Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, Jezreel
JONES, JEZREEL (d. 1731), traveller, was appointed in 1698 clerk to the Royal Society. Under their patronage he set out in the same year on an expedition of discovery into Barbary, the sum of 100l. being voted by the council towards his journey (Weld, Hist. of Roy. Soc. i. 351–2, ii. 562). In 1699 he communicated to the society an ‘Account of the Moorish Way of Dressing their Meat (with other Remarks) in West Barbary, from Cape Spartel to Cape de Geer’ (Phil. Trans. xxi. 248–58). He returned home at the end of the year, but in February 1701 he sailed on a second voyage to Barbary, and reached Tetuan in September. He sent Sloane and Petiver many valuable specimens (cf. his letters in Addit. (Sloane) MS. 4049, ff. 86–96). Some of his coloured drawings of Barbary products, copied by Albin in 1711, are preserved in the same collection, No. 4003. In July 1704 he was chosen British envoy to Morocco, and arrived at Tangier on 28 Dec. of that year (letter of Sir C. Hedges to Alcaid Ali ben Abdola, Addit. MS. 28948, f. 55; letter of Jones to Sir J. Leake, ib. 5440, f. 119). An excellent Arabic scholar, he often acted, on his return to London, as interpreter to ambassadors from Africa (Gent. Mag. i. 220). To John Chamberlayne's ‘Oratio Dominica in diversas linguas versa,’ 1715, he contributed (pt. ii. pp. 150–6) a learned dissertation ‘De Lingua Shilhensi.’ He died at his house, the Two Golden Arrows, in Plough Yard, Fetter Lane, Holborn, on 21 May 1731 (Hist. Reg. 1731, Chron. Diary, p. 26). By his wife Edith he left three sons and a daughter (will in P. C. C. 185, Isham). His correspondence with Under-secretary John Ellis is in Additional MSS. 28892, ff. 182, 190, and 28916, ff. 121, 137, 143.
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