The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion

Promoting the language, literature, arts and science of Wales

JOHN JONES OF GELLILYFDY AND HIS FLEET VOCABULARIES, 1632–1633

John Jones of Gellilyfdy, Flintshire (c.1580–1657/8) is well-known as a skilled and reliable scribe whose copies of medieval poetry and prose are particularly valuable to the Welsh scholar, as his sources have often not survived. However, John Jones was not just a copyist. When he was in the Fleet prison in London in the early 1630s, he produced lists of over 7,000 words, arranged thematically under 130 headings.