Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, William Bence

by Daniel Lleufer Thomas ‎

JONES, WILLIAM BENCE (1812–1882), Irish agriculturist, born at Beccles, Suffolk, in 1812, was the eldest son of William Jones, a lieutenant-colonel of the 5th dragoon guards, by Matilda, daughter of the Rev. Bence Bence of Thorington Hall, Suffolk. Henry Bence Jones, M.D. [q. v.], was the second son. William was educated at Harrow, matriculated on 31 March 1829 from Balliol College, Oxford, and proceeded B.A. in 1834 and M.A. in 1836. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, and for a short time went the home circuit.

Late in life Jones's grandfather had bought an estate at Lisselan, co. Cork, adjoining the public road from Clonakilty to Bandon. It was never visited by its purchaser, and only once by his son. In 1838, in consequence of the embezzlements of the agent in charge, Jones undertook its management, and lived there almost entirely from 1843 to 1880. Utilising the knowledge of farming which he had gained in Suffolk, he made great improvements on the estate, which consisted of about four thousand acres, and farmed one thousand acres himself. He engaged a man to teach his tenants how to grow turnips and clover, he improved the roads, reclaimed upwards of four hundred acres, and generally consolidated the farms. He was never popular in the district. In the severe winter of 1879 he gave increased employment to the neighbouring labourers, but opposed the establishment of public relief works, and when the Land League agitation began he was attacked as an unjust and rack-renting landlord. In December 1880 he refused to accept from his tenants Griffith's valuation in place of the stipulated rent, and was consequently boycotted. Most of the labourers in his employment deserted him, but he succeeded in carrying on his farm-work with the aid of men imported from England and elsewhere. Although successful in his resistance to the Land League, he left Ireland in 1881, and settled in London. He strenuously opposed Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Act of 1881, advocating emigration and state drainage of wet lands as alternative remedies. He died at 34 Elvaston Place, London, on 22 June 1882.

In 1843 Jones married Caroline, daughter of William Dickinson, M.P., of Kingweston, Somerset. His eldest son, William Francis Bence-Jones, educated at Rugby and Exeter College, Oxford (B.A. in 1878), and called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 26 Jan. 1883, died on 19 Nov. of the same year, when Jones's second son, Reginald, succeeded to the estate.

Jones was author of:

1. ‘The Irish Church from the Point of View of its Laymen,’ London, 1868, 12mo.
2. ‘The Future of the Irish Church,’ Dublin, 1869, 8vo.
3. ‘What has been done in the Irish Church since its Disestablishment,’ London, 1875, 8vo.
4. ‘The Life's Work in Ireland of a Landlord who tried to do his Duty,’ London (printed in Edinburgh), 1880, 8vo, being chiefly a collection of articles contributed to magazines between 1865 and 1880.

[Bence Jones's Life's Work in Ireland; Law Times, lxxiii. 168; Times, 24 June 1882; see also letters by Jones in Times, 15, 17, and 21 Dec. 1880, 3 Jan. 1881.]

D. Ll. T.