George Evelyn (18 June 1617 – 4 October 1699) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1689.
The House of Commons of England was the lower house of the Parliament of England from its development in the 14th century to the union of England and Scotland in 1707, when it was replaced by the House of Commons of Great Britain. In 1801, with the union of Great Britain and Ireland, that house was in turn replaced by the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Evelyn was the son of Richard Evelyn of Wotton, Surrey. He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford on 24 October 1634, aged 18. He was a student of Middle Temple in 1636. [1]
Wotton is a well-wooded parish with one main settlement, a small village mostly south of the A25 between Guildford in the west and Dorking in the east. The nearest village with a small number of shops is Westcott. Wotton lies in a narrow valley, collecting the headwaters of the Tilling Bourne which then has its first combined flow in the Vale of Holmesdale. The parish is long north to south, reaching to the North Downs escarpment in the north to the escarpment of the Greensand Ridge at Leith Hill in the south.
Trinity College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in 1555 by Sir Thomas Pope, on land previously occupied by Durham College, home to Benedictine monks from Durham Cathedral.
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn. It is located in the wider Temple area of London, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and within the City of London.
In November 1640, Evelyn was elected Member of Parliament for Reigate in the Long Parliament. [2] He sat until 1648 when he was excluded under Pride's Purge.
Reigate is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 1997 by Crispin Blunt of the Conservative Party.
The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640, and which in turn had followed an 11-year parliamentary absence. In September 1640, King Charles I issued writs summoning a parliament to convene on 3 November 1640. He intended it to pass financial bills, a step made necessary by the costs of the Bishops' Wars in Scotland. The Long Parliament received its name from the fact that, by Act of Parliament, it stipulated it could be dissolved only with agreement of the members; and, those members did not agree to its dissolution until 16 March 1660, after the English Civil War and near the close of the Interregnum.
Pride's Purge was an event that took place in December 1648, during the Second English Civil War, when troops of the New Model Army under the command of Colonel Thomas Pride forcibly removed from the Long Parliament all those who were not supporters of the Grandees in the New Model Army and the Independents. Some have called it a coup d'état.
In 1661, Evelyn was elected MP for Haslemere in the Cavalier Parliament. [3] In 1678 he was elected MP for Surrey and sat until 1681. He was elected MP for Surrey again in 1689 and sat until 1690. [4]
Haslemere was a parliamentary borough in Surrey, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1584 until 1832, when the borough was abolished by the Great Reform Act.
The Cavalier Parliament of England lasted from 8 May 1661 until 24 January 1679. It was the longest English Parliament, enduring for nearly 18 years of the quarter-century reign of Charles II of England. Like its predecessor, the Convention Parliament, it was overwhelmingly Royalist and is also known as the Pensioner Parliament for the many pensions it granted to adherents of the King.
Surrey was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by two Members of Parliament until 1832.
Evelyn died at the age of 82.
