JONES, Edmund (1612-83), of Gray’s Inn, Mdx., Llansoy, Mon. and Buckland, Llansantffraed, Brec.

Jones was once identified as a native of Llanddewi Ysgyryd (Llanddewi Skirrid), but this is an error.25Williams, Parlty Hist. Wales, 16. It is clear from his own testimony, as well as from his admission record at Oxford and his brother’s will of 1661 that he was from Llandenny, Monmouthshire, a parish near Raglan.26SP18/73, f. 155; Al. Ox.; NLW, LL/1 661/53. The proximity of Raglan castle, home of Henry Somerset, 5th earl of Worcester, to Jones’s home helped determine his early political allegiances. Nothing is known of his parentage, except that when he matriculated at Oxford in 1634 his father was judged to fall below the rank of a gentleman and was thus probably a yeoman farmer. After graduation, Jones enrolled at Gray’s Inn, and was called to the bar in 1641, by which time he was married to a widow of the Games family, an important gentry clan of Breconshire. After an incident in late 1639 in which Jones had called another London Welshman ‘a base rascally fellow, and a beggar’ in the street, he found himself in the high court of chivalry defending himself against an allegation of dishonouring a gentleman. Depositions were taken of Jones’s witnesses at Raglan, and no resolution of the case may have been reached before the court itself was swept away in the Long Parliament’s early remedial programme, but it is clear that before 1640, Jones and his London Welsh associates were sensitive to challenges to their gentry status.27Cases in the High Ct. of Chivalry (Harl. Soc. n.s.xviii), 226-7.

Most of what is known about Jones’s career during the civil war is derived from hostile sources, but it is clear that he left London to live in Llansoy, another parish within easy reach of Raglan, and that he was appointed the steward of Raglan, working in the interest of the strongly royalist, and Catholic, Henry Somerset, 5th earl of Worcester.28Diary of Walter Powell ed. Bradney, 26. He was not only named as a commissioner of array, but acted in the commission and served as a treasurer in Monmouthshire for the king’s cause. He was alleged to have gone to the king’s quarters at Oxford, and to have used his legal skills to draw up commissions for the king’s supporters in Ireland. Jones was also said actively to have helped Somerset, created marquess of Worcester in 1643, at Raglan. So trusted was Jones by the marquess, apparently, that he organized Worcester’s passage through the lines of the parliamentarian forces besieging Raglan.29SP18/73, f. 153. If that was true, he must also have brought the marquess back to the castle. Worcester, but not Jones, was present at Raglan when the castle surrendered in August 1646.30A Letter from his Excellencies Quarters (1646), 4-6 (E.351.13). In fact, Jones abandoned the royalist interest at least nine months before Raglan surrendered, because he took the Negative Oath before December 1645, although it was not until October 1646 that he compounded for his delinquency with the Committee for Compounding. In March 1647 he was fined £70 6s 8d.31CCC 1524.

Jones played no part in the second civil war of 1648, and his rehabilitation in public life followed on closely after his fine for royalism. He continued to act as solicitor for the Somerset family. After the Raglan estate had suffered sequestration, a relatively small allocation of land in Glamorgan was made available for the daughters of the marquess. However, when Oliver Cromwell* was awarded the Somersets’ estates by a grateful Parliament, the settlement was revisited, and in May 1648, Jones acted as trustee for the daughters.32SP23/118, p. 961; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 64-5. At around the same time, Jones, by this point a widower, married again, for the second time into the Games family of Buckland, Llansantffraed, Brecon. His father-in-law, Edward Games, a treasurer for sequestrations in the 1640s, had entered the Breconshire commission of the peace in 1647, and continued to serve as magistrate after the execution of the king until his death in 1655.33PROB11/245, f. 362; CCC 494; Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 271-3. Through Games’ local influence, Jones acquired an interest in the borough of Brecon, and became its recorder in 1650. By July 1651, however, he was the subject of a petition from the townsmen, who complained to the council of state against his appointment.34CSP Dom. 1651, p. 287. The case was referred to the Committee for Indemnity, but seems not to have been pursued there. The failure of the case to find a hearing was noted in a further petition from Brecon of around early 1653, and was attributed to the favour Jones had found among ‘men of great eminency and interest’.35SP18/73, f. 163. He acquired higher office on 29 June 1653, two months after the expulsion of the Rump, when he was appointed attorney-general of south Wales following the dismissal of Edward Freeman*, a vocal and persistent critic of the commissioners for the propagation of the gospel in Wales. Although the salary of £8 13s. 4d. was small, the post brought with it access to fees and perquisites, as well as admission to the commission of the peace in seven counties.36CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 248. As contemporary critics noted, Jones undoubtedly owed his appointment to Col. Philip Jones*, who had been brought into the council of state a few days after the Rump was expelled.37The Distressed, Oppressed Condition (1659), 3. The two would have encountered each other no later than during the restructuring of the Raglan estates in 1648, when Philip Jones was prominent in the Glamorgan county committee; in 1649 and during the 1650s Edmund Jones acted as solicitor for Philip Jones and for Edward Herbert II* in a number of property deals.38SP23/118, p. 961; Glam. Archives, DF/ L/3; DF/D/ 1123.

