JONES, Arthur (d. 1670), 2nd Visct. Ranelagh [I], of Roscommon Castle, co. Roscommon, Ire.

Originally from Wales, by the early seventeenth century the Jones family had joined the highest circles of the New English planter elite in Ireland. Arthur Jones’s grandfather, Thomas, had been archbishop of Dublin and lord chancellor of Ireland under James I, and his father, Roger, ‘a most real and noble gentleman as ever breathed’, was elevated to the viscountcy of Ranelagh in 1628 and became joint president of Connaught two years later.8HMC Var. vii. 430; CP. As a prominent member of the ‘Boyle group' which dominated Irish politics in the late 1620s and early 1630s, the 1st Viscount Ranelagh acted in concert with a number of New English politicians, notably the 1st earl of Cork, Sir William Parsons, Sir Charles Coote senior and Sir Adam Loftus.9Add. 19832, f. 33; HMC Var. vii. 430; Lismore Pprs. ser 1, iv. 174-5, 176, 180-1. Ranelagh’s political alliances were cemented by his marriage policy, which brought alliances with various important Irish landowners. His three daughters were married to the Antrim planter, Sir John Clotworthy*, and the sons of Viscount Chichester of Carrickfergus and Sir Adam Loftus. In 1630 Ranelagh married his son and heir, Arthur Jones, to Katherine Boyle, the daughter of the 1st earl of Cork. Like Cork, later in the 1630s Ranelagh became involved in the growing opposition to Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), and, with Parsons and Loftus, he was accused of being a prime mover behind the fall of Wentworth (by then 1st earl of Strafford) in 1640-1.10The Life and Corresp. of Sir George Radcliffe ed. T.D. Whitaker (1810), 228-33.

Arthur Jones may have been Ranelagh’s eldest son, but by the late 1630s he seems to have had more to do with his in-laws in the Boyle family. In June 1639 he left the earl of Cork’s house in Dorset to go north to join Viscount Dungarvan (Sir Richard Boyle*) in the king’s army, but got no further than London, excusing himself with the thought that ‘the king might be satisfied with my real intention of coming… but it is the general good opinion that gains a man the best esteem and most affection’.11Lismore Pprs. ser.1,v. 94; Chatsworth, CM/20, no. 73. This casual attitude did not impress Cork. In August the earl advised Ranelagh to allow Jones and his wife to remain in his household following the birth a premature child, assuring him that such a delay

will render him unto you much improved, he being apter to study serious things than to be carried away with levities and youth-like vanities’, and adding that ‘his expense of his time in London this winter will much better him in all respects, now that he hath given over immoderate play in corners.12Chatsworth, CM/20, no. 99.

The Boyle connection was certainly important in increasing Arthur Jones’s range of social and political contacts in England. In late August Jones accompanied Cork when he dined at Sherborne with such critics of the crown as the 1st earl of Bristol, the 3rd earl of Essex and the 2nd earl of Hertford.13Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, v. 104-5. Jones was also on the fringes of the royal court, and was even proposed as a candidate for Carlisle in the Short Parliament elections, on the interest of the queen.14Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/120/22. In early 1641 Jones acted as feoffee in the marriage settlement of Cork’s third son, Lord Broghill*, to the sister of the 3rd earl of Suffolk, and also entered bonds to allow Broghill to buy silk for the weddings clothes.15Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, v. 168; C3/435/59. Soon afterwards his wife gave birth to a son in Dungarvan’s London house. The boy was named Richard, after the earl, and his godparents were Cork, Ranelagh and Lady Broghill.16Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, v. 168-9.

