Jones, Lewis (c.1560–1646), churchman, was born in Merionethshire, Wales, and attended Brasenose College, Oxford, from which he graduated in February 1581. His arrival in Ireland is not recorded. By 1605, when Lord Deputy Chichester (qv) unsuccessfully recommended his appointment to the see of Dromore, he had married Mabel, daughter of Arland Ussher and Margaret Stanihurst of Dublin. He was appointed dean of Ardagh in June 1606 and dean of Cashel, with the prebend of Kilbragh, in June 1607. In the regal visitation of 1615 the terms on which he had leased the estates of the Cashel deanery to the son of his archbishop, Miler Magrath (qv), were the subject of unfavourable comment – improvide dimisit (improvidently given away). In 1625 he presented his son Henry (qv) to the deanery of Ardagh.
On the death of McGrath's successor in 1629, Jones was warmly recommended by his brother-in-law, Archbishop James Ussher (qv), who credited him with having rebuilt the cathedral and established a choir. The king, however, had already made his choice, and Jones was offered the ill-provided see of Kilfenora instead. Despite the promise of a profitable commendam, he did not accept. In June 1629 he was installed as prebendary of Kilneliege in the diocese of Emly. In both February and September 1630, acting on reports of the death of Bishop Andrew Knox (qv) of Raphoe, the king instructed the lords justices to appoint Jones in his place, but Knox survived for three more years. Jones was nominated to the diocese of Killaloe in December 1632 and consecrated in Cashel by the archbishop on 12 April 1633.
Before the end of the year, he had incurred the displeasure of the new lord deputy, Viscount Wentworth (qv), who ordered him to break an agreement by which he had allowed Sir Daniel O'Brien (qv), uncle of the earl of Thomond, to retain episcopal lands valued at £500 a year in return for a rent of £26. The details of the settlement that followed are obscure. O'Brien entered into two bonds with Jones in 1636, amounting to £1,200, and Jones subsequently secured an order for recovery in the court of kings bench, but £1,100 remained unpaid when he died. Jones was excused from attending the lords’ house in the 1634 parliament on grounds of age and infirmity. In 1638 he bestowed his Emly prebend on his son Ambrose. On the outbreak of rebellion in 1641, he and Ambrose took refuge in St John's castle in Limerick where they survived a five-week siege.
After the surrender of the castle on 23 June 1642, Lewis retired to Dublin, where he died on 2 November 1646 and was buried in St Werburgh's. He was survived by three daughters and five sons, of whom Henry and Ambrose became bishops (the former in his father's lifetime) and Michael (qv) and Theophilus (qv) attained secular prominence. There seems to be no substance in the tradition that Jones was aged 104 at the time of his death: his brother-in-law's statement that he was 69 years old in 1629 is consistent with his Oxford record. Later accounts of his having been censured by the court of high commission for favouring the Covenanters arose from the confusion, not unusual in his lifetime, of Killaloe with Killala.