Born 2nd March 1830 in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.

Died 18th December 1909 in Canterbury, Kent.

Sixth child, fourth son of Arthur Benoni EVANS and Anne DICKINSON.

Married 6 April 1858, at Lambeth, Elizabeth GOLDNEY 24 Feb 1833-1911. She was the youngest daughter of Francis Bennett-Goldney, one of the founders of the London Joint Stock Bank

Their children were:

1. Sebastian EVANS 20 Jan 1859 - 10 Aug 1935 at Cradley, near Malvern.

2. Frank EVANS 9 Aug 1862 - 1918

In 1892, Frank took the name of his grandfather and of his uncle, Francis Bennett Goldney. He was M.P. for Canterbury and died as a result of a

motor accident in France.

After early education under his father at the Market Bosworth grammar school, Sebastian won in 1849 a scholarship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1853 and proceeding M.A. in 1857.

On leaving the university Sebastian became a student at Lincoln's Inn on 29 January 1855 but was shortly appointed secretary of the Indian Reform Association, and in that capacity was the first man in England to receive news of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. That year he resigned the secretaryship and turned a talent for drawing to use, becoming manager of the art department of the glassworks of Messrs. Chance Bros. & Co., at Oldbury, near Birmingham. This position he occupied for ten years, and designed many windows, including one illustrating the Robin Hood legend for the International Exhibition of 1862.

In 1867 Sebastian left the glassworks to become editor of the Birmingham Daily Gazette, a conservative newspaper. In 1868 he unsuccessfully contested Birmingham in the conservative interest in the general election and also helped to form the National Union of Conservative Associations. In the same year he took the degree of LL.D. at Cambridge.

In 1870 Sebastian left the Gazette to pursue a legal career. On 17 November 1873 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and joined the Oxford circuit. He built up a practice, wrote leading articles for The Observer and contributing articles and stories, mostly with a tendency to the supernatural, to Macmillan's and Longman's magazines. In 1878 he shared in the foundation of The People, a weekly conservative newspaper, and edited it for the first three years of its career. When on the eve of the general election of 1886 the editor of the Birmingham Daily Gazette died suddenly, Sebastian resumed the editorship for a period.

In the early 1890s, Sebastian became involved in the Neo-Jacobite Revival, joining the Order of the White Rose.

Towards the end of his life he retired to Abbot's Barton, Canterbury, where he died on 19 December 1909.

While an undergraduate Evans published a volume of sonnets on the death of the Duke of Wellington (1852). His other published collections of poems were:

• Brother Fabian's Manuscripts and other Poems, 1865.

• Songs and Etchings, 1871.

• In the Studio, a Decade of Poems, 1875.

• He translated Francis of Assisi's 'Mirror of Perfection' (1898) and Geoffrey of Monmouth's History (1904), and with his son Francis, ‘Lady Chillingham's House Party’ adapted from Édouard Pailleron's Le Monde où l'on s'ennuie (1901).

• In 1881 he re-edited his father's Leicestershire Words for the English Dialect Society.[1]

Evans was also a translator in verse and prose from mediaeval French, Latin, Greek, and Italian. In 1898 he published The High History of the Holy Grail (new edit. 1910 in Everyman's Library), a version of the old French romance of Perceval le Gallois, as well as an original study of the legend in In Quest of the Holy Grail.

Sebastian exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere pictures in oil, water-colour, and black and white, and practised woodcarving, engraving, and bookbinding.

"This sketch was made by Sebastian Evans, L.L.D. in his 18th year. He was born at Market Bosworth in 1830 and his sketch therefore shows the appearance of the church in 1847." Photo by NGH.