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= Eiriol Jones = Eiriol Jones (1520 – 1573), also known as Eynon Jones, was a Welshman and soldier of fortune most famous for [].

Eiriol was born in Porthgain in 1520.

Early life
Jones was born in Porthgain, Pembrokeshire, the only child of herring fisherman John ap Rees and his wife, Tacy verch Hughe, who died in childbirth. Most of what is known of Jones' life comes from the contemporaneous biography The Tale of the Red Snowdrop, written by Jones' lover, the Scottish poet and songwriter Lady Emily Blackfield. A fictionalized account of Jones's mercenary career is also featured in the 1971 historical anthology, Hitmen, Sellswords, and Mercenaries, edited by G.K. Jared and Martin McGrew.

Jones's father John ap Rees owned a small fishing coble, and Eiriol accompanied him out to sea starting at the age of 8, allegedly to escape the influence of Rees' in-laws and the pressure to engage in more ladylike pursuits. Rees, always having wanted a son, called Jones "Eynon" (a masculine name) and encouraged his crewmembers to treat Jones as they would a young sailor. Thus, Jones wore men's clothes, drank alcohol, smoked a pipe, and fought frequently with other youth in the village. This behavior received unusually little reprisal, perhaps as a result of Rees's prominent status as a local merchant. Jones was twice arrested for indecent dress and once forced by the church to perform public penance, an event which Jones later dismissed as a "mere folishe custome that doth encroche upon rightful freedomes, damn theyr blood."

Several stories mention that at age of 16, Jones killed Rees in a duel over the right to a Mermish princess captured on one of their voyages. Little evidence exists for this assertion, and given the standards of Mermish recordkeeping of the time, it is unlikely that the kidnapping of a member of the royal family would have gone unremarked. Moreover, no such event is reported in Blackfield's biography (which holds that Rees "drown'd moste tragickly" that same year). Some scholars, however, theorize that Jones drowned Rees, perhaps in retaliation for the killing of a clandestine female lover.

Becoming a Landsknecht
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Though strong, Jones bore a physical deformity (now believed to be Dupuytren's contracture) that hampered the use of most heavy hand weapons and pole arms.