JONES, Roger (?1691-1741), of Buckland, Brec.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1713 - 1722

Family and Education

b. ?1691, o. surv. s. of Edward Jones, M.P., of Buckland by Margaret, da. of Roger Otis of Keventilly, Mon. educ. Balliol, Oxf. 16 May 1707, aged 15; I. Temple 1707. m. (1) Dorothy (d. 16 Mar. 1735), da. of Henry Cornish of London, merchant, s.p.; (2) Eleanor, s.p. suc. fa. 1696.

Offices Held

Biography

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.1

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.2 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’.3 He died in 1741.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Peter D.G. Thomas

Notes

  • 1. Worsley mss.
  • 2. Stowe mss 247, ff. 184-99.
  • 3. R. Eliot to Walpole, 20 Dec. 1733, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss.