Note 247 — Chapter XXVI

Mrs. Bevan was a daughter and co-heiress of Mr. Vaughan, of Derllysg, in the parish of Merthyr, Carmarthenshire, and received her first serious impressions under the apostolic ministry of Griffith Jones, rector of Llandowvor. She was very handsome, sensible, and accomplished. Her husband, Arthur Bevan, Esq., of Langharne, was rector of the county-borough of Carmarthen, and for fourteen years its representative in Parliament; his public conduct was at once dignified and endearing, and he died March 6, 1745, aged 56, beloved and lamented. To Mr. Jones, Mrs. Bevan was ever grateful and affectionate, attended his ministry at Llandowvor and Llandilo, powerfully assisted his efforts in establishing that blessing to the poor of the principality, the Welsh Circulating Charity-schools; and at last, in 1761, it was in her house at Langharne that he died, and at her own expense she erected a monument to his memory in the parish church he had so faithfully served. For twenty years after his death she continued his schools, and in her will left 10,000l. to perpetuate their good effects. The executrix, Lady Stepney, disputed the legacy, and it was thrown into Chancery, whence, in 1808, it came, increased to a vast sum, and was applied to the purposes willed by the testatrix. At every visit of Mr. Whitefield to Bath he preached in Mrs. Bevan’s house, and at the period of which we speak the Earls of Chesterfield and Huntingdon, and Mrs. Stanhope, were among the distinguished auditory. Mrs. Bevan’s elegant and accomplished manners attracted Lord Chesterfield’s attention, and having studied the Deistical writers of the age, she was enabled to give all her eminent ability and clearness to the discussion of the topics he was fond of introducing. She easily and solidly refuted his plausible objections to revealed religion. “Lord Chesterfield’s inclination to subvert Christianity (she writes to Lady Huntingdon) has involved me in many inconsistencies. A greater proof of his prejudices and his being reduced to the last distress in point of argument is his general clamours and invectives against all historical evidence, as absolutely uncertain; and it is not so much the corruptions of Christianity that his Lordship finds fault with, as with the Christian revelation itself, which he does not scruple to represent as the product of enthusiasm or imposture. Yet, at other times, he will agree with me, that never were there any facts that had clearer and more convincing evidence attending them than the extraordinary and miraculous facts whereby the divine original and authority of the Christian revelation was attested and confirmed. This strange fluctuation of opinion I can account for only on this ground—that the incontrovertible and undeniable evidence of these facts has overcome the notions and prejudices with which his mind has been so strongly prepossessed; and it is this shaking of the Babel of unbelief that fills me with hope that the Great Dispenser of spiritual benefits will, of his free grace and mercy, reveal to his Lordship’s mind the grand and harmonious system of revealed truth, the several parts of which are like so many links of a beautiful chain, one part answering to another, and all concurring to exhibit an admirable plan, in which the wisdom, the grace and goodness, and the righteousness of God most eminently shine forth. Your Ladyship’s great intimacy with and friendship for Lord Chesterfield has induced me to be thus minute in what related to him. Of Lord Huntingdon I have not had much opportunity of forming an opinion; but I hear from good Lady Gertrude, that Sir Charles and his Lordship are inseparable, and have long and animated discussions on the most interesting topics. He has called frequently on Mrs. Grinfield, with whom he seems much pleased. Your Ladyship is well assured she will not lose a favourable opportunity of speaking a word in season.”