LLOYD, Griffith (d.1586), of Llanllyr, Card., Doctors' Commons and Oxford.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

2nd s. of Hugh ap Llewellyn Llwyd (or Lloyd) of Llanllyr by Joan, da. and coh. of Gruffydd ap Henry. educ. New Coll. Oxf. 1565, BCL 1572, DCL 1576; adv. 1576. m. Anne, da. and coh. of John Rastell, c.j. of S. Wales circuit, 1da.

Offices Held

Principal, Jesus, Oxf. 1572; prof. civil law from 1577; chancellor, diocese of Oxford.2

Biography

Originally a nunnery belonging to Strata Florida abbey, Llanllyr at the dissolution of the monasteries was acquired by Lloyd’s father, who was sheriff of the county in 1566-7, and whose brother David represented it in the Parliament of 1545. These family connexions—together with the fact that his father-in-law had since 1570 been chief justice of the three shires of Cardigan, Carmarthen and Pembroke—must have been sufficient to account for Griffith’s election in 1586, for much of his life was spent between Oxford and Doctors’ Commons. In point of fact he had already been returned to that Parliament for Abingdon, perhaps through the influence of the Earl of Leicester, but he naturally chose to sit for the county. His wife was a great-niece of Sir Thomas More, and her sister was the wife of Robert Lougher, a colleague of Lloyd both at Jesus College and at Doctors’ Commons. It was Lougher who surrendered to Lloyd the patent for ‘reading of the civil law at Oxford’ in May 1577. In addition to the administrative work which fell to him as chancellor during the long vacancy of the see of Oxford, Lloyd was sent in 1576 on a commission to investigate the diocese of Hereford.3

He died at Doctors’ Commons six weeks after the opening of the 1586 Parliament. He had made his will, ‘written all with mine own hand’, on 13 Aug. 1585, ‘feeling some griefs in my body which do admonish me of my mortality’. His ‘good friend’ Mr. Hovenden, the warden of All Souls, received some books, others went to his brother Richard, together with his ‘scholar’s gown with wide sleeves and hood’. Lloyd left to Jesus College, of which he was the first benefactor and the second principal, his Cardiganshire lands and other properties, subject to life interests to his wife and daughter. To the last it may be that Lloyd hoped for a son, for he made a provision in his will in case his wife should be with child at his death. He went on:

For that my two brothers Morgan and Thomas are well to live, God be praised, I do not bequeath anything to them but my prayers, desiring God to prosper them in all their doings and dealings, and do desire them for my sake to be favourable and friendly to my poor widow and daughter.4

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: A.H.D.

Notes

  • 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
  • 2. Williams, Parl. Hist. Wales, 28; Reg. Oxon. ed. Clark, ii(2), pp. 22, 36; iii. 23; Coote, Civilians, 53; Wood, Fasti, i. 201; CPR, 1563-6, p. 387.
  • 3. Meyrick, Card. 242-3; Williams, loc. cit.; Williams, Welsh Judges, 162-3; Strype, Grindal, 316.
  • 4. Hardy, Jesus Coll. 19, 69; PCC 67 Windsor.