Family and Education

b. c.1682, 2nd s. of Oliver Jones (d. 1685) of Fonmon Castle by Mary, da. of Martin Button of Duffryn, Glam.  educ. Jesus, Oxf. matric. 7 Apr. 1698, aged 15.  m. 1703, Mary (d. 1757), da. of Sir Humphrey Edwin, Mercer, alderman of London 1687–d., and ld. mayor 1697–8, of St. Peter Le Poer, London and Kensington, Mdx., and sis. of Samuel Edwin†, 2s. 4da. (1 d.v.p.).  suc. bro. Philip 1686.1

Offices Held

Sheriff, Glam. 1703–4.

Biography

Jones’s grandfather, Colonel Philip Jones†, had been a member of the Protectorate Council of State and a nominee to Cromwell’s ‘other House’. He it was who purchased Fonmon Castle. The Member himself first came to notice in 1703, the year of his majority, when he was pricked as county sheriff to replace his newly acquired father-in-law, the notorious occasional conformist Sir Humphrey Edwin. In 1711 Jones obtained a private Act of Parliament to permit the prolonged leasing of lands granted to him for life under the terms of his marriage settlement. A High Tory, his election to a vacancy as knight of the shire in 1712 has been depicted as a concession by the Court-orientated Mansel interest in Glamorgan to Tory ‘malcontents’, Jones having given assurances to supporters of the Mansels that he would be ‘diligent and an honest voter’, and presumably not trouble the ministry. He was classed as a Tory in the Worsley list and in two lists of the Members re-elected in 1715, and it would appear that his affection for the Jacobite cause extended to his keeping a portrait of the Pretender. Jones died on 19 Dec. 1715, aged 33. His elder son, whose name was sent to the Jacobite court in 1721 as a likely supporter in the event of a rising, later became a close friend and follower of Charles Wesley.2

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

• 1. G. T. Clark, Limbus Patrum Morganiae et Glamorganiae, 215; J. R. Woodhead, Rulers of London (London and Mdx. Arch. Soc.), 64–65; Beaven, Aldermen, ii. 113.
• 2. Clark, 215; Sheriffs Glam. 24; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 126; Glam. Co. Hist. iv. 404; P. Jenkins, Making of a Ruling Class, 143, 154–5; W. R. Williams, Parlty. Hist. Wales, 99–100; P. S. Fritz, Ministers and Jacobitism 1715–45, 153; DWB, 507.