Jones’s election for Weobley in Herefordshire in the autumn of 1640 is something of a mystery, as the borough had no known connection with the family, nor was it controlled by a patron with Irish interests. There was a distant connection between the Boyles and the Tomkins family who controlled the borough, but the link is very tenuous.17Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 94. The influence of the earl of Essex in Herefordshire raises the possibility that Jones’s election was determined by high politics: as with Dungarvan’s election for Appleby, and Clotworthy’s return for Maldon, Jones may have been adopted by influential patrons in England, hopeful that he and his father would play a key role in the trial of Strafford. In December 1640 this expectation seemed likely to be fulfilled. Strafford told Sir Adam Loftus that Ranelagh plotted against various members of the Dublin administration ‘in a strange and unworthy way’, and early in the following February he complained that Arthur Jones, who had joined the attack, ‘slavers and rails as if he were mad, and all the while speaks not a wise or a true word’.18Bodl. Tanner 65, ff. 232, 266. On 6 February Jones and Clotworthy were given leave to appear at witnesses before the Lords when a key witness against Strafford, Sir Piers Crosby, was cross-examined.19CJ ii. 80a. Yet, after formal charges had been laid against Strafford on 24 February, Ranelagh and Arthur Jones were oddly silent. This was partly because the conduct of the trial had slipped from Irish hands, but also, as Strafford had pointed out early in February, Ranelagh had himself been accused of financial irregularity as president of Connaught.20Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 266. Possibly as a result of the embarrassments inherent in the trial of Strafford, after the spring of 1641 Jones’s role in Parliament was slight. He took the Protestation on 3 May, and in the summer was appointed to committees on Hereford Hospital, the confirmation of the estates of godly Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and on a bill for the manufacture of gunpowder in response to the first army plot scare.21CJ ii. 133a, 160a, 197a, 219b.

From October 1641, and the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland, Jones played little part in English affairs. The rebellion was a disaster for the Jones family, whose estates were overrun before the end of the year. Viscount Ranelagh, who had returned to the west of Ireland shortly before the rising, was trapped in Roscommon Castle, and in early December wrote repeatedly to the Commons, via his son-in-law, Clotworthy, warning that ‘he did not know how long he should preserve the castle’, and that ‘if speedy succours were not sent the kingdom would be lost'.22D’Ewes (C), 350-1. Arthur Jones, who had remained in London, joined other Irish Protestants in England in petitioning Parliament to facilitate the sending of 10,000 Scots to Ulster on 21 December.23LJ iv. 484b-485a. The signatories of this petition included Clotworthy, Sir Robert King* and Arthur Annesley*, whose Presbyterians sympathies and territorial interests (in the north and west of Ireland) were not dissimilar to those of the Joneses. Their willingness to accept Scottish intervention in Ulster seems to have been shared by Ranelagh and his son. Ireland dominated Arthur Jones’s activity in Parliament. On 27 December 1641, Jones and Clotworthy were named to a committee to consider William Jephson’s* report on the condition of Munster (where the Boyles held most of their estates); in February 1642 Jones was sent to attend the new lord lieutenant, the 2nd earl of Leicester, to require Irish officers to return to their units; and in May Jones was himself granted leave to join his father in Ireland, without losing his seat at Westminster.24CJ ii. 357b, 440b, 576a.

On his return to the west of Ireland, Jones found the situation had deteriorated further. In July 1642 Ranelagh, besieged inside the town of Athlone on the River Shannon, was relieved by troops loyal to the king under the 12th earl of Ormond.25Irish Rebellion ed. Hogan, 68-9. In Galway the Catholic loyalist earl of Clanricarde, who had caused a storm in Westminster when he made a treaty with the Galway rebels in May, received friendly support from Ranelagh, who assured him that Parliament was still ‘moderate enough in that kind’, and their anger was ‘the effect of some particular advices in this state’.26Carte, Ormond v. 323-4. In August Ranelagh acted as a broker in the final treaty at Galway, on Clanricarde’s request.27Bodl. Carte 3, ff. 451-2. Under pressure from the Confederate Catholics, in December Ranelagh was forced to sign his own cessation of arms with the earl of Westmeath.28Bodl. Carte 4, f. 113. Bereft of material support from England, Ranelagh had become increasingly antagonistic towards the Dublin authorities by February 1643, and Ormond was confident that ‘good use may be made of his interest and experience’ to bring Ireland under royal control.29Bodl. Carte 4, f. 208. Yet the failure of king and Parliament to make headway in the Oxford negotiations dashed any hopes of effective action against the Irish rebels. In April, Jones, back in London, reported to Ormond that ‘I much fear there is little likelihood of an accommodation’, although he remained hopeful that parliamentary ordinances would release money from Westminster, and encourage the investors in the Irish ‘adventure’ to follow suit. 30Bodl. Carte 5, ff. 68-9, 70. His father crossed to England in the same period, where he tried to gain support from both king and Parliament: he attended the court in Oxford in April and May, travelled to London in June, and by October had returned to Oxford, where he suddenly died.31Bodl. Carte 5, ff. 165, 213; Strangers in Oxford: a Side-light on the first Civil War, 1642-6 ed. M Toynbee, P. Young (London, 1973), 237-8.

