1658, and reprinted in ‘Harleian Miscellany,’ iii. 479), it is said that ‘he made hay while the sun shined, and improved his interest and revenue in land, well gotten (no question), to 3,000l. per annum’ (Harleian Miscellany, iii. 479).
After the Restoration the attorney-general challenged his receipts and disbursement of public money in an unsuccessful action at law (Charters of Swansea, p. 201). But he soon made his peace with Charles II's government, and strengthened his title to his estates by purchasing the reversion from the original owners. He also bought, in 1664, Penmark Manor, including Fonmon Castle, whither he retired to live. He was sheriff of Glamorganshire in 1671. He died 5 Sept. 1674, and was buried in the church at Penmark, where a tablet to his memory still remains.
Jones married Jane, daughter of William Price of Gellyhir and Cwrtycarnau, by whom he had four sons and five daughters. His wife died 23 Oct. 1678. His three eldest sons, Samuel, Philip, and John, were admitted students of Gray's Inn on the same day, 29 Oct. 1657, but were never called to the bar; the two former died during their father's lifetime, and the last named died without male issue, being succeeded by his only surviving brother, Oliver, for whom it is said Cromwell stood sponsor, and from whom the present Jones family of Fonmon Castle is directly descended. An oil painting of Jones, supposed to be by Cornelius Janssen, is preserved at Fonmon, and a photograph of it is given in the ‘Charters of Swansea’ (vide infra). An emblazoned pedigree of Jones, prepared by George Owen, York herald, the deed appointing him governor of the Charterhouse, and several other documents illustrative of Jones's history are also at the same place (Arch. Cambr. 5th ser. v. 383–5). Several letters from Jones to Henry Cromwell, as lord deputy of Ireland, are preserved in the British Museum in the Lansdowne MSS. (823).
[Most of the facts of Jones's life were collected for the first time in a Memoir of Colonel Philip Jones, included in the Charters of Swansea by Colonel Grant-Francis, pp. 167–207; Pedigrees of the Fonmon family are to be seen in Arch. Cambr. 2nd ser. vii. 1–22, and in G. T. Clark's Glamorganshire Pedigrees, pp. 215, 216; see also Lewis W. Dillwyn's Contributions towards a History of Swansea, p. 28; J. Roland Phillips's Civil War in Wales, i. 244 n., 401, 418, ii. 361; Foster's Register of Admissions at Gray's Inn, p. 284.]
JONES, RHYS (1713–1801), Welsh poet and compiler, born in 1713, son and heir of John Jones of Blaenau, Llanfachraeth, Merionethshire, was educated at Dolgelley and Shrewsbury, and on leaving school settled as a country gentleman on his own freehold for the remainder of his long life. He wrote poetry, and was described as the greatest living poet in 1770. He is best remembered as a compiler of Welsh poetry; he was on terms of intimacy with the most eminent Welsh poets of his time. He died 14 Feb. 1801 in his eighty-eighth year, and was buried at Llanfachraeth.
He published:
- ‘Flangell i'r Methodistiaid’ (a Whip for the Methodists), which displays very narrow religious sympathies.
- ‘Pigiadau dewisol o waith y Prydyddion o'r amrywiol oesoedd,’ 1770 (Rowlands).
- ‘Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru, neu Flodau Godidowgrwydd Awen,’ a valuable selection of Welsh poetry of different ages, Shrewsbury, 1773; revised by Robert Ellis (Cynddelw) [q. v.], Carnarvon, 1861.
- A selection of his poems was published by his grandson, Rice Jones Owen, in 1818.
[Williams's Eminent Welshmen; Foulkes's Geiriadur Bywgraffiadol; Jones's Geiriadur Bywgraffyddol; Cymru, August 1891, p. 37.]
JONES, JHONES, or JOHNES, RICHARD (fl. 1564–1602), printer, was admitted a member of the Stationers' Company 7 Aug. 1564. The first entry to him in the registers is for a ballad (Arber, Transcript, i. 271). His shop was ‘joyning to the south-west doore of Paules Church.’ He also printed ‘at the west end of Paules Church, betweene the Brasen Pillar and Lollard's Tower,’ as well as ‘over against S. Sepulchre's,’ ‘Without Newgate neere unto Holburne Bridge,’ at the Rose and Crown, and other places. In June and August 1579 he was fined for disorderly printing, and in January 1582–3 he was committed to prison by the wardens for printing without license. He issued about ninety works (several in partnership with others), consisting chiefly of plays, chapbooks, romances, and popular literature. He had licenses for a large number of ballads, ‘particularly 8 Aug. 1586 he had allowed to him 123’ (Ames, Typographical Antiquities (Herbert), ii. 1055). He used the device of a flower, with a Welsh motto. Dibdin points out that the woodcut representing an old man about to pluck a flower, usually supposed to be a portrait of Jones (reproduced by Herbert, ib. ii. 1039), is a fancy sketch, probably borrowed from an ancient herbal (Typographical Antiquities, 1812, ii. x). Some of his introductory addresses are very quaint, as, for instance, those to Marlowe's ‘Tamburlaine’ (1592) and Nash's ‘Pierce Penilesse.’ He wrote an
