JONES, Samuel (1615-73), of Ham, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surr., Courtenhall, Northants. and Little Berwick, Salop.

For the Jones family, Shrewsbury was a point on the path of upward social mobility that took its sons from Denbighshire to London and south-east England. William Jones, Samuel’s grandfather, was a draper and alderman of Shrewsbury who married into another prominent Shrewsbury-Welsh family of merchants, the Owens.23Vis. Salop 1623, i. 281-2. William’s son, Isaac was apprenticed to a London Merchant Taylor, and became free of that company in 1602.24GL, 34037/2. He remained in London, settling in the City parish of St Peter-le-Poer, but his marriage to Elizabeth Prince maintained his connection with his home town and cemented his family even more firmly into the Shrewsbury mercantile elite. Isaac Jones is said to have bought Little Berwick, just outside Shrewsbury, as early as 1629, and by 1633 he was scheduled among the London gentry at the heraldic visitation.25Salop Archives, 6001/2287, n.p.; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xvii), 18. On 18 May 1615 Samuel Jones, son of Isaac, was baptised in the church of St Peter le Poer.26St Peter le Poer par. reg. Other Jones children – all Samuel’s siblings, except his eldest brother, William – were baptised there, and in 1641 Isaac was certified by subsidy commissioners as still having a residence in that parish.27E115/228/43, 48, 117, 155; E115/229/4. A difficulty with this date for Samuel’s birth is that it is has to be inferred from his memorial inscription that he was born around 1610 rather than in 1615, but the coincidence of personal names and St Peter-le-Poer seems more convincing than the mason’s work. Nevertheless, despite these metropolitan origins, Samuel was despatched to Shrewsbury school, to perpetuate still further the relationship between the family and the important commercial town at the head of the Severn.

Isaac Jones was admitted to the livery of the Merchant Taylors’ company in 1624, and to judge from the information held on him by Parliament at the outbreak of civil war, a merchant adventurer too.28GL, 34037/2; CJ ii. 572b, 574a. He evidently acquired great wealth during his London mercantile career. To add to properties in Shrewsbury and London (he had houses at Austin Friars and eventually in Covent Garden, as well as at St Peter le Poer), he bought a country estate at Ham, near Kingston-upon-Thames.29CCAM 142; PROB11/222/569; Kingston-upon-Thames Museum, KC14/1/1. This established his family among the Surrey gentry, but Isaac Jones continued to live in the City. Samuel seems with his elder brother William to have ventured in various directions during the 1630s. The brothers took a wine licence from the government in 1634, and in 1638 they seem to have bought the manor of Bradenstoke, in Wiltshire.30Coventry Docquets, 292, 718. Samuel seems not to have pursued these investments sufficiently to have set himself up as either a Shrewsbury wine merchant or a landed proprietor, however. Instead, with his father, he became a London merchant. Isaac was an exporter of cloth, and took Samuel into the business. The pair are to be found in 1640 exporting at least 15 cargoes of cloth of the ‘old draperies’ type to Dunkirk, Hamburg and Rotterdam.31E190/43/4, ff. 1v, 4v, 5v, 6, 8v, 15, 22v, 23, 35, 41, 47v, 61v, 72v, 79, 81. Samuel is likely to have lived in London at this time. He may have been the merchant living in the City parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West in 1638.32K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), 373n, noting Inhabitants of London, 1638, 230. Given his father’s wealth, and his own right to membership of the Merchant Taylors by patrimony, he is unlikely to have been one of the various men of that name known to have been members of other livery companies in 1641.33‘Members of Livery Companies in 1641’. Very probably he was the Samuel Jones who was admitted in February 1639 to the Honourable Artillery Company, which would have provided him with the training to make him a credible colonel of foot during the civil war.34Ancient Vellum Bk. 55. By 1642 he was living in the radical parish of St Stephen’s Coleman Street, where he held office as a vestryman.