Jones, now 2nd Viscount Ranelagh, slipped away to Oxford shortly after his father’s death. In December Arthur Trevor told Ormond that ‘Arthur Jones, Lord Ran[elagh] is here passing a pardon for saying nothing in Parliament’.32Bodl. Carte 8, f. 82. Jones was still in Oxford in January 1644, and he attended the royalist Parliament there at the end of the same month.33Strangers in Oxford ed. Toynbee, Young, 237-8; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. At first, the Westminster Parliament (possibly at Clotworthy’s behest) seems to have given the new viscount the benefit of the doubt: on 22 January 1644 Ranelagh was saved from disablement, despite his desertion to the king.34CJ iii. 374a. But after he signed the Oxford Parliament’s letter to Essex the decision was reversed, and he was disabled from sitting after all.35CJ iii. 389b. Despite this, Ranelagh’s political views were not entirely clear-cut. He may have agreed with his wife, who wrote to Sir Edward Hyde* in March 1644 lamenting the death of their friend Lord Falkland (Lucius Cary*), and advocating fresh talks with Parliament.36Clarendon SP, ii. 166-8. As yet, any such misgivings remained private. Returning to Ireland in April 1644, Ranelagh carried a letter of recommendation to Ormond from George Lord Digby*, attesting to his loyalty, having ‘expressed himself both in the assembly here at Oxford and otherwise, very hearty and affectionate to his Majesty’s service’.37Bodl. Carte 10, f. 91. There were also rumours that Ranelagh would soon join the 2nd earl of Cork and the earl of Clanricarde as new privy councillors for Ireland.38Bodl. Carte 10, f. 101.

Although his standing at Oxford seemed secure, Ranelagh’s position in Roscommon was if anything more dangerously confused than before. In May 1644 the Confederate Catholics complained to the king that the castles under the command of Ranelagh, Sir Charles Coote* and Sir Robert King ‘do daily commit acts of hostility’ to the Irish, and voiced their suspicions that the Protestant defenders were in league with the Scots.39Bodl. Carte 10, f. 537v; History of the Irish Confederacy ed. J.T. Gilbert (7 vols, Dublin, 1882-91), iii. 164. Later in the same month, however, Clanricarde told Ormond that Ranelagh was ready to sign a letter denouncing the Cootes as ‘dangerous, or rather destructive, to the whole province’; and in July Ranelagh joined Clanricarde, the earl of Thomond, Lord Dillon, Viscount Taaffe and other commanders in begging the king to continue the cessation with the Confederates because of the threat of Scottish intervention, and ‘certain ruin’ if general hostilities were allowed to resume.40Letterbk. of the Earl of Clanricarde ed. J. Lowe (Dublin, 1983), 84, 93-5. The subsequent extension of the cessation eased the immediate situation; but animosity between the royalist Protestants and the Confederate Catholics continued into 1645. The appointment of a Catholic, Lord Dillon, as the new lord president of Connaught was a snub to Ranelagh, who may have expected first refusal of his father’s old position, and he soon complained to Ormond of the many ‘jealousies’ of his supposed allies.41Bodl. Carte 12, f. 238; 15, ff. 339, 569. Ranelagh travelled to Dublin, taking his seat in the Irish House of Lords in February 1645, but he returned to Connaught shortly afterwards.42Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English, 272.

