LLOYD, William (1627-1717)

LLOYD, William (1627–1717)

cons. 3 Oct. 1680 bp. of ST ASAPH; transl. 20 Oct. 1692 bp. of LICHFIELD AND COVENTRY; transl. 22 June 1699 bp. of WORCESTER

First sat 21 Oct. 1680; last sat 6 June 1712

b. 18 Aug. 1627, s. of Richard Lloyd (1595-1659), rect. of Tilehurst and vic. of Sonning, Berks and Joan Wicken. educ. Oriel, Oxf., matric. 1639; Jesus, Oxf., BA 1642, MA 1646, BD 1667, DD 1667; Camb. incorp. 1660; ord. deacon 1648, priest 1656. m. (1) c.1650 ‘Mrs Cheney’ (d.1654), s.p. (2) 3 Dec. 1668, Anne (1646-1719), da. of Dr Walter Jones, preb. Westminster; 1s. 1da.1 d. 30 Aug. 1717. will 31 May-7 June 1711, pr. 17 Sept. 1717.2

Chap. in ord. to Charles II 1666-80; chap. to Mary, princess of Orange, 1677-8; lord almoner 1689-1702.

Rect. Bradfield, Berks. 1653-4, Llandudno, Caern. 1668, Eastyn or Queenhope, Flints. 1685, Llanymynech, Salop. 1685, Llanarmon-in-Yale, Denbigh 1686, Whitford, Flints. 1686, Bangor Monachorum, Flints. 1690, Marchweil, Denbigh 1691; preb. Ripon 1660-80, Salisbury 1667-80, Llandaff 1679; vic. St Mary’s Reading, Berks. 1668-76, Llan-fawr, Merioneth 1668, St Martin-in-the-Fields 1676-80, Llanefydd 1680; adn. Merioneth 1668-72; dean Bangor 1672-80; canon residentiary Salisbury 1674-80.

Tutor to children of William Backhouse, alchemist and antiquary of Swallowfield, Berks., c.1648-51, 1656-9;3 commr. review of the liturgy 1689,4 Church in Ireland 1690,5 London hospitals 1691,6 eccles. appointments 1695, 1699,7 1700,8 rebuilding St Paul’s 1702,9 Q. Anne’s Bounty, bef. 1705;10 founder mbr. SPG 1701.11

Also associated with: Whitehall and Soho Square, London.

Likenesses: line engraving, by David Loggan, c.1680, NPG 633; oil on canvas by unknown artist, 1699, Lambeth Palace; line engraving by G. Vertue after F. Weideman, 1714, NPG D30889.

Lloyd’s public life, 1660-85

William Lloyd, dubbed ‘Old Mysterio’ in Tory satire, because of his interest in interpreting biblical prophesies, is easily confused with his namesake and contemporary in the episcopate, the non-juror William Lloyd, successively bishop of Llandaff, Peterborough and Norwich, although politically the two men were poles apart.12 The William Lloyd who is the subject of this biography was the son of a royalist vicar, said to have been imprisoned ‘four or five times’ between 1644 and 1659. According to his friend Gilbert Burnet, later bishop of Salisbury, Lloyd had been ‘formed’ by John Wilkins, later bishop of Chester, who he had perhaps come across when he accompanied his charge, John Backhouse, to Wadham in 1650. He preached Wilkins’s funeral sermon in 1672, and became involved in his project of a universal philosophical language. Burnet praised his learning and his immense application to it: ‘he was so exact in everything he set about, that he never gave over any part of study, until he had mastered it’. 1314 He spent the Interregnum as a tutor in the Backhouse family and as the incumbent of a Berkshire living, accepted by the puritan authorities, though he received episcopal ordination from Ralph Browning^†, bishop of Exeter in 1656. In 1659, according to Anthony Wood, Lloyd took part in ‘a piece of waggery’ that involved disguising a London merchant as a Greek Orthodox patriarch and encouraging the gullible of Oxford to do reverence to him. The joke earned him a temporary suspension and the disapproval of Presbyterians.15

