Donald Spence Jones

Who was Donald Spence Jones?

The Very Revd Henry Donald Maurice Spence DD was an Anglican dean and author in the last decades of the 19th century and the start of the 20th.

The son of the barrister and Chancery reformer George Spence, he was educated at Westminster School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and ordained in 1865. He was a Lecturer in Hebrew at St David's College, Lampeter until 1870 when he became Rector of St Mary de Crypt, Gloucester. From 1877 to 1886 he was Rural Dean of St Pancras when he became Dean of Gloucester, a post he held until his death. As Dean, he banned performances of Edward Elgar's choral work The Dream of Gerontius from Gloucester Cathedral from 1900 until 1910 because of Roman Catholic references in its text. He adopted, additionally, the surname Jones in 1904.