LLOYD, Sir RICHARD (1606 - 1676), royalist and judge, of Esclus, Denbighshire

The son of Evan Lloyd of Dulasau, Caernarfonshire (not of Primus Lloyd of Marrington, as in D.N.B.). His family had been settled for centuries in the neighbourhood of Penmachno, claiming descent from a bastard son of Dafydd, brother of prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd; he was nephew to a vicar of Ruabon and first cousin to three other North Wales incumbents, and a bishop of Bangor (Humphrey Lloyd, 1610 - 1688). He entered the Inner Temple in 1631, was employed on missions abroad in 1635-6, and on his return was given the reversion to the office of prothonotary and clerk to the Crown in Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire. He attended Charles I on the Scottish campaign of 1639, and was subsequently made attorney general for North Wales, in which capacity he was very active from August 1641 to April 1642 in combating (by delaying tactics and counter-proposals) the agitation for the abolition of the council at Ludlow, and early in June he attended the king at York with assurances of loyalty from the six counties. He entertained Charles on his recruiting visits to Wrexham on 27 September and 7 October 1642, receiving knighthood on the latter occasion [and he helped to co-ordinate local efforts for the defence of Chester during the early months of 1643 and of Denbighshire when invasion was threatened next summer, after which] he was made governor of Holt castle, holding out till, on 13 January 1647, he surrendered to Thomas Mytton on terms which permitted Lloyd to go abroad with £300 out of his personal estate, and his family to retain lands to the same value. His intransigence towards parliament led the latter to demand his exclusion from pardon in the negotiations of 1647. Returning at the Restoration, he was made justice of the south-eastern circuit of the Great Sessions in July 1660, and promoted the re-establishment of the council of Wales by a memorandum (presented June 1661) repeating many of his arguments of twenty years earlier. In the same year he was elected to parliament by both Cardiff and Radnorshire, sitting for the latter till his death on 5 May 1676, when he was buried at Wrexham.

Another member of the family (not to mention, for the time being, David Owen, 'Dafydd y Garreg Wen') deserves some attention. A comparison of the charts in J. E. Griffith (Pedigrees, 330, 353, 269) shows that Sir Richard Lloyd had a sister Margaret who married Richard Anwyl of Parc. Their daughter was Barbara, who was alive in 1707 and who married twice, the second time to one surnamed Parry, sometimes identified with Jeffrey Parry of Rhydolion, forefather of the Parrys of Madryn, which cannot be correct since the latter died while she was still married to her first husband. Her first husband, as demonstrated by Nannau MS. 3452 in the library of University of Wales, Bangor, was Hugh Lloyd (not 'Richard' as given by Griffith) of Deneio and Nefyn. Their third son (fifth son according to some) was RODERICK LLOYD (died 1730) of Hafodwryd, Penmachno, Caernarfonshire, who entered Lincoln's Inn in 1684 (and who spent most of his life there), and became (as had his uncle Richard Anwyl) Clerk of the Outlawries in the Court of Common Pleas. It is often said that he was protonotary to his famous neighbour, Sir Robert Price of Giler, but his name does not appear in the lists of W. R. Williams (The Welsh Judges). Nevertheless, it is obvious that there was a close relationship, throughout his career, between the two. He is commemorated in Penmachno by the school, almshouses, and the charitable gifts (including Welsh books for the poor) which he donated to his parish; see his will (Nannau MS. 3448, at Bangor), and also Lowe, The Heart of Northern Wales, ii, 437-40, and Gweithiau Gethin, 250, 253-4. He married in 1703, Anne, widow of Robert Pugh of Pennar or Pennard, Penmachno (a lawyer of Middle Temple), and left a daughter, another Anne, who married in 1730 Edward Williams of Meillionydd. Their daughter, yet another Anne, by her marriage to Robert Howell Vaughan (Griffith, op. cit., 201), brought Roderick Lloyd's property to the Hengwrt-Nannau family, which is why his papers are among the Nannau papers in the library at Bangor, papers (particularly Nannau MSS. 3444- 60) which complement and rectify, to some extent, the charts of J. E. Griffith. Roderick Lloyd died May 1730, and was buried 30 May in Lincoln's Inn chapel. A daughter of his wife's first marriage to Robert Pugh was Anne Pugh who married John Wynne, Bishop of St. Asaph; the bishop's name is seen with Sir Robert Price and others among the executors of the will of Roderick Lloyd.

Authors

• Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd, (1891 - 1975)
• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and sources therein cited
• J. E. Griffith, Pedigrees of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire Families (1914), 328, 330
• Huntingdon Lib., U.S.A., Egerton Manuscripts at the Huntingdon Library, U.S.A7539-7559
• N.L.W. Crosse of Shaw Hill Manuscripts at the National Library of Wales 1101-1111
• Caroline A. J. Skeel, The Council in the Marches of Wales a study in local government during the sixteenth and seventeenth centurie (Cambridge 1904), 166
• R. H. Morris, The Siege of Chester, 1643–1646 (Chester 1924), 110, 122, 146, 185
• A. H. Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales (Cardiff 1952), 49, 65-8, 71, 196
• P. H. Lawson in The Cheshire Sheaf, being local gleanings, historical & antiquarian, January and February 1937
• and the other references given above

Published date: 1959

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