Lloyd’s career flourished after the Restoration, though it is not quite clear why: he was a prebend in Ripon from 1660, royal chaplain in 1666, a vicar in Reading by 1666, a series of Welsh benefices from 1668. He may have been assisted by his marriage, on 3 Dec. 1668, to the daughter of a canon of Westminster, as well as by his friendship with his cousin Robert Morgan, bishop of Bangor. In April 1673, when Morgan was contemplating his own death, he recommended Lloyd as his successor at Bangor.16 On that occasion Lloyd was passed over, but during the 1670s, he became increasingly well-known at court through his sermons.17 His court connections were probably enhanced by the marriage in 1670 of Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, to Flower Backhouse. Lloyd had been tutor in the Backhouse household, and may have had closer ties with the family as one of his sisters was married to a Mr Backhouse. Burnet recalled a story about the origin of the Great Fire of London in 1666 together with the countess of Clarendon, about events on estates that belonged to her. Lloyd’s closeness to Clarendon seems to have been well known.18

In 1677 Lloyd published a proposal to sow divisions among English Catholics by allowing them toleration if they renounced both the pope’s infallibility and deposing power.19 It may have earned the favour of James Stuart, duke of York, because of Lloyd’s rejection of ‘impertinent and extravagant, false and wild notions of popery’, and his openness to the idea of toleration; some opponents of Catholicism, however, feared that ‘all this was intended only to take off so much from the apprehensions that the nation had of popery’.20 Lloyd was instituted to the large and prestigious London parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields in December 1676. During his tenure there he became embroiled in a dispute with Denzil Holles, Baron Holles, and his son Francis Holles, 2nd Baron Holles, over their claim to exclusive access to a chancel pew. Lloyd insisted on keeping ‘all the chancel seats free for the use of them that come to serve God, and not to take any rent, nor to suffer anything to be paid but what people were pleased to give freely to the chancel keeper for his attendance which is all that he has for keeping the place clean and decent’.21 In 1677 he was sent to Holland with Mary, princess of Orange ‘to settle her chapel’.22 He was instrumental in securing the installation of another brother-in-law, Jonathan Blagrave, as chaplain at The Hague, an appointment that facilitated his communications with the Dutch court.23

Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the magistrate who died in suspicious circumstances in October 1678, was one of Lloyd’s parishioners and it was Lloyd who delivered the uncompromisingly anti-Catholic sermon at his funeral on 31 Oct. 1678. Believing that Godfrey had been murdered, he declared that ‘The innocent blood speaks and cries in the ears of God… it speaks and cries aloud to him for vengeance’. He pinned responsibility for his death firmly on the Jesuits.24 Six days later, Lloyd was again in the pulpit for the customary anti-Catholic festival of 5 Nov. and delivered another sermon contrasting the errors of Rome with the true apostolical Church of England.25 Lloyd viewed the body, and persuaded the king that Godfrey had indeed been murdered, rather than had committed suicide.26

St Asaph, 1680-92

In January 1679 Lloyd was entrusted by the Privy Council’s committee of examinations with questioning Miles Prance, whose evidence subsequently convicted Berry, Green and Hill of Godfrey’s murder.27 In March 1679 he was granted a prebend of Llandaff, an appointment widely perceived as political reward for services rendered during the Popish Plot. Further evidence of his employment as a court agent came in August 1680 when, already bishop elect of St Asaph, he was commissioned by the secretary of state to spy (with full expenses for informers) against political subversives in Reading.28 It has been suggested that Lloyd’s elevation to St Asaph in the autumn of 1680 was a reward for protecting the court from embarrassing information contained in the various confessions extracted during the plot.29

