LLOYD, Richard (1602-?1649/50), of Marrington, Salop; later of the Inner Temple, London

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. c.1602,1 1st s. of Priamus Lloyd of Marrington and Katherine, da. of Edward Fox of Greet, Salop.2 educ. I. Temple 1632.3 m. ?Rebecca, at least 1s. 2da. suc. fa. aft. 1634.4 d. ?1649/50

Offices Held

?Commr. subsidy, Salop 1641-2, Poll Tax 1641, Irish aid 1642, assessment 1642-3.5

Biography

The Richard Lloyd returned for Montgomery boroughs in 1628 has usually been identified as a Gray’s Inn lawyer from Caernarvonshire who subsequently bought an estate near Wrexham, Denbighshire, sat in the Short Parliament, and ended his career as justice of the Brecon circuit and MP for Radnor in the Cavalier Parliament. However, there is ample reason to dispute this attribution: this man’s patrimony lay on the Merioneth-Caernarvonshire borders many miles from Montgomery; and he had no known links with the local magnate Edward, Lord Herbert of Chirbury (Sir Edward Herbert*), whose family had monopolized Montgomery’s parliamentary patronage since at least 1604.6

Herbert doubtless wished to sustain his electoral interest in 1628, but his brother Sir Henry, who had represented the seat two years previously, was apparently preoccupied by his recent acquisition of an estate in Worcestershire. Without any interest among his immediate family, Herbert apparently agreed to the return of Richard Lloyd, an obscure second cousin who was heir to an 800-acre estate at Marrington, Shropshire, only two miles east of Montgomery; Lloyd’s father, distinguished by the uncommon name of Priamus Lloyd, was one of the burgesses who attested his election return.7 Lloyd left no trace upon the copious records of his only Parliament, and no other member of the family was ever returned to the Commons.

Lloyd’s prospects worsened in 1630 when he and his father were forced to mortgage Marrington to Sir Thomas Myddelton I* for £2,000 - a high degree of leverage upon an estate worth only £200 a year. With his inheritance rapidly dwindling, Lloyd belatedly sought a career at the bar, registering at the Inner Temple as a mature student in 1632. A year later, shortly before the mortgage fell due for repayment, Lloyd and his father bowed to the inevitable and sold their estates for £3,500. Interest payments and the redemption of various other debts meant that the family netted only £300 from the sale, which modest sum quickly became the subject of a dispute between father and son.8

The details of Lloyd’s subsequent career are difficult to trace. Expelled from the Inner Temple in 1635 for participating in a holiday prank, he secured a passport to travel abroad in the following year, but was reinstated in his chambers in 1638. Although not known to have been called to the bar, he was still resident at the Temple and acting as an attorney in the spring of 1648, which rules out any prospect that he was the Colonel Richard Lloyd of Llwyn y Maen, Salop then fighting for the royalist cause in the Second Civil War.9 He was perhaps the Richard Lloyd of Hopton ‘Vughte’ [Uchaf], Montgomeryshire, only four miles from Marrington, whose will of 19 Nov. 1649 mentions a wife and at least three children; probate was granted on 5 Aug. 1650.10

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Author: Simon Healy

Notes

  • 1. Parents’ marriage settlement dated 12 Jan. 1601: REQ 2/408/55.
  • 2. Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 89-90.
  • 3. I. Temple Admiss.
  • 4. His fa. was then still alive: C3/408/142.
  • 5. SR, v. 65, 88, 107, 141, 155.
  • 6. DWB (Sir Richard Lloyd); HP (Commons) 1660-90, ii. 755-6; C142/426/91.
  • 7. SIR HENRY HERBERT; Vis. Salop, 191-3; Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxix), 374; C142/416/7; C219/41B/21.
  • 8. C2/Chas.I/C6/65; 2/Chas.I/C8/1; 2/Chas.I/C18/13; 2/Chas.I/D1/62; 2/Chas.I/D6/50; 2/Chas.I/M42/13; C3/408/142; I. Temple Admiss.
  • 9. CITR, ii. 221, 243; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 293; C3/452/32; CCC, 2030. Lloyd was related to the barrister Edward Floyd, who fell foul of the Commons in 1621.
  • 10. PROB 11/213, f. 204.