The situation in the province came to a head in the new year of 1646.43A. Duignan, ‘“All in a confused opposition to each other”: politics and war in Connacht, 1641-9’ (PhD thesis, University College Dublin 2005), 196-8. Ormond wrote to Ranelagh in January 1646, acknowledging the ‘disrespect you have had from the Confederate party’, but trusting that his loyalty to the crown was secure.44Bodl. Carte 16, f. 498. On 23 January Ormond again wrote to Ranelagh begging him not to heed the counsel of the parliamentary commissioner, Sir Robert King, and Parliament’s lord president, Sir Charles Coote, who had tried ‘to induce your lordship to run the same ways with themselves’.45Bodl. Carte 16, f. 457. Ranelagh protested his innocence, but shortly afterwards he was accused of involvement in a plot to seize Athlone.46Bodl. Carte 16, f. 557. On 25 February, Ranelagh told Ormond he had endured enough ‘unworthy jealousies’, and that ‘for this reason I am resolved to join with the English of this country’.47Bodl. Carte 16, f. 557. He carried out his threat by the first week of March, when he yielded Roscommon Castle to parliamentary forces under Richard Coote.48Bodl. Carte 16, ff. 576, 579.

Ranelagh’s defection brought an immediate end to his political career in Ireland, and it is likely that he retired to London, where his wife and family were already resident. In England he became preoccupied with his financial position, which was precarious indeed. Ranelagh had approached Arthur Annesley about the recovery of part of his estate even before his defection, and it was rumoured that he ‘gave up his castle upon good terms’, and was promised ‘by contract to receive the value here for his subsistence’.49CCSP i. 305; HMC Egmont, i. 286. Whatever the truth of this allegation, the Irish committees at Whitehall made occasional attempts to compensate Ranelagh for his losses, referring his petitions for compensation to Colonel Michael Jones at Dublin in August 1647 and to the House of Commons in October 1648.50CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 24, 763. By this time Lady Ranelagh had secured a pension of £6 per week from Parliament, but the family were besieged by creditors, including the silk merchant who held Ranelagh to account for the money owed by Broghill since 1641, and in July 1647 had him ‘arrested by a bill of Middlesex’.51Add. 5497, f. 152; C3/435/59; C54/3359. Money worries seem to have made Ranelagh ill-tempered and vindictive. When Ormond negotiated the surrender of Dublin to Parliament in the spring of 1647, he wanted to secure good terms for his closest allies. In response it was alleged that Ranelagh recommended that Clanricarde, who had lent him money on interest earlier in the decade, ‘should be excluded out of all conditions whatsoever’.52Clanricarde Letterbk. ed. Lowe, 376, 463.

After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Ranelagh was dependent on favours from friends and relatives with connections with the central government. Faced with mounting debts, in February 1654 Lady Ranelagh petitioned the council of state, and in May she was granted £1,100 for her husband’s losses.53Irish Statute Staple Bks. 243; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 400; 1654, p. 182. In the same month the family estates in co. Roscommon were restored, and the commissioners for Irish affairs were instructed to consider this business in the following month.54CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 799, 803. Lord Broghill used his influence with the protectoral regime to intervene on his sister’s behalf in March 1656, and in January 1657 he assigned to her his salary as lieutenant-general of the ordnance in Ireland.55TSP, iv. 597; Petworth, MS 13192, unfol. By 1658 Lady Ranelagh was hopeful that Cromwell would intervene personally, and on hearing of the protector's death in September she immediately wrote to Broghill in despair

I confess his performances reached not the making good of his professions; but I doubt his performances may go beyond the professions of those who may come after him... I easily perceive that his death makes that letter of his, that you brought with you over, and have now sent me, of no use to the end for which it was desired.56TSP, vii. 396.