On 21 Oct. 1680, Lloyd took his seat on the first day of the second Exclusion Parliament to begin a parliamentary career that spanned more than three decades. In his first session, he attended 62 per cent of sittings, was named to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions and to six select committees. Ordered to preach before the Lords on 5 Nov. 1680, his sermon defended his earlier advocacy of a scheme for a modified toleration of Catholicism, claiming that he had formulated his thoughts long before the Popish Plot demonstrated how far matters had degenerated into ‘such a dangerous crisis’.30 On 11 Nov., Lloyd warned William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, that letters from Flanders to the archbishop and to Henry Compton, of London, may have been intercepted ‘and made use of for ill purposes’, though there is no indication of just why the letters might be deemed sensitive.31 During the autumn Lloyd approached the Presbyterian John Howe to discuss comprehension proposals. The two men subsequently met at the house of John Tillotson, the future archbishop of Canterbury. They agreed on a further meeting on 15 Nov., this time at the home of Edward Stillingfleet, the future bishop of Worcester. Stillingfleet provided ‘a very handsome treat’ but Lloyd did not turn up. He may have been detained in Parliament where that very day he voted to reject the Exclusion Bill, but Howe recorded that they waited for several hours ‘till near ten a clock; but the bishop neither came, nor sent, nor took any notice of the matter afterwards’.32 On 23 Nov. 1680, he also voted against the appointment of a committee to consider, in conjunction with the Commons, the state of the kingdom. He was in the House for much of the trial of William Howard, Viscount Stafford, though in accordance with the convention established during the impeachment of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, he did not vote. Nor did he testify, although he knew the prosecution witness Edward Turberville and might have been able to discredit him, having been told by Turberville that he had no knowledge of Catholic plots. He is said to have consulted widely before deciding to remain silent, perhaps aware that Turberville’s denials would not necessarily invalidate Turberville’s testimony, although Burnet thought it was simply because Lloyd was too frightened. Because his Considerations Touching the True Way to Suppress Popery had been interpreted as a pro-Catholic tract ‘it was not thought fit, nor indeed safe, for him to declare what he knew concerning Turberville’.33 As required, in the early months of 1681 Lloyd forwarded testimonies on oath from the potentially seditious in Reading.34 He did not attend the Oxford Parliament in March 1681, but helped to buttress the government’s position after the dissolution by publishing against resistance.35

Lloyd took up residence at St Asaph in May 1681. With North Wales dominated by politically powerful men such as George Jeffreys, later Baron Jeffreys, and Henry Somerset, 3rd marquess of Worcester (later duke of Beaufort), Lloyd spent the early years in the diocese concentrating largely (and intensively) on ecclesiastical affairs. Related to, or on friendly terms with many in the Welsh establishment, he instituted a reform programme which included the recovery of church patrimony and the dissemination of devotional texts in the Welsh language, holding weekly communion, and seeking to raise standards of everyday behaviour.36 He did not heed the proscription against ordaining non-graduates, explaining in 1686 that

We have a great many more cure of souls than we have graduates in this country and most of the people understanding nothing but Welsh, we cannot supply the cures with any other but Welshmen. But yet of those whom I have ordained, the graduates have not been always the best scholars. I have more than once seen them shamefully outdone by men that never saw the university.37

Despite close involvement in diocesan affairs, Lloyd retained a high profile in London. In June 1682 he was appointed as one of the councillors to review the Hyde-Emerton affair, a dispute arising from Danby’s attempt to secure a politically and financially advantageous marriage for his son (Peregrine Osborne, then styled Viscount Dunblane, later 2^nd duke of Leeds) even though the prospective bride, Bridget Hyde, was already married. Lloyd was clearly unwilling to become too deeply involved in so contentious an affair. He seems to have been absent at a meeting of the court of delegates on 15 July called to judge the validity of Bridget Hyde’s first marriage. Although Danby, who wanted the first marriage overturned, was informed that Lloyd was ‘steady in his judgment’ of the affair on 20 July, it was apparent by October that he intended to abstain by refusing to attend to give sentence. Danby wrote scornfully that his excuse ‘that his obligations... kept him from coming to discharge a better conscience here, in keeping a woman from misery’ was transparently inadequate. In response Lloyd wrote a long and carefully reasoned letter insisting that he would not attend unless ordered to do so by the king and that although he had initially been willing to give a verdict in Danby’s favour he had since come to doubt Bridget Hyde’s testimony. Danby, imprisoned in the Tower, still had influence at court, and on 14 Nov. Lloyd learned from Edward Conway, earl of Conway, that the king commanded his attendance. Up until that point he had kept his doubts between himself and the Osbornes, but he now openly told Conway that ‘I cannot satisfy my judgment in delivering any opinion in this cause’.38

