In 1923 Audrey Nona Gamble published an ambitious work entitled A History of the Bevan Family in which she states, "The ancient family of Bevan derives its descent from Jestyn-ap-Gwrgant, the last Prince of Glamorgan, who lived at Cardiff Castle about 1030AD."The average family historian is cautious in claiming any ancestors before 1538 when Henry VIII's Vicar General, Thomas Cromwell ordered that each parish priest should keep registers of the baptisms, marriages and burials taking place in his parish. However, Mrs. Gamble, relying upon Dr. Nicholas and Rev. Thomas Evans
"who in 1864 made a careful investigation of Registers and Records" confidently lists a 20 generation descent from the Prince of Glamorgan to Jenkin-ap-Evan who married Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Peter After in the parish church of St. Mary's at Rhossili circa 1620. Jenkin anglicised his Welsh surname creating the new one of Bevan.
Before revealing her own family history, Mrs. Gamble links to this one by placing Francis Bevan, one of Jenkin and Elizabeth's sons, at Oxwich Castle in 1694. Another of Jenkin and Elizabeth's sons, William, was the founding father of a more famous branch of the family and the one from which Mrs. Gamble traces her descent.
Born in Rhossili in 1627 William and his wife Priscilla raised their family in Swansea where William was a merchant, serving for many years as an Alderman. He became a Quaker, presumably influenced by the preaching of the founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox, when he visited South Wales in the mid 17th century. William is recorded as being imprisoned for two years for refusing to pay Church Rates and Tithes according to his religious convictions. William built a Friends Meeting House in Swansea and it was in the graveyard there alongside his wife Priscilla that he was buried in 1702.
William's fourth son, Silvanus, continued to live in Swansea, taking an active role in the commercial activities of the increasingly prosperous port. He was Burgess of the City and rented various plots of land
'near the lower white Tile; Kae Back near the Ashclose and a House and Garden at the Parsonage.'Silvanus continued to practise his father's faith although apparently did not take such an active role in religious affairs as he had. He married Jane Phillips, the daughter of a Swansea Quaker and they had eleven children - six daughters - Hester, Priscilla, Mary, Elizabeth, Susannah and Rebecca - of his sons, William Aquila, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy, it is the latter two who made their mark on two institutions which were far removed from parochial Swansea.
Silvanus died on 4th December 1725. He had maintained his link with the Gower and his will revealed he owned property at Penclawdd, Llanrhidian.
Silvanus (1691-1765) travelled to London as a young man and served a seven year apothecary apprenticeship with a master by the name of Thomas Mayleigh. Gaining admittance to the Freedom of the Society of Apothecaries on 5th July 1715, Silvanus set up in practise at No. 2 Plough Court just off Lombard Street and on 10th November that same year married Elizabeth Quare at the Quaker Meeting House in White Hart Court, Gracechurch Street. Sadly Elizabeth died a year later, giving birth to their child, a boy who died hours later. Silvanus remained alone at Plough Court for two years before marrying Martha Heathcote in 1719.
The pharmacy prospered and in 1725 Silvanus took over the lease on 3 Plough Court and expanded his business, the same year that Silvanus was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. His younger brother Timothy joined him at Plough Court about this time and in 1731 was himself admitted as a member of the Society of Apothecaries.
Towards the end of his life, Silvanus left Plough Court and practised as a physican from his home in Hackney. His circle of acquaintances was wide and included William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania of whom Silvanus carved a likeness. Silvanus died on June 5th 1765 at Hackney and is buried at Bunhill Fields.
Silvanus died childless and it is his brother Timothy who connects the Bevan family to new business opportunities with his two influential marriages. The first one was to Elizabeth, daughter of linendraper David Barclay by whom he had three surviving children, Silvanus, Timothy and Priscilla. His second marriage was to Hannah Gurney, daughter of the philanthropic Gurney Quaker family from Norwich of whom the prison reforming Elizabeth Fry nee Gurney was a descendant.
In 1766 the pharmacy at Plough Court was advertised as
Timothy Bevan & Sons, Druggist and Chymists, Plow Court but the following year Silvanus left to become a partner in his mother's family banking firm. Established in 1690, Barclays Bank operated out of premises in Lombard Street, the centre of trading activities for merchants, goldsmiths, jewellers and coin dealers and just a stonesthrow away from Plough Court. By the beginning of the 19th century this 'Quaker' bank was known by the name of its owners Barclay, Bevan, Tritton and Co.
Timothy's younger son, also named Timothy, continued in the pharmaceutical partnership until his death in 1773. Upon his father's retirement in 1775, Joseph Gurney Bevan took over the running of the business, the only child of Timothy's second marriage. The establishment at Plough Court continued to develop, maintaining the principle of good quality products retailing at a fair price and moving into a new, foreign market where trade was hampered by the American Revolution of 1776 and the Napoleonic wars that began in 1792.
