JONES, WILLIAM (died 1679), Puritan minister

Probably Merioneth -born, he first comes into prominence by an order of the Committee for Plundered Ministers settling him at Denbigh and allowing him £100 per annum out of the profits of the rectory (1647); he acted also as chaplain to the Parliament's garrison in the town; in 1650 he was named as one of the twenty-five 'approvers' to work the Propagation Act. In the years 1654-6 his profits were in jeopardy because of the hostile attitude of an Anglican farmer of the tithes, but in 1657 the finance authorities of the Protectorate, the Trustees for Maintenance, allowed him an augmentation of £40 annually. The Restoration threatened both the original grant and the augmentation, but it was in August 1661 that he was effectually silenced as a Puritan minister, under the Act of Sept. (1660), not under the Act of Uniformity (1662). Under the Five Mile Act he had to leave Denbigh, and found refuge at Plas Teg, Flintshire, the home of the Trevor family of Trefalun - the father had been a commissioner under the Propagation Act of 1650 and the son was active in furthering Charles II's design of a Declaration of Indulgence in 1672; it is said that land was settled upon him to the value of £20 a year; he was at Plas Teg when a licence was issued to him to preach under the Indulgence of 1672, dated 28 October.

A few years later he joined the coadjutors of Thomas Gouge in translating religious books into Welsh - the two which he translated were originally written by Gouge himself, and both appeared in 1676 with the titles Gair i Bechaduriaid, a Gair i'r Sainct and Principlau neu Bennau y Grefydd Christianogol.

Later he seems to have moved from Plas Teg to Hope, where he died in February 1679. His funeral sermon was preached by Dr. David Maurice, a 'conforming Minister of Abergeley,' who also penned a Latin inscription to be placed on his gravestone (this ' minister ' was during William Jones's latter years vicar of Llanasa, Flintshire; the ' conforming minister ' and William Jones had married two sisters).

Author

• Thomas Richards, (1878 - 1962)

Sources

• Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1654 (329), 1655 -6 (221, 223)
• Lambeth Manuscripts. 992 (45), 993 (316)
• Diaries and letters of Philip Henry, M.A. of Broad Oak, Flintshire, A.D. 1631-1696 (London 1882), 93
• Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Charles II, entry book 38A (261)
• Edmund Calamy, An account of the ministers, lecturers, masters, and fellows of colleges and schoolmasters, who were ejected or silenced after the Restoration in 1660. By or before, the Act for Uniformity. (London 1713), 713
• The Nonconformist Memorial; being an Account of the Lives … and Printed Books of the two thousand Ministers ejected … (1802–3), 1802-3, iii, 477-8
• H. B. Thomas, A History of the Diocese of St. Asaph (1874), i, 334
• History of the Princes, the Lords Marcher, and the Ancient Nobility of Powys Fadog, iv, 373

Additional Links

• VIAF: 2367098
• Wikidata: Q20734656

Published date: 1959

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