On the eve of the civil war, Isaac Jones was elected an alderman of the City, but fined off rather than serve during a period of such political turbulence.35Beaven, Aldermen of London, ii. 65; Pearl, London, 285n. He had previously paid a fine rather than serve as sheriff.36Principal Inhabitants, 1640, 4. In May 1642 he drew attention to himself by exhibiting reluctance to contribute to the Adventurers’ fund to reconquer Ireland: a delegation was sent from the Irish adventurers to persuade Jones and two other merchant adventurers to join in.37CJ ii. 572b, 574a. Once civil war broke out, this kind of behaviour was bound to be interpreted as a lack of sympathy for the cause of Parliament, and in April 1643 Isaac Jones and Isaac junior, Samuel’s younger brother, found themselves among the caseload of the Committee for Advance of Money*, whose time was generally spent pursuing royalists.38CCAM 142. There is no evidence of active royalism on Isaac’s part, and of Samuel’s loyalty to Parliament there was no doubt. He was named among the commissioners for the ‘association’ to defend Surrey in July 1643, and his orders from the earl of Essex authorised him to take charge of military defences there, with the rank of colonel.39LJ vi. 151b, SP28/8/75. He was also commissioned to raise a regiment, and he accomplished this promptly and efficiently. It was a Surrey regiment: units from it joined Sir William Waller* at Farnham and fought at Basing House in November to Waller’s satisfaction, during his abortive assaults on it.40SP28/8/77; SP28/135/1; HMC Portland, i. 154.

The regiment was only briefly in the field. Even before some troops were drawn off to help Waller, Jones had been assigned to the re-garrisoning of Farnham castle, which had been abandoned by George Wither in November 1642.41Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surr. Politics’, 76. Jones’s surviving accounts for the garrison run from July 1643 until March 1645. His chaplain there was one of the Presbyterian Tutchin family: probably John Tutchin, who is known to have participated in the civil wars.42SP28/135/1; Calamy Revised, 498. By May 1644, Jones was encountering the usual difficulties faced by commanders in obtaining enough money to pay his soldiers. There were complaints from the Surrey gentry to Parliament about the cost of the garrison.43A Continuation of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages (18-25 Apr. 1644), 4-5 (E.43.22). Arrears of the assessment from Surrey were hypothecated to him, but at the same time he had to petition the Commons for restitution of goods of his seized by the ships of Parliament.44CJ iii. 487a, 492b. In June he was able to write to the House in positive terms about another attempt on Basing House, but his good standing at Westminster was soon undermined by his enemies in Surrey.45CJ iii. 516b. The county committee there was divided into factions; a conservative, cautious group under Sir Richard Onslow* was opposed by a group more intent on a parliamentarian victory, led by Sir John Maynard*.46Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surr. Politics’, 77-9. Jones was of the latter camp, and provoked the dislike of Onslow’s allies because of the cost to the countryside of his garrison and because his association with Waller had won him some independence from them.

After a remodelling of the Surrey committee in the summer of 1644, the Onslow group orchestrated a complaint in Parliament against Maynard and Jones, which took the form of a petition in September.47CJ iii. 637b. On 14 October it was reported that there were moves afoot in Surrey to replace Jones with Onslow as governor of Farnham, but a petition emerged from the City of London in Jones’s favour.48Perfect Occurrences no. 11 (18-25 Oct. 1644), n.p. (E.256.28). Despite the questionable standing of his father with the City parliamentarians, Samuel was supported by the leaders of the City’s war effort, in whose eyes Surrey was a satellite county, and Jones a London man. Within a few days, the Onslow group was circulating a vague story that those in positions of trust at Farnham were not well-affected towards Parliament, an obvious slur on Jones. In response, Jones’s officers petitioned on their own account.49CJ iii. 669b. In November, the Commons debated the Surrey quarrel again, but with no decisive outcome.50A Perfect Diurnall no. 26 (11-18 Nov. 1644), 523 (E.256.36). CJ iii. 694a; Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surr. Politics’, 82.

