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Obituary Major Francis Jones, CVO, TD, MA, FSA, DL, CStJ. Wales Herald Extraordinary. Francis Jones was born at Trefin on 5 July 1908. He was educated at Fishguard County School and began his career as a school-teacher. After school hours he used to go round the county speaking for the Primrose League, which is where I met him first, immaculately dressed in his black coat and vest, striped trousers, spats and bowler hat. During his spare time, also, he began "to go through the gaol files", as he would say. A reporter of the County Echo came across him, in 1935, 'busily at work in the dungeons of the old castle at Haverfordwest delving into ancient records of Pembrokeshire at the request of the Pembrokeshire County Council, clad in an old cassock and looking very much like a Franciscan friar, having been engaged on record work of a genealogical nature in Pembrokeshire for the last ten years'. In 1936 he was appointed an archivist at the National Library of Wales where he began work on the same day as his fellow-Trefinian, Dr B.G.Charles, and there he remained until war broke out, when he transferred from the Welch Regiment (TA) to the Pembroke Yeomanry. He served, and was mentioned in despatches, in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy. After the war he worked in the Historical Section of the Cabinet Office, compiling the official narrative of the Sicilian and Italian campaigns. In 1958 he was appointed County Archivist for Carmarthenshire, a post which he held until 1974. In 1963 he became Wales Herald Extraordinary, a title that had not been employed since the fourteenth century, and he was in attendance upon the Prince of Wales at the Investiture Ceremony in 1969. He was appointed CVO in that year. He was president of the Cambrian Archaeological Society in 1985-86 and of the Pembrokeshire Historical Society from 1988. He was a vice-president of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion and of the Dyfed Association of Local Councils, and a member of the Councils of the National Library, the National Museum, the Historical Society of the Church in Wales, the Heraldry Society and L'Academie Internationale d'Heraldique. He was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards, he was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and he was admitted Master of Arts honoris causa by the University of Wales. He was a Burgess of Haverfordwest and historian of its Gild of Freemen. He held the Territorial Decoration with three clasps and was appointed Deputy Lieutenant in 1965. His published works include The Holy Wells of Wales (1954), God Bless the Prince of Wales (1969) and Historic Carmarthenshire Homes and their Families (1987), together with innumerable articles on historical, genealogical and heraldic matters in learned journals. Much remains unpublished. Francis was a colourful character, even when he was not dressed in his tabard. He had a great sense of dignity, and of humour, and a manner of speaking that was remote from his origins, but nothing delighted him more, when among his older friends, than to revert to the Doric of Pencaer. He was in the tradition of George Owen, York Herald and Lewys Dwnn, and he will be long remembered for his contribution to Welsh, and in particular, Pembrokeshire genealogical research. Dillwyn Miles Editor's note: A fuller appreciation of Major Jones' work will be published in a future edition.