see my young  Nephew ; and thence to Baynards (in Ewhurst) to visit my  Brother Richard.”

On August 16 of this same year, 1648, he writes :

“I went to Woodcote (in Epsom) to the wedding of my  Brother Richard, who married the daughter and coheire of  Esqr. Minn lately deceas’d, by which he had a greate estate  both in land and monie on the death of a brother. The coach  in which the bride and bridegroom were, was overturned in  coming home, but no harm was done.”

Richard was twenty-six when he married and the bride  was nineteen. Her name was Elizabeth, and she was the  daughter and heiress of George Mynne of Woodcote in the  parish of Epsom, whose wife was Anne, daughter of Sir  Robert Parkhurst, Kt., of Pirford, Surrey.

At the beginning of 1655, John went to  pay his younger brother a visit at Woodcote, where  the couple seem to have lived. He writes on January 1,  1655:

“I went to keepe the rest of Christmas at my Brother’s  R. Evelyn, at Woodcote.”

Richard had five children, of whom four sons died in infancy and an only daughter survived. This daughter, Anne, was married on June 29, 1670, at Southampton House Chapel, London, to William Montague, son of the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. She had no children and died at Woodcote, February 15, 1688. Evelyn mentions the wedding in his Diary. On June 29, 1670, he says :

“To London, in order to my Niece’s marriage, Mary, Daughter to my late Brother Richard, of Woodcot, with ye eldest son of Mr. Attorney Mountague, which was celebrated at Southampton House chapell, after which a magnificent entertainment, feast, and dauncing, dinner and supper, in the great roome there, but the bride was bedded at my Sister’s lodging in Drurie-lane.’

In 1668 Richard Evelyn became very ill. On November 8 a message was sent to his brother John, which arrived while he was in the middle of dinner, asking him to come up to London and see his brother. He did so, and stayed with him till the 17th. Richard’s illness lasted many months.

John Evelyn writes, March 3, 1670 :

“Finding my Brother in such exceeding torture, and that he now began to fall into convulsion fits, I solemnly set ye next day apart to beg of God to mitigate his sufferings and prosper the onely meanes which yet remained for his recovery he being not only much wasted, but exceedingly
and all along averse from being cut (for the stone 😉 but when he at last consented, and it came to ye operation, and all things prepar’d, his spirit and resolution failed.”

On March 6 Richard died.  His wife survived him about twenty-two years. She died January 29, 1692, aged sixty-three, and was buried in Epsom Parish Church. She was Lady of the Manor of Epsom and Horton, and her daughter having died before her in 1688, Charles Calvert, Baron Baltimore, was her next of kin, as she had no grandchildren.

Referring entries


Referring entries


Further reading

Sources

  • “The history of the Evelyn family: with a special memoir of William John Evelyn”by Helen Evelyn 1905.   [Full text of book txt file]