In October 1682 he gave Sancroft the names of several persons who preached without orders in neighbouring dioceses, crowing that his own was ‘wholly clear from that sort of vermin’. The desire to avoid unwelcome publicity evident in his attitude to the Hyde-Emerton affair seems to have been reflected in his initial implementation of the policies of the ‘Tory reaction’ in his diocese. In December 1682 he asked Sancroft to secure the support of Jeffreys (whose nephew was high sheriff) and of Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, in order to suppress a conventicle in Wrexham – but insisted his part in the request be kept secret. What was not to be kept secret was his offer of the vicarage of Wrexham to Jeffreys’ brother. He wanted Sancroft to tell Jeffreys that Lloyd considered him ‘an excellent judge and particularly very zealous for the Church’.39 In January 1683 he referred to the ‘heat’ of his visitation but after the discovery of the Rye House Plot later that year he became far more strident in his directions to the clergy to seek out the perpetrators of the ‘wicked and dangerous conspiracy of atheists and fanatics’ and he drew up more effective guidelines for implementing excommunication.40 At the time of the Seven Bishops’ trial in 1688, Roger Morrice noted that although the bishops claimed that they had never prosecuted nonconformists and had always sought Protestant unity in the face of against popery, ‘it is false, for they had all countenanced it, and some of them had been actually engaged in it, as particularly the bishop of St Asaph, though he saith he did not prosecute Dissenters, but only kept them under instruction. Which by the common law they might, but his instruction was very severe discipline’

Lloyd expected Sancroft to intervene in his diocesan dispute over the rectory of Llangollen by leaning on the judge ‘not for favour but for patience and attention’.41 Lloyd continued with his antiquarian studies, publishing in 1684 his Historical Account of Church-Government and sparking a dispute with the lord advocate Sir George Mackenzie for appearing to minimise the importance of the Scottish monarchy and thereby having ‘done episcopacy much wrong here’. Lloyd’s friend Stillingfleet pitched in to support Lloyd’s erastian principles in which the Church was subordinated to the secular mechanisms of the state.42 Lloyd’s namesake Lloyd of Peterborough, would fulminate in May 1685 about how, if Stillingfleet’s anticipated election as prolocutor of Convocation caused were blocked it might give him ‘an occasion to make himself very popular and suggest that the king or the Bishops or both, do begin to show their displeasure against the champion of the Church of England as he was lately called, and no doubt but many will make sinister interpretations of the case’. Lloyd suggested bitterly that the bishop of St Asaph, as Stillingfleet’s ‘great chum’, was suggested as someone who should tackle Stillingfleet to ask him ‘by what authority he took to barter away the rights and discipline of the established Church’.43

James II and the fate of the Church 1685-92

On 19 May 1685, Lloyd arrived at the House on the third day of James II’s new Parliament. He attended the session for 78 per cent of sittings, was named to the three sessional committees, and to three select committees, including the Bangor Cathedral bill in which, as a former dean of Bangor, he had a personal interest. On 18 Oct. 1685 Humphrey Lloyd, the ailing bishop of Bangor, sent his proxy to both the two William Lloyds. The proxy was eventually registered in favour of Lloyd of Norwich. Lloyd of St Asaph was in the House on 20 Nov. 1685 for the prorogation. By December, he was ‘mustering all the North Wales gentry’ to receive his friend the earl of Clarendon on the latter’s way to Ireland.44 In March 1686 he reminded Sancroft that Humphrey Lloyd was in poor health and suggested that he would soon be dead. The prediction was premature – Lloyd of Bangor did not die until 1689 – but he nevertheless provided Sancroft with a list of potential successors, including Jeffreys’ brother.45 Lloyd of St Asaph’s correspondence with Sancroft during this period reflects a regional rather than purely diocesan role within the Church.

