LLOYD, CHARLES (died 1698), squire of Maesllwch in Radnorshire (in his later days) and Independent elder

One of Vavasor Powell's apologists in the Examen et Purgamen Vavasoris of 1654; he supported him also by signing the Word for God in opposition to the Protectorate of Cromwell. In August 1672 Henry Maurice paid him a visit, and in 1675 Maurice puts it on record that Lloyd was one of the elders in the 'gathered church' of Brecknock. He was one of the Dissenters, like Richard Edwards of Nanhoron and Jenkin Jones of Kilgerran, who were named in 1687 as likely men to forward if appointed J.P. s, the new religious policy of James II, but there is no proof that he was entrapped by that king. Soon after the Toleration Act came into force in 1689, Lloyd gave a piece of land on his Radnor estate at Maes-yr-onnen to build a chapel on, the first Independent chapel in Wales. Towards the end of his life he got into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities at Brecon because he had married (as third wife) the daughter of his second wife's brother, but nothing effective seems to have happened as he refers to 'my dear wife Anne ' in his last will of 1696. That will casts a good deal of light on his family connections (especially through his second and third marriages) with the Puritan Watkins family of Sheephouse, but it casts no light at all on the reasons why for a long period he was referred to as ' Charles Lloyd of Gwernyfed ' - that had to wait for an article in Y Dysgedydd of 1939 (339) by Idris Davies, explaining that he lived in the dower house there, with his first wife, the widow of one of the Gwernyfed sons.

Charles Lloyd was brother to William Lloyd of Wernos and to Walter Lloyd of Felindre, all three descending from the Lloyds of Cray and Crickadarn.

LEWIS LLOYD

Son of Charles, became a great London merchant, purchaser of much land in Brecknock and Radnor, and a stout Dissenter like his father. He was one of the founders of the London Congregational Fund in 1695, a fund to give support to weak churches in the country; towards the end of his life he gave much information about Wales to Dr. John Evans when he was compiling his Nonconformist lists for the benefit of the Whig electoral managers. His last will was dated 27 March 1714/5; in it he laid a special injunction upon any one of his own family or anybody else, who dared to dispose of the land on which Maesyronnen chapel was built, to pay a fine heavy enough to build a new chapel elsewhere. He died in 1717, his will being proved on 21 October in that year.

Author

• Thomas Richards, (1878 - 1962)

Sources

• Harleian Manuscript at the British Museum 4181 (129b, 130)
• Broadmead Records (1847, 1865) Add. B. 512
• Rawlinson Manuscript at the Bodlean Library, Oxford A. 139a, 155
• Idris Davies, 'Dyddiau cynnar Annibyniaeth ym Mrycheiniog a Maesyfed,' Y Cofiadur, 1946, 1-63, passim
• Isaac Thomas, 'Y Gronfa Gynulleidaol ac Annibynwyr Cymru,' Y Cofiadur, 1958, 5-6, 8
• Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, v, 134-48
• Garthewin Manuscripts at the University of North Wales, Bangor (U.C.N.W.), 2182-4
• P.P.C. 145 Lort (will of Charles Lloyd), P.P.C. 193 Whitfield (will of Lewis Lloyd)

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q20732698

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/