The eldest son of William Jones, chief secretary of the Religious Tract Society, he was born in the parish of Christchurch, Blackfriars, London, on 31 August 1817.
He was educated at a school in Totteridge, Hertfordshire, at King's College, London, and at Magdalen Hall, Oxford.
In 1851 he left London as vicar of Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, where he rediscovered the Anglo-Saxon church.
He wrote articles in the Magazine of the Wiltshire Archæological Society, of which he was elected vice-president in 1882; and at the time of his death he had collected for the Rolls Series documents relating to the diocese and city of Salisbury.
[1] His brother was Samuel Flood Jones (1826–95), a Precentor at Westminster Abbey.