Joseph Gurney Bevan married Mary Plumstead in 1776 but the couple had no children. He retired from Plough Court in July 1794 and two years later Joseph and Mary moved to Stoke Newington where he occupied himself with literary and religious matters. He wrote biographies of leading Quakers such as Isaac Pennington and Robert Barclay and was editior of a small Quaker journal called
Piety Promoted.With no children to inherit the business, Joseph Gurney Bevan was succeeded by Samuel Mildred. At the beginning of 1795 Mildred took Bevan's clerk, William Allen into partnership with him and thus began the development of Allen and Hanburys Ltd., a pharmaceutical empire which in 1927 employed approximately 2,000 people in not only London but throughout Europe into Egypt and as far east as Shanghi, the forerunner of the global GlaxoSmithKline conglomerate.
Returning to Joseph's brother Silvanus who joined the family banking firm of Barclays - it is with him that the family fortunes escalate but also the long held connection with the Quakers is lost. In 1769 Silvanus married Isabella Wakefield, the daughter of a Westmoreland Quaker family. However Isabella died of fever just seven months later. When Silvanus remarried four years later it was to Louisa Kendall, the daughter of another London banking family, but not a Quaker. At this time it was Quaker policy to disown all members who married out of the Society, which must have had serious implications both professionally and personally for Silvanus.
Silvanus and Louisa lived in London where six of their seven sons were baptised at various churches within the City - Bishopsgate, St. Edmunds; St. Giles-in-the-Fields and St. George's, Hanover Square. In 1793 Silvanus bought Swallowfield Park near Reading where the family lived for five years and youngest son Richard was born. From here they moved to a large estate, Riddlesworth Hall, near Thetford in Norfolk and in 1814 the family moved to Fosbury House in Wiltshire. Silvanus divided his year between Fosbury, his London home at 31 Gloucester Place and Collingwood House, Brighton. Described as a farmer it is doubtful he enjoyed the same hands-on experience as his namesake at Overton!
Silvanus and Louisa's eldest son David continued to invest heavily in property. Anxious that his eldest, newly married son, Robert Cooper Lee Bevan should live close by, David bought the lease on the Trent Park Estate, 1,000 acres of Middlesex countryside, now home to the University of Middlesex.
Robert experienced a religious conversion at the age of 27 and
'renounced worldly pleasures and henceforth devoted himself wholeheartedly to the things of God', writes Mrs. Gamble. Towards the end of his life he divided his time between Trent Park, Fosbury House and Chalet Passiflora, a villa in Cannes.
About this time, Ann's husband Silvanus was tramping on foot around the Gower countryside, travelling between chapels at Horton, Porteynon and Pitton, preaching his own modest Methodist tract.
And so Mrs. Gamble concludes her
Bevan Family History with a biography of her own father, Francis Augustus, second son of Robert Cooper Lee Bevan and his first wife Agneta. Born ten years after Overton Silvanus, Francis was educated privately at home before entering Harrow. After completing his education he enjoyed two years of foreign travel before joining the family firm at Lombard Street. Among his interests were the arts, cricket, riding and travel. Mrs. Gamble paints an affectionate picture of her father, a man 'destined' for a political career but who was prevented from entering parliament on the grounds of ill health. A man who devoted much of his time to the church and philanthropic causes such as The London City Mission, The Church Patronage Trust, The Colonial and Continental Church Society and Christs Hospital.
Francis Augustus and Silvanus both led a life of service to their work, their faith and their family but in every other respect were very far removed. In the 1881 census Francis Augustus and his wife Maria are recorded at 58 Prince's Gate where they are looked after by eight servants - a butler, a housekeeper, a Ladysmaid, two housemaids, a scullery maid, a footman and a page. Their four children, Leonard, Evelyn, Audrey (Mrs. Gamble to be) and Gytha were at Monken Hadley with six domestic servants and a garden labourer! At Overton Silvanus' live in help consists of his wife Ann and their six children.
Francis Augustus died on 31st August 1919 aged 79. Silvanus had predeceased him by five years, then aged 84. It is unlikely these two men ever met or even knew of eachother's existence, yet both were descended from Jenkin Bevan and his wife Elizabeth who married circa 1620 at the parish church of St. Mary at Rhossili - and if Mrs. Gamble's 1923 research can be substantiated - back as far as 1030AD and Jestyn-ap-Gwrgant, the last Prince of Glamorgan!
Photograph - Swallowfield Park home to Silvanus and Louisa Kendall Bevan
