JENINGS, Jonathan (1633-1707), of Ripon, Yorks.

The younger son of a lawyer, Jenings might have been expected to follow his father into the legal profession, but apparently showed no interest or aptitude in that direction. He seems to have done very little to distinguish himself in local affairs before his return for his native Ripon in 1659, taking the junior place behind his elder brother Edmund Jenings, who was probably the town’s wealthiest inhabitant by the late 1650s.23Supra, ‘Edmund Jenings’; N. Yorks. RO, DC/RIC II 1/1/2, p. 506.

Like his brother, Jenings made little impression upon this Parliament’s proceedings. He was named to only four, minor, committees and made no recorded speeches on the floor of the House.24CJ vii. 622b, 634b, 637b, 638b. On 22 March, during a debate on the whether the Irish Members should be allowed to sit, he declared for the yeas – a group headed by the protectorate’s republican opponents – on whether the words ‘legal right of’ should be added to the question. In itself, the addition had little political significance; Sir Henry Vane II had moved for the words to be added, and Arthur Annesley, a leading spokesman for the Irish Members, had agreed to the addition, although he hoped that the question would not pass.25Burton’s Diary, iv. 232-3. Jenings was not made a teller in the subsequent division, which passed in the negative.26CJ vii. 618b.

Apparently seen as politically acceptable by the restored Rump, both Jenings brothers were named to the July 1659 militia commission.27A. and O. ii. 1324. However, Jenings’ appointment late in March 1660 as a captain-lieutenant of foot in the Yorkshire militia regiment of Thomas 3rd Lord Fairfax* suggests that he welcomed moves towards the Restoration, of which Fairfax was a leading proponent (Jenings subsequently obtained a captaincy in the militia regiment of Henry Lord Fairfax).28Notts RO, DDSR 216/1; DDSR 216/16; Beinecke Lib. Osborn Shelves, Danby boxes [OSB.MSS 6], box 2, folder 36. A firm supporter of the new regime, Jenings was appointed to Ripon’s aldermanic bench by the corporation commissioners in 1662.29N. Yorks. RO, DC/RIC II 1/1/2, p. 549.

Jenings’s private life reveals that he was not afraid of confrontation. During the early 1660s, he brought a suit in chancery against his brother Edmund and ‘confederates’ for allegedly withholding rents he had been assigned as payment on a £300 debt (as trustees of their brother-in-law’s estate, the Jenings brothers, together with Henry Arthington*, were sued in chancery in 1665 on almost exactly the same charge).30C6/11/165; C10/68/48; C10/101/57. And in January 1676, Jenings achieved considerable notoriety in Yorkshire after he killed his fellow parvenu gentleman, George Aislabie, in a duel. Convicted of manslaughter at the Yorkshire assizes, he obtained a royal pardon and was knighted two years later.31York Minster Lib. Hailstone mss, QQ 6.1 (Jenings, ‘The Naked Truth’ [unpubl. tract, n.d.], pp. 21-3); Heywood Diaries ed. J.H. Turner, iii. 209-11; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Jonathan Jennings’. The Yorkshire nonconformist minister and diarist Oliver Heywood, who left an account of the duel, described Jenings as ‘a debauched person’, a ‘Yorkist’ (a supporter of the future James II’s right to succeed to the throne) and – as a West Riding magistrate – ‘mad against Protestant Dissenters; yea, so raging that his fury moderated other justices’.32Heywood Diaries ed. Turner, ii. 297, 292-3. In 1683, Jenings helped to pen the congratulatory address from the Yorkshire gentry to the king upon the latter’s delivery from the Rye House Plot.33Reresby Mems. 311. Despite his ‘Yorkist’ convictions, his loyalty to the crown did not stretch to approving of James II’s religious policies.34Penal Laws and Test Act ed. G. Duckett, i. 82; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Jonathan Jennings’. Nevertheless, as MP for Ripon in 1689, he voted to agree with the Tory majority in the Lords that the Glorious Revolution had not rendered the throne vacant.35Browning, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, iii. 172; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Jonathan Jennings’. Having retained his seat in the 1690 general election, he was identified at Westminster as a tory supporter of the Williamite court.36Browning, Danby, i. 422, 429, 441, 494; iii. 185; HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Sir Jonathan Jennings’.

Jenings died early in 1707 and was buried in Ripon Minster on 27 January.37Ripon Millenary ed. Harrison, ii. 68. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate, which included a house and other property in St Agnesgate, Ripon, to his son Peter and daughter Anne.38Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 64, f. 122.