Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/186

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Jones
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Jones

quence of the embezzlements of the agent in charge, Jones undertook its management, and lived there almost entirely from 1843 to 1880. Utilising the knowledge of farming which he had gained in Suffolk, he made great improvements on the estate, which consisted of about four thousand acres, and farmed one thousand acres himself. He engaged a man to teach his tenants how to grow turnips and clover, he improved the roads, reclaimed upwards of four hundred acres, and generally consolidated the farms. He was never popular in the district. In the severe winter of 1879 he gave increased employment to the neighbouring labourers, but opposed the establishment of public relief works, and when the Land League agitation began he was attacked as an unjust and rack-renting landlord. In December 1880 he refused to accept from his tenants Griffith's valuation in place of the stipulated rent, and was consequently boycotted. Most of the labourers in his employment deserted him, but he succeeded in carrying on his farm-work with the aid of men imported from England and elsewhere. Although successful in his resistance to the Land League, he left Ireland in 1881, and settled in London. He strenuously opposed Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Act of 1881, advocating emigration and state drainage of wet lands as alternative remedies. He died at 34 Elvaston Place, London, on 22 June 1882.

In 1843 Jones married Caroline, daughter of William Dickinson, M.P., of Kingweston, Somerset. His eldest son, William Francis Bence-Jones, educated at Rugby and Exeter College, Oxford (B.A. in 1878), and called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 26 Jan. 1883, died on 19 Nov. of the same year, when Jones's second son, Reginald, succeeded to the estate.

Jones was author of:

  1. ‘The Irish Church from the Point of View of its Laymen,’ London, 1868, 12mo.
  2. ‘The Future of the Irish Church,’ Dublin, 1869, 8vo.
  3. ‘What has been done in the Irish Church since its Disestablishment,’ London, 1875, 8vo.
  4. ‘The Life's Work in Ireland of a Landlord who tried to do his Duty,’ London (printed in Edinburgh), 1880, 8vo, being chiefly a collection of articles contributed to magazines between 1865 and 1880.

[Bence Jones's Life's Work in Ireland; Law Times, lxxiii. 168; Times, 24 June 1882; see also letters by Jones in Times, 15, 17, and 21 Dec. 1880, 3 Jan. 1881.]

D. Ll. T.

JONES, WILLIAM ELLIS (1796–1848), Welsh poet, whose bardic name was Gwilym Cawrdaf, born on 9 Oct. 1796 at Tyddyn Sion in the parish of Abererch, Carnarvonshire, was the second son of Ellis and Catherine Jones. His father was then a fuller, but subsequently became a schoolmaster. William after working as a journeyman printer at Dolgelly and Carnarvon, removed to London in 1817. About this time he studied landscape-painting, and soon after accompanied a gentleman to France and Italy in the capacity of a draughtsman. On his return to England he carried on the business of a photographer at Bath and Bristol, but after an illness returned to Wales, and resumed the occupation of printer. In January 1824 he entered the office of ‘Seren Gomer’ at Carmarthen, but subsequently worked for the Rev. Josiah T. Jones, first at Merthyr, then at Cowbridge (1836–8), and finally at Carmarthen. He was for many years a lay preacher among the Wesleyans, and while at Cowbridge was editor of, and chief contributor to, ‘Y Gwron Odyddol,’ the monthly organ of the Welsh Oddfellows. He died at Carmarthen on 27 March 1848, and was buried in St. Peter's churchyard.

Jones was the author of at least eleven odes (‘awdlau’), besides several other shorter poems written according to the rules of Welsh assonance, and he won the bardic chair at the Brecon Eisteddfod in 1822. A short lyrical poem entitled ‘Nos Sadwrn’ (‘Saturday Night’) and his ode ‘Hiraeth Cymro am ei wlad’ (‘The Welshman's longing for his home’) are full of a nervous tender feeling. He was also the author of a religious allegory of high merit, called ‘Y Bardd, neu y Meudwy Cymreig,’ Carmarthen, 1830, 12mo. He contributed largely to ‘Hanes y Nef a'r Ddaear,’ Carmarthen, 1847–8, and translated into Welsh Williams's ‘Missionary Enterprises,’ Carmarthen, 12mo. A collected edition of his poetical works was published in 1851, under the title of ‘Gweithoedd Cawrdaf … jn cynwys Gwyddfa y Bardd …’ (Carnarvon, 8vo), to which is appended a reprint of ‘Y Meudwy Cymreig.’ A portrait of the poet and a memoir by his brother, Ellis Jones of Carnarvon, are prefixed.

[J. T. Jones's Geiriadur Bywgraffyddol, ii. 146–147; memoir prefixed to Gweithoedd Cawrdaf … ut supra; Williams's Eminent Welshmen, p. 268; Foulkes's Enwogion Cymru, pp. 113, 114.]

D. Ll. T.

JONES, WILLIAM HENRY RICH (1817–1885), antiquary, eldest son of William Jones, chief secretary of the Religious Tract Society, was born in the parish of Christchurch, Blackfriars, on 31 Aug. 1817. He was educated at a private school at Totteridge, Hertfordshire, at King's College, Lon-