JONES, Sir Thomas (1554-1604), of Abermarlais, Carm.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. Feb./Apr. 1554, 1st s. of Sir Henry Jones by his 1st w. Elizabeth, da. of Matthew Herbert of Cogan Pill, Glam. educ. ?Shrewsbury 1562; G. Inn 1568. m. Jane, da. and h. of Rowland Puleston of Caernarvon, 5s. 2da.2 suc. fa. 1586. Kntd. 1584.3

Offices Held

J.p.q. Card., Carm. from c.1583; custos rot. Carm. 1587, dep. lt. by 1595; bailiff of Llanthony, Mon. by 1591.4

?Sheriff, Carm. 1588-95; sheriff, Card. 1601-2, Carm. 1602-3.

Biography

Jones first entered Parliament in the year that he succeeded to the wide influence of his father in West Wales, presumably on his return from serving in Ireland under Sir John Perrot. During his father’s lifetime he had extended his Pembrokeshire estates by leases and purchases in the neighbourhood of Tenby and Roche, but the lease of the crown lordship of Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, held by his father and grandfather, was not renewed in his favour but granted to the Audleys, who had held it in the fifteenth century. Jones was arraigned by Lord Audley before the court of Exchequer in 1592 for alleged encroachments in the lordship, and detention of the court rolls. He himself resorted to the same court four years later for protection against encroachments by others in his manor of Emlyn, of which he had recently been petitioning for a new and longer lease in the interests of his family. In 1602 he appeared before Star Chamber on a charge of assault and forcible entry into a corn mill in Carmarthenshire.6

His public career was equally turbulent. In 1577 he brought a Star Chamber action against a magistrate for assault in Carmarthen town, and ten years later he appeared in the same court on behalf of the freeholders of the shire to object to the recent appointment of a coroner. Some years later Sir John Vaughan of Golden Grove, as lord of a moiety of Llanthony, brought an action against him for withholding money levied by him as former bailiff of the town, and Attorney-General Coke accused him in Star Chamber of misdemeanours as deputy lieutenant. Though Jones’s main interests were in Carmarthenshire, he sold extensive properties in Pembrokeshire to Sir John Perrot in 1591, at the same time securing additional leases of the former lands of Talley abbey in Carmarthenshire; an inventory of Perrot’s estate at his death in the following year shows that Jones and Perrot still held joint interests in Pembrokeshire.7

Jones was one of the Members nominated to attend the Queen, 11 Nov. 1586, and as knight of the shire he was entitled to attend the subsidy committee appointed on 22 Feb. 1587. He was in charge of the committee, 29 Nov. 1597, for repairing Newport bridge in Monmouthshire. The knights of the shire for 1597 were appointed to the following committees: enclosures (5 Nov.), the poor law (5, 22 Nov.), armour and weapons (8 Nov.), the penal laws (8 Nov.), monopolies (10 Nov.) and the subsidy (15 Nov.). Jones died between making his will, 7 Mar. 1604, and its proof, 18 May 1604. He asked to be buried in the parish church of Llansadorne, left small bequests for the repair of St. David’s cathedral and the parish church and to certain servants; annuities of £20 each to his sons Rowland, Richard and Herbert; £500 to his daughter Anne, and the residue to the sole executor, his elder son, Sir Henry Jones. A codicil provided for household stuff in ‘the house in Caernarvon’ to go to his widow. An inquisition post mortem was taken at Carmarthen, 29 Sept. 1604.8

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: A.H.D.

Notes

  • 1. Folger V. b. 298.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from fa.’s i.p.m., C142/213/69; Hist. Carm. ii. 473; J. E. Griffith, Peds. 275.
  • 3. Jones appears as Sir Thomas of Abermarlais in the return of 1586 and has therefore been assumed to be the man referred to in Shaw, Knights, ii. 83 rather than ibid. 86 or Dwnn, Vis. Wales, i. 189-90.
  • 4. Star Chamber, ed. Edwards (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. i), 43; CSP Dom. 1595-7, p. 139; Exchequer, ed. E. G. Jones (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. iv), 128; PRO Index 4208.
  • 5. Thomas Jones ‘esquire’.
  • 6. CSP Ire. 1574-85, p. 549; Exchequer, ed. E. G. Jones, 109-10, 113; Star Chamber, ed. Edwards, 52; Augmentations, ed. Lewis and Davies (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xiii), 306, 492; CSP Dom. 1591-4, p. 363; Hist. Carm. i. 234.
  • 7. Exchequer, ed. E. G. Jones, 128; G. Owen, Taylors Cussion, ed. Pritchard (1906), ff. 36-7; Star Chamber, ed. Edwards, 43, 45, 52; Arch. Camb. (ser. 5), xii. 325, 355; Augmentations, ed. Lewis and Davies, 253.
  • 8. D’Ewes, 399, 409, 552, 553, 555, 557, 561, 565; PCC 54 Harte; Wards 7/28/14.