JONES, THOMAS (1752 - 1845), cleric

Born at Cefn yr Esgair, Hafod, Cardiganshire, 2 April 1752, son of John Thomas. In 1765 he went to school at Ystrad Meurig, and after nine years there he was ordained deacon in September 1774 and licensed to a curacy at Eglwys-fach and Llangynfelyn, Cardiganshire. In 1779 he moved to Leintwardine, Herefordshire, and after serving at Longnor (Salop), Oswestry, and Loppington, he went to Great Creaton in Northants, where he was curate for forty-three years. For the last eighteen of these (1810-28) he was also curate of Spratton. In 1828, at the age of 76, he was appointed rector of Creaton, resigning in 1833. He died 7 January 1845 and was buried at Spratton.

Jones corresponded with Thomas Charles about the foundation of Sunday schools, and himself founded one at Creaton in 1789. He also persuaded the S.P.C.K. to publish in 1799 an edition of ten thousand copies of the Bible in Welsh; when the demand for Welsh Bibles persisted, he sought to persuade the Society to issue a further edition, but failed. Later, as a result of his efforts and those of Thomas Charles and others, the British and Foreign Bible Society was established.

Jones was a fervent Evangelical preacher and a prolific writer. He was the author of seven works in Welsh, mainly translations (including one of Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest) and seventeen in English, the last being published in 1841. Perhaps his best-known work is The Welsh Looking-glass, 1812 [a remonstrance against the secession of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists from the Established Church].

Author

• Thomas Iorwerth Ellis, (1899 - 1970)

Sources

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• John Owen, Memoir of the Rev. Thomas Jones late of Creaton, Northamptonshire (1851)
• Enwogion y Ffydd (1880), ii, chapter 12, 364-9
• D. E. Jenkins, Life of Thomas Charles (Denbigh 1908) (index)

Published date: 1959

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