# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, Thomas (1622?-1682)

​JONES, THOMAS (1622?–1682), Welsh divine, son of John Williams, from whose christian name he took his surname of Jones according to the Welsh custom, was born about 1622 at Oswestry, where he received his early education. He matriculated as a member of Jesus College, Oxford, 16 April 1641, but on the outbreak of the civil wars left the university and did not return till the surrender of Oxford to the parliamentary forces in 1646. In 1648 he became fellow of University College, by the authority of the parliamentary visitors to whom he submitted, and graduated B.A. 23 Feb. 1649, M.A. 20 Feb. 1650. He was a zealous supporter of protestantism, and became in 1655 puritan rector of Castell Caereinion in Montgomeryshire. He thereupon mastered the Welsh language so as to preach in it. After the Restoration Jones was ejected (1661) from his living in favour of Rice Wynne, the rector who had been deprived in 1645, and he was removed to Ludlow as chaplain to the lord president of the marches. In 1663 he became chaplain to James, duke of York. When the Duchess of York announced her intention to join the Roman catholic church, Jones charged Dr. George Morley [q. v.], the bishop of Winchester, her chaplain, with remissness of duty. Morley thereupon caused Jones to be dismissed from his chaplaincy in 1666, and he retired to the rectory of Llandyrnog, Denbighshire (then in the diocese of Bangor, but since transferred to that of St. Asaph), which had been conferred on him some time before.
Robert Morgan, his bishop, lent assistance to Dr. Morley to annoy and punish him, and in 1670 Morley obtained a verdict against him in the king's bench for 300l. as damages for slander, in that he had said in the hearing of the Bishop of Bangor and two of his chaplains that Morley was a ‘promoter of popery and a subverter of the church of England.’ To secure payment the living of Llandyrnog was sequestered, the money being applied to the repair of Bangor Cathedral and other pious uses. In consequence of another controversy which he had with his diocesan as to the position of the reading-desk in the church at Llandyrnog, Jones was soon after condemned ‘ab officio et beneficio,’ though it appears that the true reason for such an extreme measure was that the bishop wished to recover the living, which had previously been held in commendam by the bishops of Bangor. Jones was thus reduced to straitened circumstances, his sight became impaired, and, according to Wood, his mind was somewhat deranged before his death, which took place at Totteridge in Hertfordshire on 8 Oct. 1682. He was living there with Francis Charlton, brother-in-law of Richard Baxter.
Jones's chief works were: 1. ‘Vita Edwardi Simsoni, S.T.D., ex ipsius autographo,’ prefixed to Simson's ‘Chronicon Catholicon,’ Oxford, 1652, fol. 2. ‘Of the Heart and its right Sovereign, and Rome no Mother-Church to England,’ London, 1678, 8vo, along with which was printed 3. ‘A Remembrance of the Rights of Jerusalem above, in the great Question, Where is the true Mother-Church of Christians?’ 4. ‘Elymas the Sorcerer; or, a Memorial towards the Discovery of the bottom of this Popish Plot, published upon occasion of a passage in the late Dutchess of York's declaration for changing her Religion.’ The ‘passage’ referred to appeared in Louis Maimbourg's ‘Histoire du Calvinisme,’ and the book was virtually a renewal of the charges against Dr. Morley; it was answered by Dr. Richard Watson first in July 1682, and subsequently in ‘A fuller Answer … in a Letter addressed to Mr. Thomas Jones,’ London, February 1682–3, fol. Dr. Morley also published his own vindication in a preface to certain treatises which he published in 1683.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 51–3; Wood's Fasti Oxon. iv. 120, 162; Burrows's Registers of Visitors of the University of Oxford, pp. 174, 557; Bye Gones relating to Wales and the Border Counties, 4 March 1874 and 20 Jan. 1875; Thomas's History of the Diocese of St. Asaph, pp. 414, 730.]
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