A Welsh Jesuit priest executed at Cardiff in 1679 during the Popish Plot panic, one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Saint Philip Evans was a Welsh Jesuit priest who ministered secretly in South Wales and was arrested, tried, and executed at Cardiff in July 1679 during the anti-Catholic hysteria that followed Titus Oates’s fabricated ‘Popish Plot.’ Condemned chiefly for the fact of his priesthood alongside fellow priest John Lloyd, he is remembered for a notably composed bearing before his death. Beatified in 1929, he was canonized in 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Quick Facts

• Born: c. 1645 (Monmouthshire, Wales)
• Died: 1679-07-22 (Cardiff, Wales)
• Feast Day: October 25 (with the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales)
• Venerated as: Priest of the Society of Jesus, martyr

Who Was Saint Philip Evans?

Saint Philip Evans was a Welsh Jesuit priest who ministered clandestinely in South Wales during the years when the practice of the Catholic priesthood in England and Wales was a capital offense, and who was arrested, tried, and executed at Cardiff in July 1679 during the anti-Catholic hysteria that followed Titus Oates’s fabricated ‘Popish Plot.’

Historical Setting

The Popish Plot of 1678–81 was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates alleging a Catholic plan to assassinate King Charles II; the resulting panic led to a wave of arrests, trials, and executions of Catholic priests and laypeople across England and Wales, even though the underlying plot was later shown to be entirely fabricated. Philip Evans, captured near Sker in Glamorgan, was tried and condemned chiefly for the fact of his priesthood, together with another priest, John Lloyd.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Philip Evans

The Church remembers Philip Evans, together with John Lloyd, as among the last priests executed under England’s anti-Catholic penal laws before those laws began, slowly, to relax. Accounts of his final days describe a notably composed bearing at his execution, including that he played a game of tennis after learning the date of his death had been set — a detail long preserved in local Welsh Catholic memory as a sign of his equanimity before death.

Canonization and Feast Day

Philip Evans was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI and canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, a group representing the wider body of some three hundred Catholics executed in England and Wales between the 1530s and 1680s.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Philip Evans’s calm before execution — a man who could still find room for an ordinary game before his death — is remembered as a particular kind of Christian courage: not defiant drama, but an unhurried peace grounded in faith that death was not the last word.

A Prayer to Saint Philip Evans

Saint Philip Evans, priest who met death with quiet peace, pray for those who minister in secret and in danger today, and grant us your calm trust in God’s providence. Amen.

Sources

• Roman Martyrology
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, entry on the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales