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Life
1605-1682; son of bishop of Killaloe; ed. TCD; surrendered his castle, Bellananagh, to the Irish rebels in 1641; presented Humble remonstrance of the gentry and Commonalty of country Cavan to the lords justices of Dublin, an office refused by Bedell; appointed to take evidence as to what murders and outrages had been committed, 1642; solicited money in London to relieve distressed Protestants; promoted to bishopric of Clogher on advice of Ormonde, 1645; collated the 1641 “Depositions” while occupying that see (later donated to TCD by his successor John Stearne in 1741); vice-chancellor of TCD, 1646, to which he presented the Book of Durrow, and the oak staircase in the library, 1651;
Scoutmaster General Scoutmaster General to Cromwell’s Army under Commonwealth, and granted ancient seat of Lynch’s at Summerhill in Co. Meath, confirmed to him at Restoration; appointed commissioner to collect fresh evidence of outrages in Leinster and Munster, 1652; other commission work, viz., settlement of Ulster, 1653, and ‘hearing difficulties [...] arisen between adventurers concerning lands alloted to them in Ireland’, 1645-45; Bishop of Meath, 1661; made over The Book of Kells to TCD, having jurisdiction over the effects of the diocese;
deeply involved in the No Popery [anti-Catholic] scheme of Earl of Shaftesbury, his intercepted letters, according to Carte, showing ‘something more zealous than honorable’ in revealing the extent of a popish plot: ‘He was certainly the means of bringing one perfectly innocent person, the titular archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunkett [q.v.], to the scaffold’; engaged in project to print Testament and Liturgy in Irish. m. niece of Ussher. Two of his children became Catholics. ODNB
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Works
A Remonstrance of the Rebellion in the County of Cavan (1642); St. Patrick’s Purgatory (1647) [incl. correspondence of Bishop Spottiswoode]; A Consecration Sermon at Christ Church, Dublin (1667); A Sermon at the Funeral of Archbishop Margetson (1678).
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Notes
St. Patrick’s Cathedral: A monument in St. Patrick’s Cathedral formerly stood in the Choir, now in north aisle; surmounted by family motto, Coelitus mihi vires; Archbishop Jones represented in Chancellor’s robes and attitude of prayer; his son Viscount Ranelagh appers in a recumbent effigy lower down, surrounded by kneeling figures; Thomas Jones, Archiepaiscopus Dublin, Huberniaw Canecllarius, bis e Justiciariis unus. Obiit 10 Apr. a.d. 1619; Margarita Thomase uxor obiit 15 Dec. 1618 [also Roger Jones, Eques, Visc. Ranelagh ... Vice-Comitis Moore de Droghedah [et. al.]; the whole restored by Lady Catherine Jones, at Deans Swift’s request, 1731. (See Alexander Leeper, DD, Historical Handbook of St Patrick’s Cathedral, 1891.)
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