Lloyd’s role in the investigation of the Popish Plot exposed him to potential censure in the reign of James II. In a letter that can be dated by internal evidence to the second half of 1685, Samuel Parker, the future bishop of Oxford, maintained that

the plot had never come to anything without Godfrey’s murder, nor Godfrey’s murder without Prance’s evidence, nor Prance’s evidence without the bishop of St Asaph, who (like a good divine) with infinite pains reduced him back to his first perjury to save his life, after he had abjured it to save his soul.46

Lloyd, continued Parker, was now ‘president of a trimming cabal of London divines ... a leading man in all the episcopal consults’. By the spring of 1686 Sir Roger L’Estrange^‡ was investigating the evidence for the Popish Plot, with a clear view to discrediting it. Lloyd found that conduct that had once enhanced his reputation now put him under a cloud. In April 1686 he told Sancroft that in reply to queries from L’Estrange,

I frankly told him concerning that gentleman’s death I am still of the same opinion that I was when I preached at his funeral. I confess I am not able to answer the arguments that I used then, nor I have not yet seen anything to alter my opinion, but the information of Oates, Bedloe and Prance which I could never reconcile with what I knew of that story. And their tales, when I durst not contradict, I did never countenance or encourage.47

He was also concerned about a rumour alleged to be current amongst the Catholics in his diocese about his role in supporting Oates during his imprisonment. Sancroft replied that ‘those that love you here, have been lately much concern’d for you’ as there was a report that Lloyd had been summoned to London to answer questions following Prance’s retraction of his confession.48 Lloyd’s continuing belief that Godfrey had been murdered by Jesuits did not get mentioned in L’Estrange’s subsequent account; his doubts about Prance did.49

In an undated letter that presumably belongs to the reign of James II, Lloyd reported that one of his sermons damning Catholicism had clearly had an effect on at least ‘one face in the church’, alerting him to the existence of a spy in the congregation and the likelihood of a hostile report to the magistrate.50 Lloyd continued to correspond with Sancroft, bemoaning the fate of the ‘poor Church’, and continuing his by now customary barrage of recommendations for ecclesiastical preferments. In October 1686 he told Sancroft that ‘I am well assured that in these six counties there are not six persons fewer in the communion of our Church than there were in the beginning of his majesty’s reign’ and ‘all seem to be very sensible of the great blessing we have in our primate’.51 Anxious to curry favour with Lord Jeffreys, as well as to protect the interests of the Church, when he suspected in November that the death of Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, would shortly create a vacancy, he wrote to Sancroft to

make bold to put you in mind of Dr Jeffreys, whom probably his brother would not be the first to propose to HM, but if he were proposed by my lord treasurer [Rochester] or some other that would do it at your Grace’s request, he would drive the nail home, and not only shut that door against such a one as we have reason to fear may come in that way, but secure as such a bishop will be a blessing to the Church.52

Ward survived till January 1689, but the influence of the Jeffreys family was still worth cultivating. In January 1687 when the vicarage of Wrexham became available Lloyd told Sancroft that there were ‘near 20 Papists and many more other separatists in that parish’, and ‘because it is the place where my lord chancellor was born, whose good influence may do much in that parish I writ to his brother, Dr Jeffreys to advise me how to dispose of it’. That same month he told Sancroft that he was suffering from tinnitus.53 He also became involved in discussions with nonconformists to foster Protestant unity, arranging to meet the ejected minister William Bate at the house of Nicholas Stratford, then vicar of St Mary, Aldermanbury, and later bishop of Chester, in or about late November.54

