Author: Evans, Margaret
Biography:
EVANS, Margaret, formerly DAVIS (c. 1748-1844: Ronan)
She was probably born in 1748 (but the exact date and place is not known), the second daughter of Joshua Davis (1708-88), a Dublin barrister, and Anna Rowan, who had married in 1743. Nothing is known of her education but she would have had a privileged middle-class Protestant upbringing. She married Hampden Evans (1740-1820), a captain in the cavalry, on 7 Jan. 1769 at St. Bride’s, Dublin. He had an income of over £5000 a year and was the owner of a 470-acre estate at Mount Evans and of Portrane House, on the coast about 25 miles north of Dublin. They had at least eight children. On 15 Dec. 1792 her husband joined the Dublin Society, which had close links to the Society of United Irishmen formed in Belfast in Oct. 1791. In the failed rebellion of 1798, he was arrested and charged with high treason. Along with many others who faced death sentences, he was offered exile in return for confession but refused and elected for trial. When the executions started, he agreed to exile. Margaret Evans was altogether more conservative. In “The Christian’s Precept” she wrote, “In politics I’ll take no part, I hate all scandal in my heart,” and she attacked Paine directly in “To Thomas Payne.” They went into exile, first at Hamburg, then at Cassel in French Flanders, and finally at Paris, where they lived comfortably at various addresses and maintained contacts with other Irish rebels. They were granted leave to return in 1806 but the re-opening of hostilities delayed their return until 1811. Thereafter they returned to Portrane House. Her husband died on 22 Apr. 1820 in the same house at which he had been arrested, in Great George’s Street, Dublin. She died at Portrane House on 12 Mar. 1844, aged 96. (Gerard Ronan, Margaret Evans: Poet of Portrane[2020]; Kentish Gazette 27 July 1798, 3 Aug. 1798; Saunders News-Letter[Dublin] 2 Jan. 1799, 26 Apr. 1820; Dublin Monitor 15 Mar. 1844) AA
Other Names:
- Mrs. [Margaret] Evans