The financial difficulties of the Jones family in the 1650s reveal how closely aligned its members were to the Boyle interest. Throughout the decade Lady Ranelagh corresponded regularly with the earl of Cork and Lord Broghill, and when the countess of Cork visited London in 1656 she lodged with the Ranelaghs in St James’s.57Chatsworth, CM/29, passim; Lady Burlington’s Journal, unfol.: 13 July 1656. Lady Ranelagh was very active in settling the estates and financial affairs of other members of the family, including the earls of Kildare and Barrymore.58Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 2 May 1657; CM/31, no. 52. The closeness of Lady Ranelagh to the rest of the Boyle clan seems to have strained her relations with her husband. In 1657, when questioned over the employment of a Baptist servant, Ranelagh retorted ‘with many oaths that he knew not his wife was of that opinion’.59Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 4 May 1657. In 1658 Ranelagh was again called before Cork to explain his alleged involvement in purloining documents relating to his wife’s estate.60Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 28 Jan. 1658. Apart from the Boyles, the Ranelaghs maintained contacts with a number of other Old Protestant families. Before 1655 Ranelagh’s eldest daughter had married Sir William Parsons junior (who died in December 1658), a man whose family had been closely allied to his father before 1641. Ranelagh also kept in touch with his brother-in-law, Sir John Clotworthy, who had been in retirement since his disgrace in 1648. In 1655 Clotworthy joined with Broghill in assigning payments of £500, owed to them by bond, to Ranelagh younger daughters, as their marriage portions; and in May 1659 a match was arranged by the 2nd earl of Cork between Clotworthy’s son and Ranelagh’s daughter (despite the fact they were first cousins).61NLI, box D.21907-22035: indenture of 1655; Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 12 May 1659. Another useful contact was Arthur Annesley, who shared Lady Ranelagh’s connection with Samuel Hartlib and his circle and was co-feoffee with Ranelagh in a settlement of the Chichester family in 1649.62Sheffield UL, Hartlib 66/3/1A, 26/13/2A; T.C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford, 1975), 215-6, 247; PRONI, D.389(5): deed, Dec. 1649. In 1657 Annesley and Lady Ranelagh had collaborated in ensuring the settlement of the Kildare estates, and in October 1659 Ranelagh and others arranged the payment of Annesley’s expenses as agent in England for the Irish Protestants.63Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 2 May 1657; HMC Egmont, i. 610. Ranelagh was thus at the centre of a kindred network which connected many of the major players in pre-restoration Ireland.

Lady Ranelagh crossed from Ireland to England in February 1659, in the company of her brother, Lord Broghill, who was to take his seat in Richard Cromwell’s* ‘Other House’.64Chatsworth, CM/30, no. 95. After the fall of the protectorate she corresponded with the earl of Cork, and warned him in July of a possible back-lash by the army in Ireland, and in October her old friend, Sir Edward Hyde, attested to her growing importance when he told Ormond of her influence with the governors of the state, perhaps implying that she would be useful in winning Broghill to the royal cause.65Chatsworth, CM/31, no. 36; CCSP iv. 413. In December 1659, when Broghill’s friends mounted a coup against the army in Dublin, Cork went to England where he acted as his brother’s eyes and ears. In this he was closely supported by Lady Ranelagh – in January 1660 she and Cork dined with Robert Boyle, ‘with whom we consulted about my brother Broghill’s affairs’ – and when in May 1660 Broghill signalled the willingness of the Protestants in Ireland to back the Restoration, it was no coincidence that he wrote to Lady Ranelagh, who in turn then passed copies to Bulstrode Whitelocke* and others.66Chatsworth, Lord Burlington’s diary, unfol.: 28 Jan. 1660; Longleat House, Whitelocke XIX, f. 129.

After the return of Charles II, Viscount Ranelagh was restored to his Irish estates, but unlike Broghill, Cork, Clotworthy and other relatives, he never seems to have attracted royal favour. Indeed, in October 1660 he caused the king great displeasure by refusing to yield important documents into the hands of Lady Ranelagh’s brother-in-law, the earl of Warwick.67  CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 329. Perhaps it was fitting that his disgrace should have been at the hands of yet another Boyle relative. During the 1660s Ranelagh became increasingly dissolute, and was denounced as ‘the foulest churl in the world’, who ‘seldom cometh sober to bed’. But perhaps Ranelagh’s turning to the bottle was understandable: the first half of his life had been controlled by his father; the second half was dominated by his brilliant wife and her overbearing relatives. He died, apparently intestate, in 1670. His eldest son, Richard Jones†, succeeded to the viscountcy and was created earl of Ranelagh in 1677.68  CP.