Family and Education

b. by 1498, 2nd s. of David Lloyd of Leighton by 2nd w. Ellen, da. of Jenkin Kynaston of Stocks, Salop. m. Gwenllian, da. of Thomas Price of Newtown, Mont., at least 5s. inc. Oliver^†.2

Offices Held

Steward, Strata Marcella abbey Mont. by 1523, receiver by 1535; sheriff, Mont. 1540-1, 1547-8; j.p. 1543-?d., q. 1558/59-61; commr. benevolence 1544/45, subsidy 1546, relief 1550; rhingyll (bailiff), Egville, Kerry, Llanllwychaiarn and Tairtref, Mont. by 1545, Tregynon, Mont. by 1546; chief steward, barony of Cause, Salop by 1554.3

Biography

The Lloyd family of Montgomeryshire (also known as Lloyd Fychan) claimed descent from Brochwel Ysgythrog, Prince of Powys. The first trace of Humphrey Lloyd comes in 1519, when the 3rd Duke of Buckingham leased to him Criggion moor and Breidden forest near Welshpool and the Gaer mill in Thornbury Forden near Montgomery. In the 1520s Lloyd was steward of the Cistercian abbey of Strata Marcella and on its suppression he retained the receivership of its estates. He was a friend of Sir Richard Herbert of Montgomery. (d.1539); they both signed the petition from the gentlemen of Montgomery for the implementation of the Act of Union of 1536, suspended at the King’s pleasure, and it was Lloyd who was entrusted by Herbert in 1539 with carrying the petition up to Cromwell. Described by Bishop Lee as ‘an honest gentleman’, Lloyd had good reason to support the new order in Wales: he was the first sheriff of Montgomery and among the first justices of the peace there, and he was to benefit greatly in the years to come.4

Although a younger son, for some years Lloyd held his father’s property at Leighton which he obtained, it seems, by sharp practice. Within the last three years of Henry VIII’s reign he was defendant in a chancery case over the manor. This had come to his father from Sir William Brereton in the reign of Edward IV as security for a loan of £40; on David Lloyd’s death it passed to his eldest son by his first wife, David Lloyd Fychan, who in turn demised it in 1520 to his three sons. It was the two surviving sons who charged their uncle, Humphrey Lloyd, with receiving the repayment of £40 on the manor and refusing to hand it over to them, ‘considering himself to be a justice of the peace’. A suit introduced earlier into Chancery also referred to property at Leighton, which Thomas Kerry, a salter of London, claimed as lord of the manor but of which allegedly Lloyd had dispossessed Kerry. A decree of 1544 stated that Kerry had no more right to the disputed property than any of his predecessors as lord of Leighton, but despite this Kerry caused Lloyd to appear before the court regularly for the next three years to his great discomfort, he being ‘an aged man and charged with many children’. In 1547 Lloyd asked for a commission to be set up in Wales to resolve the matter. Kerry brought a related action in the Star Chamber, claiming that Lloyd had broken up a manorial court at Leighton held in his name in 1541 and had struck two of the jurors ‘because they gave their verdict in the English tongue according to your Grace’s laws, for that as he pretended that the same was against the Welsh laws’, an accusation oddly at variance with his support for the Union. A receiver for the royal lordship of Montgomery imprisoned for debt also sued him about 1545 for withholding money.5

It was against this background of litigation that Lloyd was returned knight of the shire in the last Parliament of Henry VIII’s reign and the first of Edward VI’s. His election on each occasion was presumably assisted by his wife’s kinsman Edward Herbert, who was to sit as knight for Montgomeryshire in the second Edwardian Parliament. Nothing has come to light about Lloyd’s activity in the House, but presumably he won the cases against him as no more is heard of them after 1547. His local ascendancy remained undiminished and his links with the Stafford family, especially with Henry, 1st Baron Stafford, unbroken until 1562, after which no trace of him has been found.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

• 1. Hatfield 207.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Dwnn, Vis. Wales, i. 276, 289n; C1/1241/58; W. V. Lloyd, Sheriffs, Mont. i. 4.
• 3. Lloyd, i. 5; Val. Eccles. iv. 451; SC6/Hen. VIII 5247 mm. iv, 3v, 4v, 5, 5249 m. 6v; E179/222/353; CPR, 1553, p. 363; 1560-3, p. 446; SP11/5/6; C193/12/1.
• 4. Lloyd, i. 4, 6-7, 10; LP Hen. VIII, x, xiv, xv.
• 5. C1/1017/30-32, 1115/31, 1139/27, 1180/22, 1241/58; St.Ch.2/23/116, 167.
• 6. Lloyd, i. 6-7.