For this to happen earlier,you need an earlier Renaissance equivalent,earlier age of enlightenment equivalent and hence earlier discoveries that succeeded them. Not impossible. But these are the pre requisites.
Evolution could probably be discovered as early as Newton's time. There was already methodical study of natural history (then the term for biology). A book called
Historia Piscium was published in 1686 as a comprehensive survey of fish known at the time and this was decades before Linnaeus' system of classification. Full text of
Historia Piscium (untranslated, Latin only, but nice pictures):
https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/54633295
Carl Linnaeus, who taxonomically grouped humans with apes, as well as grouping all other forms of life by their apparent similarities, could easily hypothesize something similar to Darwinian evolution. Late in his life, however, he was troubled by the fact that plant hybrids could be created by cross pollination. These were varieties that had not existed before. Linnaeus stopped short of concluding that these plants had evolved.
Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) said that living things do change through time. He speculated that this was somehow a result of influences from the environment or even chance. He believed that the earth must be much older than 6000 years. In 1774, in fact, he speculated that the earth must be at least 75,000 years old. He also suggested that humans and apes are related. Buffon was careful to hide his radical views in a limited edition 44 volume natural history book series called
Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804). By doing this, he avoided broad public criticism.
Buffon some time before 1788, wrote, "Not only the ass and the horse, but also man, the apes, the quadrupeds, and all the animals might be regarded as constituting but a single family", and later "that man and ape have a common origin", and that "the power of nature...with sufficient time, she has been able from a single being to derive all the other organized beings".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_Naturelle
https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/evolve/evolve_1.htm
There was methodical-enough study existing in Newton's time and also in the two centuries between him and Darwin that it certainly could have appeared earlier. Arguably Linnaeus could have just arrived to a different conclusion and we have an earlier Darwinism.