The various lists compiled during 1687-8 make it clear that Lloyd opposed the religious policies of James II. He was unhappy, too, about the king’s most recent episcopal appointees including the unpopular Thomas Cartwright, bishop of Chester, ‘a man of very great brows’ who, Lloyd claimed, had a history of financial sharp practice.55 In December, whilst on a visit to Oxford, Lloyd reported anxiously that the university press was under threat.56 The following year he became involved in a heated pamphlet dispute with Samuel Parker (another of James II’s episcopal appointees) over the abrogation of the Test. Parker claimed that the Test eroded privilege of peerage: Lloyd, responding swiftly (but anonymously, as ‘a person of quality’) to the ‘amphibious-ambidextrous bishop’, asserted that the Test merely suspended rather than removed the right to vote in the House, much as minority did. He reserved most of his venom for Parker’s attempted ‘palliation of the most irreconcilable points of the popish religion’ and described Parker’s arguments as ‘lies and sophistry’.57

Lloyd vehemently opposed the two Declarations of Indulgence and on 12 May 1688, when some of the bishops in London met at Lambeth and decided to refuse to read the second Declaration and to petition the king against doing so, it was also agreed ‘to get as many bishops to town as were within reach’, one of whom was Lloyd of St Asaph. Four days later he was in London and joining in discussions over strategy with his friend Clarendon and the other bishops before signing the Seven Bishops’ petition on 18 May 1688 and presenting it to the king, who, he told Clarendon (with whom he was staying) was ‘angry, and said he did not expect such a petition from them’.58 With the other original signatories, he was summoned to appear before the Privy Council on 8 June 1688 where he asserted that ‘no subject was bound to accuse himself’.59 After the trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops Lloyd returned to his diocese, but he continued to support Sancroft in the fight against the king’s religious policies.60 He composed a list ‘of things to be insisted upon by the b[isho]ps in their address to the clergy and people of their respective dioceses’ which included the need to be on guard against ‘Romish emissaries like the old serpent’ and to encourage the recovery of protestant nonconformists to the Church of England’.61 By September 1688, in anticipation of fresh parliamentary elections, he was using his visitation ‘to frustrate the king’s purposes in having equal members elected to Parliament in North Wales’.62 Nevertheless, when approached by Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, with an ostensibly hypothetical question about whether it was possible ‘in conscience’ to break the law in order forcibly to oppose a ‘manifest design of destroying our religious and civil rights and liberties’, he advised against it. Nottingham declined any role in inviting William of Orange to come to the nation’s assistance.63

Although there were reports that Lloyd was present during the September meetings between bishops and the king and that he signed the bishops’ ‘ten advices’ that were presented to the king on 3 Oct. 1688, it is unlikely that this is accurate; he is not named in the list of those summoned to meet the king (although his namesake, Lloyd of Norwich, was) and the entry for 7 Oct. in Clarendon’s diary specifically states that Lloyd ‘came to town last night’ and that he ‘was very well pleased he was not here, for he had no mind to go to the king’.64 Lloyd was also absent from the meeting on 6 Nov. when the king called upon the bishops to declare that they had had no hand in the invitation to William of Orange.65 On the evening of 8 Nov. he and Lloyd of Norwich accepted a suggestion from Rochester and Clarendon that they involve Sancroft in pushing for an address from the lords spiritual and temporal to the king to summon Parliament. Sancroft quickly approved the idea and the two Lloyds then began to canvas other members of the House. Though the scheme split the temporal nobility, a petition was presented to the king on 17 November.66 On 27 Nov. 1688, Lloyd attended Whitehall in response to the king’s summons where the king informed the assembled lords that they faced an invasion ‘tending to the ruin of all that was dear to him and them’.67 On 11 Dec. 1688, after the king’s first flight, he signed the declaration to William of Orange.68 On 13 Dec., though not one of those sent to take the declaration to the prince, he was with those who were at Henley, where they met William. When he returned to London the following day, he stayed with William’s greatest clerical supporter, Gilbert Burnet. At dinner on Sunday 16th with both of them, Clarendon was shocked to hear Lloyd say that ‘the king by going away had made a cession’. Clarendon concluded, sadly that Lloyd had been ‘poisoned’ by Burnet, and ‘was not the same man I left him at Henley’.69 Even at this early date it is clear that Lloyd’s sympathies were entirely with the Orange cause.