There seems little doubt that at this point, Jones was associated with the war party and the plans to build the New Model army. In December 1644, he harboured plans to raise more horse, which would have done nothing to reassure his critics in Surrey.51CSP Dom. 1644, p. 196. In January 1645, he gave evidence against Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester in the hearings arising from allegations that Manchester was a half-hearted commander. Jones reported a conversation after the second battle of Newbury (27 Oct. 1644) in which Sir Arthur Hesilrige* upbraided the earl for describing a royalist commander as ‘honest’.52SP16/503/56. The dispute over his command came to a head in March, when Jones was summoned before the Committee of Both Kingdoms* in London. The Onslow camp by now had a new candidate for the governor's place at Farnham, in the shape of Jones’s own lieutenant, Jeremiah Baines*, who had served under him since July 1643.53CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 341, 342, 343; Perfect Occurrences no. 14 (28 Mar.-4 Apr. 1645), n.p. (E.252.36); SP2822/120. Jones had evidently mistrusted Baines for some time, and made it clear that he would not willingly resign in favour of his subordinate.54HMC Portland, i. 216. In the Commons debate on 28 March, there was a widespread recognition in the House that Jones had done good things at Farnham, and the pugnacious Edward Bayntun* spoke up on his behalf.55Harl. 166, ff. 195, 198; Add. 31116, p. 402. Bayntun was a kinsman of Maynard, Jones’s ally, and of the Thynnes, long-standing business associates of Isaac and Samuel, and it was probably these personal links rather than any wider political motives that impelled Bayntun. His lobbying was in vain, however; the Surrey men secured Jones’s resignation, and on 29 March he laid down his command.56SP28/178, unfol.

No commission in the New Model came Jones’s way, and the only consolation he may have derived from the episode was that his enemy, Baines, was passed over as governor of Farnham; the command went to John Feilder. Bayntun helped ensure that Jones received what was in effect a testimonial to his former good services.57CJ iv. 100b. Thereafter, Jones was left to pursue requests for his arrears of pay, which for him and his dozen officers amounted to over £1800.58LJ vii. 372b, 374b; SP28/178; SP28/135/1. For the rest of the 1640s, Jones retired from public life, and probably devoted himself to his business interests. He married Mary Middleton, whose aunt was the wife of Sir John Maynard, Jones’s Surrey committee ally.59Misc. Gen. et Her. ser. 3, ii. 227, 262. The saga of his family’s relations with Parliament’s committees of penal taxation continued. In November 1644 Isaac Jones had been ordered to be brought in custody before the Committee for Advance of Money for not paying his assessment, but the date may suggest a malicious widening of the controversy then engulfing Samuel.60CCAM 142. In May 1646, Samuel’s brother-in-law, the royalist Sir Drue Drury, compounded for his delinquency before the Committee for Compounding*.61CCC 1297.

In October 1646, further trouble came with the delinquency case of Lord Goring (George Goring*). Goring had borrowed significantly from Isaac Jones before the civil war. As security against the loan he had put up property around Lewes, Sussex, including Rodmell manor, and the profits of his office as secretary to the council in the marches of Wales. In 1646, Goring’s estate was sequestered by Parliament for his leading part in the king’s military campaigns, and Isaac Jones had to lobby the Committee for Advance of Money to prevent the securities disappearing into the coffers of Parliament. Eventually, the committee was persuaded by Isaac Jones’s arguments and the sequestration was lifted but it was an unpleasant second appearance at the tribunal for the older Jones, and an ominous warning that he could not bank on repayment by such a high-profile royalist.62VCH Sussex, vii. 71; E. Sussex RO, DAN/1132; CCAM 704.

For Samuel Jones the immediate aftermath of civil war was not ruinous. Around 1650, he purchased the manor of Courtenhall, Northamptonshire, and became a landed proprietor there.63Bridges, Northants. i. 353. He must have accepted the execution of the king without fuss, because in 1652 he was pricked high sheriff of his newly-adopted county. The same year, Isaac Jones was named as an assessment commissioner for Middlesex, by virtue of his house in Covent Garden, but died in September.64List of Sheriffs, 94; CJ vii. 69a, 214b; C6/41/174. The will named Samuel as an executor. William, the older brother, died in 1642, contrary to a modern account which erroneously places his death in 1663.65PROB11/222/569; E113/12, answer of Sir Samuel Jones; HP Commons 1660-1690. Isaac’s testamentary intentions were frustrated, in Samuel’s words, through ‘accident and hostile times’.66C6/41/174. Samuel was unable to pay either his father’s debts or his legacies; on one reckoning, Isaac left an estate of £20,000 or more; on another over £10,000 was due from the Welsh secretaryship, even though the office had been abolished by Parliament.67C6/41/174; C6/8/21. The result was a number of chancery cases, in which Samuel was either defendant or plaintiff. In May 1656, for £360, he had disposed of a holding of 315 acres of land forming part of the Bedford Great Level estate. He had inherited this holding from his father, who in 1649 and 1650 had attended meetings of the Bedford Level adventurers fairly regularly.68Cambs. RO, R.59.31.1c; R.59.31.9.1, ff. 14, 17v, 26, 29, 30, 30v; R.59.31.9.2, unfol.

