He often expressed an intense hostility to the completely Anglicised Welsh nobility, their policies of rackrenting, and their employment of land agents whom he considered, "destitute of the principles of justice [and] moral honesty".

Jones learned many works of Catholic oral poetry in the Welsh language, many of them rooted in the spirituality of the Celtic Church, from his mother and was later to write them down and preserve them for posterity.

He was christened into the Anglican Communion at the parish church alleged to have been founded by Saint Cadfan on 18 June 1726, and the only formal education he received was at one of Griffith Jones' schools that existed for a time in the neighbourhood.

[4] As well as the classics, Jones promoted the ideas of the French Philosophe Voltaire in Welsh; in the view of David Barnes in his book The Companion Guide to Wales, this "succeeded in influencing the political development of his country".

[4] In Welsh literary circles during the 18th century, the Elizabethan era pseudohistory of Madog ab Owain Gwynedd provided a defense for the House of Tudor to begin their own colonisation of the New World.

The belief existed that Madog, son of Owain Gwynedd, had travelled to North America in the 12th-century and had planted a colony whose descendants, the Madogwys (Padoucas), still spoke the Welsh language.

This myth was extremely attractive to Jones, and the publication of John Williams' 1791 work An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 sent the members of the Gwyneddigion Society into a frenzy of excitement.

The anthem, sung to the refrain, "Ac unwn lawen ganiad ar doriad teg y dydd" (And join in joyful song at the fair break of dawn), was designed to commemorate "our viscitudes (sic) of Fortune".

Jones made great play of the treachery and pillage wrought by the Romans, the "treacherous" Vortigern, "that tyrant" Edward I and "the usurper" Henry IV.

[1] At its core, however, Jones' nationalism was fuelled by the social and economic changes that were affecting Wales, which he felt boded ill for Welsh tenant farmers.

At the Llanrwst eisteddfod in June 1791 Jones distributed copies of an address, titled 'To all Indigenous Cambro-Britons', calling for tenant farmers and impoverished craftsmen to pack their bags, quit Wales and sail to the 'Promised Land' in the newly founded United States of America.

[8] When Jones heard, in 1792, that Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, had purchased large tracts of land in New York State, he wrote to him expressing his desire to see the creation of a Welsh colony on this estate.

[12] Sir William's response was very negative, he countered that the farmers of Britain lived in the most 'bounteous country in the world' and that if they improved their cultivation methods and became more industrious, then they would prosper.