JONES, William II (aft. 1566-1640), of Treowen and Hendre Obaith, Llanarth, Mon.

The Member’s grandfather, William ap John Thomas, was the first to break with the tradition of patronymic naming practice and his son, John, inherited the settled family name of Jones. Bradney, i. 302, 306; Gwent RO, D583.65. Although the Member was linked to the influential Morgans of Machen through his grandmother, it was his uncle, Philip Jones, a London Grocer, whose bequest placed him in the upper ranks of Monmouthshire society: at Philip’s death in 1603 Jones inherited his manors of Hendre Obaith (c.1,300 acres) and Llanarth. PROB 11/101, ff. 204-5v; Gwent RO, D583.73, D43.5256. Shortly thereafter his father also settled the 500-acre Treowen estate on him. Gwent RO, D43.4918. Jones made an advantageous marriage with the heiress of Moore Gwillim†, a wealthy Monmouth man who represented the town in Parliament in the 1580s and was connected to Philip Jones. The Member was thus placed within the associative web of Monmouth’s political elite, which included a number of the town’s Elizabethan MPs as well men like William Fortune, Member in 1626. Gwent RO, D43.4919, D583.73.

Despite his own family contacts, Jones’s return to the 1614 Parliament as a knight for Monmouthshire was probably secured by his links with Edward Somerset, 4th earl of Worcester. From at least 1608 Jones served as steward on some of the earl’s manors around Raglan, and as lord lieutenant of Monmouthshire, Worcester later procured Jones’s appointment as one of his deputies. Jones’s social status may suffice to explain these preferments, but his religious sympathies may also have helped his cause: in the 1624 Parliament he was presented as a recusant officeholder because of his wife’s Catholicism. NLW, Tredegar Park 93/51; CJ, i. 776b; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 163v, ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 180v. This would have acted as a bar to preferment in many areas, but in south-eastern Wales the earl was well known as the chief patron of local Catholics. R.P. Matthews, ‘Roman Catholic Recusancy in Mon. 1603-1689: A Demographic and Morphological Analysis’ (Univ. of Cardiff Ph.D. thesis, 1996), pp. 212-13; P.P. Murphy, ‘Caths. in Mon. 1533-1689’, Presenting Mon. xxi. 35.

In the 1614 Parliament Jones was probably entrusted with supporting the bill for an endowment of a school and almshouses for Monmouth made by a Haberdasher namesake - he later corresponded with the Company clerk over this bequest. NLW, Kyrle-Fletcher A(39). Consequently, he was probably the ‘Mr. Jones’ named to the bill committee on 16 May. In his capacity as one of the shire knights, he perhaps also tabled a bill for incorporating a hospital in Llangview and erecting a grammar school in Usk (20 May), but it is impossible to be certain, as the measure only received one reading. CJ, i. 486a, 490b. The other committee nominations and speeches made by ‘Mr. Jones’ during this Parliament can be ascribed with some confidence to the lawyer William Jones I, Member for Beaumaris. As a Monmouthshire Member, though, Jones could have attended committees for bills to revoke a clause of the Welsh union legislation (18 Apr.) and to regulate the erection of weirs (21 May). Procs. 1614 (Commons), 98, 309.

After the Parliament, Jones rebuilt the family house at Treowen and continued to be active in Monmouthshire local government. Gwent RO, D43.4817. He died intestate at Treowen in July 1640. A commission for administering his estates, which were later estimated at around £400 p.a., was issued on 29 Aug. to his eldest son, Philip, who became a prominent royalist commander in Monmouthshire during the Civil War. PROB 6/17, f. 141v; NLW, Kyrle-Fletcher A(17); CCC, 1514; CCAM, 1388. No member of the family subsequently sat in Parliament.