Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/176

i year was [ip]iointed chl-'f justice of Bthe king's bench in Ireland, in Huccession to I Sir John Dutton, transferred to thu English court of exchequer (see MoSTiou's edition of Bacon's Works, vii. 2fl3), and while the IrisU chancellorship wu« vacant he was a commis- sioner of the great seal. In 1020 he resigned k his judgeahip, and returned to the English Cbar. His name occurs in his own and in F Crake's ' Reports' from Michaelmas 1650 to f Michaelmas 1621, On 25 Sept. 1621 he was ap|M)inted a judge of the common pleas, and on 20 March 1622 was selected as a member of a commission to go to Ireland and inquire into the state of that kinfrfom. Ho com- I plained to Lord Cranfield that the commis- L MOners refused to recognise him as a judge, Per entitled to any precedence on the com- ■ roiRsion, and that he was placed junior on it (HUt. MSS. Comm. 4th liep. App. p. 3ft5). While in Ireland, upon the complaint of the general body of suitors, he revised the scale of costs in the Dubhn courts (see Kcsbell and Prendero art's Cat. State Papers, Ire- , land, 1615-25). I!e remoined a member of i Ihe Irish oororaission at any rate till Novem- ' ber 1623 {Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App. p.SlB). OnUAug. 1623hewasajipointeda| member of the council of Wales, in January ', of the following year was a mem ber of another Irish commission, and on 17 Oct. 1024 was transferred from the common pleas to the king's bench. As a member of tho Star- chamber he appears to have been in favour of leniency, at least in the coses of Lord Morley and Sir Henry Mayne; but in 1627 he was oneof the judges who refused to admit Eliot and his companions to bail (28 Nov.) He wasoneof the judges who tried Eliot, Holies, and Valentine in 1630, und he delivered the judgment of the court. In 1636 he actually signed an opinion in favour of ship-money (Bt:iiifmbrancia,f. 4Ui); Hut. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pp. 3, 497 a), and in 1638 he gave judgment tor its legalitv. He died at his ' Itouee in Holbnm on 9 t)ec, 1640, and was f lluried in Lincoln's Inn Chapel. Sir Robert I Heath [q. v.] succeeded bitn. Henme, in his 'Curious Discourses,' ii. 44H, prints a paper by Jones on the early Britons rend before the Anliquones' Society in Elizabeth's reign, and calls him 'a person of admirable learning, par- ticularly in the municipal laws and British antiquities.' Jones's 'Reporta of Cases from 18 James I to lit Charles I ' appeared in 1675, fol. He married in 1587 Margaret, eldest daughter of Griffith ap John Griffith of Keve- namulcb, Oamarvonshire, by whom he had I, Charles, reader at Lincoln's Inn in I 1640; and secondly, Catherine, daughter of Thomas Powys of Abingdon, Oxfordshire,

���widow of Dr. Robert Ilovenden [q, engraved portrait of Jones by Sherwiii is prc- Hxed to hiB ' Reports.'

[toss's Lives of tlio Judgf*; D>no's Renjd. Visit, of Wnlcs, ii. I16i Dnvnn and Brace's Cnl. State Papers ; Pari. Hist. ii. 200 ; Stiua Trials, iii. B44, 1181; Collina's Pceruie. viii. 577; Sir W. Jones's Rp,x.rl9, Pref.; Law Officers of Ireland, pp. 26. 88 ; Fonter's Sit J. Eliot. nL 1864. ii. 94, 1S6,373, SIS, 563; Gardiner's Hist. vi, ai6, viii. 279.] J. A. H.

JONES, Sir WILLIAM (1631-1682), lawyer, son of Richard Jones, of Stowey, Somerset, M.P. for Somerset in 1654, was entered at Gray's Inn 6 May 1647 (Foster, Admissions, p. 244); was called to the bar, and soon acquired a 'capital practice' in the court of king's bench (North, Lives, i. 47). The Duke of Buckingham befriended him, and he was knighted and made a king's counsel in 1671. He was solicitor-general from 11 Nov. 1673 till 25 June 1675, when he was appointed attorney-general. He directed the prosecution of the victims of Titus Oates's plot in 1678, but growing, it is said, disgusted with that work, he resigned the attorney-generalship in November 1679, and became a pronounced enemy of the court. He was returned to the House of Commons as member for Plymouth at a bye-election on 3 Nov.1680, and entered parliament with 'the fame of being the greatest lawyer in England and a very wise man' (Grey, Debates, vii. 451). He was a manager for the commons at Stafford's trial (30 Nov.), and to his strenuous efforts the passage of the Exclusion Bill through the commons was generally ascribed (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. ix. 99 sq.; Cobbett Parl. Hist. iv. 1208). His action was severely satirised by the court wits (see State Poems, iii. 138, 157), and Dryden introduced him as 'Bull-faced Jonas' into 'Absalom and Achitophel' (1681). He was re-elected for Plymouth to the abortive parliament summoned to Oxford in March 1681. The king's declaration of 8 April 1681, justifying his dissolution of parliament, was answered by Jones in his exhaustive 'Just and Modest Vindication of the Proceedings of the last two parliaments' (London, 1681, 4to. anon.) The tract was reissued in 1689 as 'The Design of Enslaving England Discovered,' and reappeared in 'State Tracts,' 1693, i. 105, and in Cobbett's 'Parl. Hist.' iv. App. cxxxiv sq. After its publication Jones appeared little in public life, owing, it was reported, to dislike of Shaftesbury. He was on intimate terms with Lord William Russell. His friend Burnet describes him as 'honest and wise' although sour-tempered (Own Times, i.396). He died on 2 May 1682, either at his house in South-