EVAN(S), LEWIS (1720 - 1792), one of the earliest Calvinistic Methodist exhorters in North Wales

Christened 18 February 1719/20, son of Evan Lewis of Trefeglwys, Montgomeryshire, but removed when very young to Crugnant, Llanllugan, Montgomeryshire, where he became a weaver. On a visit to Trefeglwys, 4 November 1738, he was converted by a sermon of Howel Harris's. He then went to some of Griffith Jones's circulating schools around Llanllugan, and began to exhort as a Methodist. At the Trevecka Association of 1745 he was commissioned to itinerate in North Wales. In 1746 he was imprisoned at Dolgelley for exhorting at Bala - the affair is noteworthy because Harris appealed on his behalf to the King's Bench, and the justices were compelled to release Lewis Evan (excerpts of the documents in the case have been printed in Cylchgrawn Cymdeithas Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd, November 1921). He itinerated zealously, penetrating even into Caernarvonshire and Anglesey, and suffered dire persecution. In the Methodist disruption of 1750 he was at first on Harris's side, and frequented his 'associations'; but later he joined Rowland's connexion. He died (according to E. Griffith, Methodistiaeth Trefaldwyn Isaf, 39) 5 September 1792.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• The chief authority is Richard Bennett, more specifically his article in Cylchgrawn Cymdeithas Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd, November 1921, but also his Methodistiaeth Trefaldwyn Uchaf, 1738–1852 (1929)

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q20733006

Published date: 1959

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