He succeeded to the titles of Baron Jones of Navan, and Viscount Ranelagh on the death of his father in 1628.
He was the eldest son of Arthur Jones, 2nd Viscount Ranelagh and Katherine Boyle, daughter of the Earl of Cork who counted amongst her brothers the chemist Robert Boyle and Lord Broghill, the later Earl of Orrery who was a prominent politician in Cromwellian and Restoration times.
After the earldom had become extinct and the viscountcy dormant in 1712, the Ranelagh title was revived in 1715 in favour of Sir Arthur Cole, 2nd Baronet, of Newland, who was made Baron Ranelagh.
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson | Viscount | Vickers Viscount | Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein | William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe | viscount | Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley | Charles Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham | William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim | Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby | William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne | Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy | Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke | William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor | James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce | Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke | Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston | Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon | Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe | Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford | Viscount Falkland | Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood | John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley | James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon | William Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford | William Barrington, 2nd Viscount Barrington | Stapleton Cotton, 1st Viscount Combermere | Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill | Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted | John Monckton, 1st Viscount Galway |
The town's name was in homage to the Viscount Ranelagh, an Irish nobleman who had Ranelagh Gardens built in Chelsea, England in 1742.