Roger Jones was one of the leading squires of Breconshire, but he owed his election for the borough to the support of the Morgans of Tredegar. The son of a Jacobite, he was reckoned a Tory in 1713 and a Whig in 1715, with this explanatory note in the list of the new Parliament prepared for George I:
Il étoit Tory dans le dernier Parlement. Il vient d’épouser une jeune femme Whig et promet de se mettre du parti de madame.1Worsley mss.
Absent from the division on the septennial bill, he voted against the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, and was absent from the division on the peerage bill, though expected to support it.2Stowe mss 247, ff. 184-99. Resigning the borough to a Morgan in 1722, he unsuccessfully fought the county with Tredegar support. Afterwards, although his interest was computed at 400 of the 1,200 freeholders in Breconshire, he declined to stand again, ‘being unwilling as ’tis thought to put himself to any expense’.3R. Eliot to Walpole, 20 Dec. 1733, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. He died in 1741.