JONES, Dr Gilbert (1592-1669), of Bristol, Glos.

Gilbert Jones may have been of Welsh descent, but by the early seventeenth century his family had crossed the Severn, as he was recorded as being the son of a Worcestershire gentleman – probably ‘Mr Walter Jones’ of St Helen’s parish, Worcester.10The Par. Bk. of St Helen’s Church ed. Wilson, i. 29; Registrum Orielense ed. Shadwell, 139; Levack, Civil Lawyers, 244. Gilbert pursued a career in the law, although his training was in civil, not common law, and he should not be confused with his namesake, the son of Gilbert Jones of Montgomeryshire, who enrolled at Gray’s Inn in 1617.11G. Inn Admiss. Admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1612, Jones had attained the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts by the summer of 1617, and then studied law at All Souls, graduating as BCL in 1623.12Registrum Orielense, 139 Two years later he had his first career break, when he was chosen to succeed Sir James Hussey, chancellor of the diocese of Bristol, who had died suddenly in July 1625.13Whiteway Diary, 74. Jones may have owed this promotion to the patronage of the then bishop, Robert Wright, although it was common practice to purchase reversionary interests to diocesan chancellorships.14Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, i. 216; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 214. The prestige of his new position no doubt facilitated Jones’s promotion to the degree of DCL in 1628.15Al. Ox.

As chancellor of Bristol, a diocese which included the archdeaconry of Dorset as well as the deanery of Bristol, Jones soon came into contact with the region’s major gentry families, whose ecclesiastical affairs were under his supervision. From the early 1630s Jones sat on local commissions: for piracy in Dorset in 1632, 1638 and 1642, and for charitable uses in the same county in 1638-9.16C181/4, f. 104; C181/5, ff. 152v, 226v; C192/1, unfol.; Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, f. 52. In 1636 he was appointed by Sir Edward Rodney as judge of the vice-admiralty court in Somerset.17CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 374. In these offices, Jones served alongside important local families such as the Trenchards, Strangways and the Bonds of Lutton, as well as the Rodneys. Jones was also an active chancellor. He oversaw two vacancies of the see in the 1630s, and conducted several episcopal visitations.18LPL, Abbot’s Register, III, ff. 179-80; Laud’s Register, f. 303v; Whiteway Diary, 132. His service under three successive bishops of Bristol (Robert Wright, George Coke and Robert Skinner) suggests that he was a competent lawyer. Moreover, as all three bishops were stalwarts of the pre-Caroline Church of England, and at least one (George Coke) came into conflict with Archbishop William Laud, Jones’s acceptability to each may indicate that his own religious inclinations were conformist, but not Arminian.19Hutchins, Dorset, i. xxv; Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, i. 216; HMC Cowper, ii. 198-9.

In the Short Parliament elections of March 1640, Jones was returned for the Dorset borough of Wareham, which had long been under the electoral patronage of the Trenchard family. Jones had sat on various commissions in the 1630s with the head of the family, Sir Thomas Trenchard*; and John Trenchard*, Jones’s fellow MP for Wareham, was the brother-in-law of Sir Edward Rodney — another of the chancellor’s friends in the 1630s. It is far more likely that Jones was elected for Wareham on the Trenchard interest, rather than (as has been suggested elsewhere) on the waning patronal influence of Dorset’s lord lieutenant, the 2nd earl of Suffolk.20Cf. Levack, Civil Lawyers, 46. Once seated at Westminster, Jones’s involvement in the eradication of Laudian ‘innovations’ seems to confirm that he shared the religious inclinations of his episcopal masters and his lay patrons. Between 21 and 24 April, Jones was appointed to four committees for examining the commission granted to the recent church Convocation at York, which was shortly to pass the Laudian new Canons. These committees also considered innovations in religion, and the perceived attack by the church authorities on property rights and the privileges of Parliament.21CJ ii. 8a, 9b, 10a, 12a. It was probably in recognition of his professional expertise that, on 1 May, Jones was appointed to the committee on the second reading of the bill against abuses in ecclesiastical courts.22CJ ii. 17b.

Jones’s activities during the civil war and interregnum are obscure. Although he did not sit for Wareham in the Long Parliament, he continued to be appointed to the local piracy commission.23C181/5, f. 226v. He may have been influenced by Sir John Strangways* and other local royalists to join the king in the summer of 1642. After the outbreak of war, Jones joined the king at Oxford, where he was still resident in 1646, and in June 1649 he returned to Westminster, hoping to compound under the Oxford articles. His fine, of a bare £43, representing a third of his assessed wealth, indicates that Jones was in financial difficulties by this time.24CCC 2087. In 1650, when his delinquency was investigated by the Somerset county committee, Jones, who was listed as residing in Bristol, was passed over as he had no visible estate in the county.25CCC 260. If he was also the Gilbert Jones of Brockworth, Gloucestershire, who borrowed £250 from a London merchant in 1651, this may be yet another sign of the former chancellor’s approaching financial ruin.26LC4/203, f. 148. At the restoration of the monarchy, Jones re-emerged as legal adviser to the diocese of Bristol, under the new bishop, Gilbert Ironside, and by 1662 he had been appointed vicar-general of the see.27LPL, Court of Arches Act Bk. A2, f. 120v. Jones was involved as a litigant on behalf of the diocese in a wide variety of cases in the court of arches during the mid-1660s, and he remained active in legal affairs until his death, sometime in 1669.28LPL, Court of Arches Process Bk. D.163, D.395; Court of Arches Act Bk. A2, ff. 288, 292, 296-7, 307; A3, ff. 8, 17; A4, ff. 26, 36, 67; A5, ff. 203, 210, 216. The succeeding chancellor of Bristol, Henry Jones, was his son.29Diocese of Bristol ed. Boswell, 9.