Jones was returned for Breconshire on the interest of the Games family and doubtless that of Philip Jones and what was consolidating into the Cromwellian establishment in south Wales. His fellow-Member for the county was Edward Somerset, scion of the family for which Jones had long provided legal services. Jones’s election, on 12 July 1654, provoked another petition against him to the government after the poll had been denied the inhabitants by the sheriff. No protest was registered against Somerset. According to the protesters, the sheriff had failed in his duty, Jones was a former royalist delinquent and his voters fell short of the property qualification: all of which offended against articles 13, 14 and 18 of the Instrument of Government.39SP18/73, f. 151. The petition from Breconshire was accompanied by eight articles detailing Jones’ royalist past, and the earlier objections to Jones from the borough of Brecon were revisited.40SP18/73, ff. 153, 163. Jones was alleged to have declared at the poll that ‘he would be even with most of those that voted against him, whatsoever it cost him’.41SP18/73, f. 159. A certificate of Goldsmiths’ Hall was produced to prove that Jones had indeed compounded for delinquency, but he was nevertheless allowed to take his seat.42SP18/73, f. 157. He was named to the committee for reform of chancery (5 Oct. 1654), grain exports (6 Oct.), abuses of legal writs (3 Nov.) and perhaps that on forged debentures (22 Nov.).43CJ vii. 374a, 374b, 381b, 387b. He would surely have been a supporter of the government, but perhaps his low profile owed not a little to the unresolved controversy surrounding his election.

Jones was not named among the major-generals’ commissioners in south Wales in 1655, but when in March 1655 the government wrote to the magistrates of each county to urge vigilance against potential insurgents, he was the recipient of the letter for Breconshire, suggesting that he was highly trusted, perhaps even custos rotulorum.44CSP Dom. 1655, p. 94. He was not returned to the second protectorate Parliament, but was once again elected for Breconshire to serve in the single Parliament of Richard Cromwell*. He was named to the committee for privileges and elections on 28 January 1659.45CJ vii. 602b. On 10 February, he argued in favour of ‘the previous vote’, supporting the line of the Cromwellians on the bill of recognition in favour of Richard Cromwell as lord protector.46Burton’s Diary, iii. 198. This speech may have drawn him to the attention of the republican ‘commonwealthsmen’, who opposed the bill; two days later Col. Matthew Alured drew Members’ attention to ‘vipers in your bowels’, mentioning in particular ‘Mr Jones’. After some heavy-handed humour about which of the three Members called Jones was intended, he stood in his place to declare himself the one in question, and to confess that during the civil war it was his ‘fortune to be in a place of trouble in Monmouth’.47Burton’s Diary, iii. 233-4. Subsequent debate focused initially on whether or not he had compounded for delinquency and whether he had borne arms against Parliament. Asked directly by the Speaker, Jones admitted he had compounded, but not as a delinquent in arms.48Burton’s Diary, iii. 238-9. This evoked a range of suggestions from his fellow-Members on how he should be treated. A fellow south Walian lawyer and protectorian, Evan Seys, urged leniency while drawing attention to Jones’s low salary as a government office-holder, but the punishment settled upon was expulsion from the House and perpetual disablement from sitting in any future Parliaments. After this had been resolved, some sought to send Jones to the Tower, but Members’ attention moved instead to other alleged delinquents among their number.49Burton’s Diary, iii. 240-1.

Expulsion marked the end of his parliamentary career, but it seems Jones kept his attorney-general’s position in south Wales until 1660. In 1658 he had added the recordership of Carmarthen to his tally, as well as that of the borough of New Radnor, but these were almost certainly accrued by favour of Philip Jones.50Articles of Impeachment (1659), 14 (E.983.31). The same patron probably lay behind the favourable response by the lord protector’s council to a request that Edmund Jones should have a lease of fines in the courts of Montgomeryshire and Denbighshire.51CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 70. In May 1659, during the period of the restored Rump Parliament, Philip Jones was fiercely attacked by opponents of the house of Cromwell and the protectorate, and Edmund Jones was listed among his cronies and dependents in office.52Articles of Impeachment, 14, 15. The bad odour in which Jones now found himself spread to Brecon, where in September he attempted to influence the outcome of the borough civic elections. Subsequently, the aldermen and over 100 Brecon men signed or made their mark on a petition to the committee of safety, which held the reins of power after the Rump had been turned out for a second time. They not only accused Jones of violent behaviour towards his opponents, but also argued that as one who had been prevented from ever again being returned as a Member of Parliament, he was ‘uncapable therefore also’ of being their recorder.53CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 289. His recorderships and place in the commission of the peace in the counties of south Wales disappeared shortly afterwards, at the restoration of the monarchy.

Because of his legal expertise and history of modest services to the royalist cause, Jones was soon rehabilitated. He was included in commissions of oyer and terminer from the summer of 1660, and quickly returned to the commission of the peace for Breconshire and Monmouthshire. By 1662 he was acting as solicitor to the council in the marches of Wales, which would in due course become a fiefdom for the Somerset family. Jones recovered his former interest with his pre civil war patrons, his part in selling off the Raglan estates in the 1650s notwithstanding. He became a member of the council in Wales in his own right in 1670, and in 1674 was admitted to the deputy lieutenancy for Breconshire. By then his social standing was higher than ever it had been during the interregnum, and he combined public office with providing legal expertise to great men. He became seneschal of Brecon for William Morgan II* and the steward of the Monmouthshire estates of Henry Somerset, by then elevated to have become the 3rd marquess of Worcester. At Gray’s Inn, too, his stock rose after the Restoration, and from the late 1660s he held the high offices there. He drew up his will on 7 March 1683, and died on 6 June that year. He left bequests for the poor of Raglan and Llandenny parishes, Monmouthshire and Llansantffraed, Breconshire. His son Edward Jones became Member for Breconshire in 1685, and a grandson, Roger Jones, represented the borough first as a tory, and later perhaps as a whig, from 1713.