It is possible that a period of relief from creditors may have prompted Samuel Jones to seek a seat in the second of Oliver Cromwell’s* Parliaments, which was summoned in the year when Jones was divesting himself of property for what appears as a low price. At the start of the civil war Jones had lived in the same London parish as William Spurstowe, Shrewsbury’s MP in the Long Parliament and subsequently the town’s benefactor. This association may have played a part in Jones’s election. Jones’s estate in Shrewsbury was, however, sufficient an interest in itself to commend him to the Shrewsbury corporation. In November 1655 he summoned a local mason to create a new house at Little Berwick which was to be a copy of the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. The model property belonged to ‘the earl of Middlesex’, presumably James Cranfield, the 2nd earl, who had taken the side of Parliament in the civil war but had been one of the Presbyterians who had opposed the army. This may provide an interesting insight into Jones’s own political outlook. The contract between Jones and the mason became the subject of litigation in 1659, either because of the latter’s poor workmanship or simply because Jones could not pay, according to which party is to be believed. 69C6/143/142. Certainly, Jones’s financial affairs were messy at this time, but for him to have set his cap at a place in Parliament would have been of a piece with his general ambitiousness evidenced in his property purchase and development.

Whatever Jones’s motives, he proved unacceptable to the government and in September 1656 found himself excluded from the House.70CJ vii. 425b. The reasons for his exclusion probably lay in his continued association with a royalist family, the Drurys. During the early 1650s, Jones took on the guardianship of his nephew and niece, children of his widowed sister, Susan Drury. In 1652 and 1653, Jones was still having to plead for more time to pay the remainder of Sir Drue Drury’s delinquency fine, first levied in 1646.71CCC 1298; Vis. London, 18. In April 1655, Jones was granted passes to take the Drury children overseas, presumably for their education.72CSP Dom. 1655, 581, 583. Had the government harboured any serious concerns about Jones’s political sympathies, the pass would not have been granted, but during the year government anxiety about domestic security and royalist plotting abroad deepened. By the time the new Parliament met, Jones’s relationship with the Drurys would have been looked at askance by the lord protector’s council. Furthermore, another of Jones’s sisters had married George Pierrepont, brother of Henry Pierrepont, 2nd earl of Kingston, who was rewarded by the king with the marquessate of Dorchester for his prominence in the royalist cause.73PROB11/222/569; C6/41/174; Thoroton, Notts. i. 176. Against these connections, Jones’s former military commission would have seemed inadequate compensation, evidence merely of a Presbyterian pre-New Model outlook, and Presbyterians were by this time almost as suspect as royalists. Jones seems never to have taken his seat.

Jones was never entrusted with local office during the protectorate, and only began to re-enter public life when the revived Rump sat, in May 1659. That year he was taken to court by his builder. An ally of Jones’s during the four years or so of the attempt to build Little Berwick was his crypto-royalist brother-in-law, Sir Richard Prince of Shrewsbury, and Prince was probably the means by which Jones was able to develop his political interest in the town.74C6/143/142. He was returned as ‘of Berwick’ by the corporation to serve in the Convention of 1660, and quickly revealed himself as a hard-line cavalier.75Salop Archives, 215/72; HP Commons 1660-1690. Given his family ties and the evident distaste for him displayed by the Cromwellian government, this was unsurprising, but he was unable to build on his political interest, fractured as it was in small estates in various counties. His reward for keen support of the restored monarchy was first a knighthood and then court office. Nevertheless, he had to appear before exchequer commissioners to account for his activities as sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1653, before he could hold the same office in Shropshire.76E113/12, answer of Sir Samuel Jones. It may have been partly his frustrated ambitions, and lack of any children to whom to pass on his estates, that led him to devise his elaborate scheme for almshouses at Berwick and a school at Courtenhall. He also did what he could to ensure that he was given a splendid tomb after his death. His adopted heir, a nephew, was to call himself Jones.77Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, viii. 97-121. He died on 3 January 1673 and was buried at Courtenhall. For all his enthusiasm for Charles II, Jones died disapproving of the drunkenness and debauchery ‘now so much in fashion’.78Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, viii. 110. In 1667 he had married as his second wife Mary Tryon, of a Northamptonshire gentry family. After Jones’s death she married Charles Bertie, brother of another prominent supporter of Charles I, Montague Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey.