LLOYD, Francis (c.1655-1704), of Ludlow, Salop.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, 2002
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

14 Jan. 1691 - 1695

Family and Education

b. c.1655, 1st s. of Marmaduke Lloyd of Crickadarn, Brec. by Catherine, da. of Richard Williams of Park, nr. Builth, Rad.  educ. St. Edmund Hall, Oxf. matric. 14 Apr. 1671, aged 16; I. Temple 1671, called 1678, reader 1700–1.  m. (1) lic. 25 Nov. 1678, Mrs Anne Hackett (d. 1686) of Chalfont St. Peter, Bucks., wid., da. of Sir Francis Rewse of Headstone, Mdx., 1da.; (2) Elizabeth, da. of Evan Owen, rector of Beguildy, Rad., 2s. 1da.1

Offices Held

Attorney-gen. for Brec., Glam. and Rad. 1689–95; freeman, Ludlow 1690, common councilman 1690, recorder by 1691–d., alderman 1692; Welsh judge 1695–1702.2

Biography

Lloyd’s grandfather had been a Welsh judge under Charles I, and he himself was noted as a ‘pretender’ to the post of attorney-general for Breconshire, Glamorgan and Radnorshire shortly before his appointment in August 1689. In 1690 he stood at Ludlow and he and another Whig were defeated by two Tories, William Gower* and Thomas Hanmer I*. Lloyd and his colleague petitioned that the charter under which the election had been held was invalid: it had been granted to the borough by James II in 1685, to establish a Tory-controlled corporation, and had seemingly been revoked since. The Commons decided in their favour and on 22 Dec. 1690 declared a void election. The next month a by-election was held, according to the pre-1685 charter. Meanwhile, the old corporation had resumed the government of the borough as a result of the Commons’ decision, and Lloyd had been brought in as a common councilman and as recorder. At the by-election he and Silius Titus* defeated Gower and Hanmer, who petitioned against the return. While the petition was under consideration the question of the borough’s charter was also being disputed, members of both corporations claiming the right to act. Lloyd was one of the representatives of the restored corporation who addressed the Privy Council with a complaint against the rival body, and subsequently petitioned the King and Queen for a new charter to settle matters once and for all. On 8 Dec. 1691 the Commons dismissed the Tory petition against the parliamentary election; and eventually, a year later, a new charter for Ludlow was issued, confirming the authority of the restored corporation.3

Classed as a Court supporter with a place in Grascome’s list (and as a placeman in three other lists of the early 1690s), Lloyd spoke on 23 Jan. 1692 against the bill for reducing interest. In the next session, during a debate on 30 Nov. in a committee of the whole on the counsel being given to the King, he participated in a Whig attack on the ministry, announcing that:

There were some persons about me in the country whom I had good course [sic] to suspect to be no friends to the government, upon which I thought it my duty to tender them the oaths. Soon after which, I received a summons to attend the Council where some persons here hinted at were very busy in asking me questions about the matter, but at last I was dismissed but had no sort of encouragement given me for doing my duty or check to my adversaries.

He is known to have spoken again on 22 Feb. 1693, the day after he had been given leave of absence for three weeks for the recovery of his health, when, at the third reading of the bill to prohibit the importation of foreign buttons, he ‘offered a rider on behalf of one Mr Simpson to give him leave to import £4,000 worth of hair buttons which he had really contracted for before this bill was brought in’. Sir Edward Seymour, 4th Bt., and several other Members spoke in favour of this amendment, while John Smith I led the opposition to it, securing its rejection by 87 votes to 60.4

Soon after the beginning of the next session, on 29 Nov. 1693, Lloyd was ordered to bring in a bill to repeal a clause in an Act limiting the number of j.p.s in Wales, and he piloted the bill through its stages in the House. On 16 Jan. 1694 in the report on the land tax bill he told on the Whig side for retaining the assessors’ oath. Having been a teller in two separate divisions on 2 Feb., first over a private bill and then in favour of the Hon. Fitton Gerard* over a disputed election for Clitheroe, and again in a division on 8 Mar. for an amendment to the bill for the relief of orphans, he was given leave of absence for three weeks on 23 Mar. because his father was ‘very ill’. The next year, on 7 Feb. 1695, at the third reading of a supply bill, he was a teller against an opposition amendment, and in the following month was appointed to a Welsh judgeship, being given leave of absence for three weeks on 20 Mar. Having come bottom of the poll in the election at Ludlow in November, he petitioned against the return but on 16 Jan. 1696 was given leave to withdraw it.5

Lloyd was put up as a candidate without his consent at Ludlow in January 1701, polling 13 votes. Appointed as a deputy-lieutenant for Breconshire in March 1701, he wrote to Robert Harley* the next month advocating compulsory military training for all able-bodied adult males in the country:

such a course would deter the most potent prince in the world from invading the kingdom. It might have been of pernicious consequence in some former reigns, but now that we have a prince that rules in the hearts of his people few will be so blind as not to see their greatest interest is to preserve him.

Lloyd’s patent as a Welsh judge was not renewed after Queen Anne’s accession and he died in March 1704, being buried on 13 Mar. at the Temple church.6

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

  • 1. CJ, x. 739; Williams, Gt. Sess. Wales, 111–12; Salop Par. Reg. Soc. Hereford dioc. xiii. 519; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, xi. 325.
  • 2. Williams, 111–12; Salop RO, Ludlow bor. recs. adm. of freemen, min. bk. 1690–1712.
  • 3. CSP Dom. 1689–90, pp. 208, 216; 1690–1, p. 260; Egerton 2882, f. 276; Add. 70015, f. 167; HMC Portland, ix. 407; Ludlow bor. recs. petition to William and Mary; Copies of Charters and Grants to the Town of Ludlow, 195–212.
  • 4. Luttrell Diary, 150, 276, 437.
  • 5. Cal. Treas. Bks. xi. 1122; W. Bohun, Coll. of Debates, 203.
  • 6. Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, iii. pp. iii–iv; CSP Dom. 1700–2, p. 254; HMC Portland, iv. 16; Williams, 112; Cal. I. Temple Recs. iii. 459.