Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, John (d.1598)

1400428Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 30 — Jones, John (d.1598)1892Daniel Lleufer Thomas

JONES, JOHN, alias Buckley, alias Godfrey Maurice (d. 1598), Franciscan, was born of a good Welsh family in the parish of Clynog Fawr in Carnarvonshire. In the ‘Early Chronicles of Shrewsbury,’ published in the ‘Transactions of the Shropshire Archæological Society’ (iii. 338), he is erroneously described as a Shropshireman. He entered the community of the Franciscans at Greenwich, but on the dissolution of that convent in 1559, he withdrew to the continent, and was professed at Pontoise. There is no reason for supposing that he returned to England before 1592, so that Challoner and later biographers must be wrong in stating that he was a prisoner in the Marshalsea in 1582–4 (see list of prisoners in Morris's Life of Gerard, p. 29, where Jones's name is not included), and again in Wisbech Castle in 1587. The statement was probably occasioned by the identification of Jones with Robert Buckley [q. v.] On leaving Pontoise, Jones went to Rome and entered the convent of the Observantines of the Ara Cœli, embracing the order of the Reformed Friars or Observantines of the Roman Province in 1591. After remaining at Rome for about a year, Jones, with the permission of his superiors and the blessing of Clement VIII, returned to England, and stayed for a few months in London in a house established by John Gerard for the reception of priests. On quitting London he ‘betook himself to his own connections,’ and continued his missionary work until he was arrested at the instance of Richard Topcliffe in 1596. Before his arrest Jones had visited two persons who were subsequently his fellow-prisoners, Robert Barnes and Jane Wiseman, and eventually, after two years' imprisonment, they were all three arraigned for high treason in the king's bench court at Westminster, on 3 July 1598. The charge against Jones was that, being a Romish priest, he had returned to England contrary to the statute 27 Eliz. c. 2. ‘If this be a crime,’ said Jones, ‘I must hold myself guilty, for I am a priest and came over into England to gain as many souls as I could to Christ.’ He was sentenced to death, and on 12 July was drawn on a hurdle to St. Thomas's Waterings, Southwark, and there hanged. His quarters were fixed on poles at different places, and Dr. Champney (quoted by Challoner) stated that one of the fore-quarters found its way to the convent at Pontoise. An account of the ‘martyrdom of Godfrey Maurice’ (which was Jones's name in religion) was written three days after the execution by Henry Garnet (1555–1606), and published in Diego Yepes' ‘Historia particular de la Persecucion de Inglaterra,’ Madrid, 1599.

[Challoner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. 1741, i. 360; Dodd's Church History (Tierney), iii. 117–18, cxci seq.; Morris's Life of Fr. J. Gerard, 3rd ed. pp. 142–3, 208; Gillow's English Catholics, iii. 657–60; Bye Gones for 18 Aug. 1881.]

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