Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, Lewis
JONES, LEWIS (1550?–1646), bishop of Killaloe, born in Merionethshire, Wales, became, according to Wood, a student at Oxford about 1562. He graduated B.A. in 1568 (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., i. 265), and was elected fellow of All Souls' College. Taking holy orders, and migrating to Ireland, he was appointed dean of Ardagh in 1606, and dean of Cashel and prebendary of Kilbragh in that church in 1607. He held both deaneries jointly till 1625, when he resigned Ardagh to his son Henry. The royal visitors stated, in 1615, that he had improvidently leased the revenues of the Cashel deanery to a son of Archbishop Meiler Magrath. But while dean he restored Cashel Cathedral,and established a choir there. In 1629 Archbishop Ussher warmly recommended him to Laud, on the ground of his services to the diocese, for the vacant archbishopric of Cashel (Ussher, Works, ed. Elrington, xv. 444). The recommendation was without effect. In 1629 Jones became a prebendary of Emly, and in April 1633 bishop of Killaloe. Early in his episcopate he showed more favour to Scottish covenanters than Wentworth, the lord-deputy, and Laud, approved, and he was censured by the High Commission court. 'I am sorry old Jones of Killaloe is so faulty,' wrote Laud to Wentworth on 12 April 1634. According to Anthony a Wood, he retired to Dublin on the outbreak of the Irish rebellion, and, dying there on 2 Nov. 1646, was buried in St. Werburgh's Church. Harris states in his edition of Ware's account of the Irish bishops that Jones died in the 104th year of his age; but Ussher, in his letter of 1629, says that Jones was then sixty-nine years old, in which case he would be eighty-six at death. The fact that he had been a graduate of Oxford for seventy-eight years implies, however, that he was some years older. Three of his sons, Henry Jones (1605-1682), Michael Jones (d. 1649), and Sir Theophilus Jones (d. 1685), are separately noticed.
Another son, Ambrose Jones (d. 1678), bishop of Kildure, was educated at Dublin; succeeded his father as prebendary of Emly in February 1637-8; became treasurer of Limerick in 1639, and precentor there in 1641; archdeacon of Meath in February 1660-1; rector of Castletown, co. Meath, in 1663; and bishop of Kildare in 1667. As bishop he sought to recover the alienated property of the see. He died on 15 Dec. 1678, and was buried at St. Andrew's, Dublin.
[Cotton's Fasti Eccl. Hib. passim; The Bishop's Will, Dwyer's Hist. Dioe. Killaloe, p. 181; Steame MS. (Trinity Coll. Dublin), F. 4, 2; Laud's Works, vii. 57, 68, 76.]