JONES, Gilbert (c.1758-1830), of 15 Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, London.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1806 - 1812

Family and Education

b. c.1758, 1st s. of Gilbert Jones of Bosbury and Lower Bullingham, Herefs. by Elizabeth (m. 1753), da. of Richard Mathews of Lower Bollinghope, Herefs. m. 1784, Rebekah Dymond of Hampstead, Mdx., 3da. suc. fa. 1789.

Offices Held

Solicitor to the Society of L. Inn 1814-19.

Biography

Jones, who qualified in 1780, was established as an attorney at the above address by 1782. He practised in King’s bench and subsequently in common pleas. In 1805, having purchased his business premises the year before, he was in partnership with William Green. After the death of John Gally Knight in 1804 he acted for the young 4th Duke of Newcastle in the management of his boroughs. In 1805 he negotiated a seat for Castlereagh on the duke’s interest.1 When the duke came of age in 1806, Jones was his choice for one of his seats.

An unobtrusive Member, Jones followed his patron’s line of supporting the Portland and Perceval administrations. No speech is known. He voted with ministers on the address, 23 Jan. 1810, and in all the crucial divisions on the Scheldt expedition that followed, so the Whigs were justified in being doubtful of his deserting to them. He was also in the majorities against the discharge of the radical Gale Jones and against parliamentary reform, 16 Apr., 21 May 1810. On 1 Jan. 1811 he was in the ministerial minority on the Regency question. He voted against sinecure reform, 4 May, and against a more efficient administration, 21 May 1812. He went out of Parliament at the ensuing dissolution. In December 1812, when he was managing a petition on behalf of Valentine Blake, he clearly regarded himself as attached to the government.2

Jones continued to advise Newcastle on the management of his boroughs, notably in 1818 when his control of Boroughbridge was undermined and remedial measures were called for. In 1819 he gave his legal opinion to government on the proposed merger of the surveyorships-general of land revenues and woods and forests. In indifferent health, he resigned as solicitor to Lincoln’s Inn that year, being succeeded by his partner. He retired in 1825 to his residence at Footscray, Kent, purchased in 1818, to which he added Eltham Park Farm in 1824. He died after a fall from his horse, 7 Sept. 1830. His daughters Maria, Sarah and Elizabeth Ann all died unmarried between 1853 and 1857.3

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Authors: Winifred Stokes / R. G. Thorne

Notes

  • 1. Lawson Tancred, Recs. Yorks. Manor , 309-13.
  • 2. Add. 40223, f. 251.
  • 3. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Newcastle mss NeC 6585, 6614, 6616, 6621; Add. 38276, f. 337; Black Bks , iv. 154; Gent. Mag. (1830), ii. 285; Kent AO, U1485, Jones docs.