On 17 Dec. 1688, presumably exploiting his connections with the Dutch court, he was acting as an intermediary in order to arrange a time when the bishops might pay their duty to William of Orange, which they did the following day. Although he had assured Simon Patrick, the future bishop of Ely, and Thomas Tenison, later archbishop of Canterbury, that Sancroft agreed with this course of action and would go with them, in the event he did not.70 On 17 Dec. he wrote to Prince William at Syon House, reporting on a conversation with Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, who had told him that the king was now prepared ‘to make large concessions’ and that had assured him the king was even prepared ‘to be reduced to the state of a duke of Venice, committing all the power of war and peace, and of making all officers, ecclesiastical and civil, to the Prince for his life-time’. Lloyd considered such an arrangement was unsafe and had pressed Turner to propose to James ‘the other way of cession’—presumably abdication.71 On 21 Dec. 1688 Lloyd attended the assembly that met William in the queen’s presence chamber and the following day joined the ‘provisional government’ meeting in the House of Lords. His commitment to William became still more obvious when the prince received communion from him on 30 December.72 The bishops were involved in negotiations throughout January 1689. On 11 Jan. Lloyd met with Turner, Lloyd of Norwich, Tenison and Patrick amongst others to listen to Gilbert Burnet ‘sustain his notion of the forfeiture’. Three days later Lloyd was at a meeting that included Patrick and Tenison to discuss comprehension and draw up the basis of a parliamentary bill, for which he claimed to have Sancroft’s permission73 Lloyd was now said ‘to be for the advancement of the protestant Reformed interest throughout the world, and the deserting that narrow foundation that was laid in Church and State in 1660’.74 On the 15th Clarendon found him at Lambeth, ‘much wheedled’ by Burnet, and determined to ‘make the king’s going away to be a cession (a word he is very fond of)’.75

On 22 Jan. 1689, he attended the House for the first day of the Convention. Present for 76 per cent of sittings, he was named to the committee for the journal. He was also added to the committee on simoniacal promotions. Despite his earlier enthusiasm for ‘cession’, on the 29th he voted for the regency. On 22 Jan. Lloyd had been charged with preaching before the Lords on the day appointed for thanksgiving for the recent events. He was, though, reported to be ill on 31 Jan., perhaps a convenient illness, given the intervening and following debates: he was not present for the votes that afternoon on the vacancy of the throne.76 During the abdication debates of early February, however, he was involved in two conferences with the Commons and on 6 Feb. 1689 voted against agreeing with the Commons in the use of the word ‘abdicated’ and that the throne was vacant. By mid-February, when William and Mary were proclaimed as monarchs, it was noted that although he claimed ‘not to be pleased’ he called William ‘an usurper indeed but the best of usurpers’.77 Although he had told Sancroft on 28 Feb. that he would not take the oaths to the new monarchs, to Sancroft’s great pleasure. On hearing this, Clarendon remarked in his diary ‘it is strange to see how many good men have their jealousies about St Asaph, as if he were not right’; but in a conversation with Lloyd on the following day, the latter explained that he simply did not feel able to take them at present, said he felt that no obligation remained on him from his oaths to James II and justified taking the new ones. Though troubled by Clarendon’s suggestion that if he took the oaths now, he would simply be seen as having been influenced by Burnet, on 4 Mar. he did so.78 In another conversation with Clarendon on 11 Mar., he failed to respond directly (‘after a long pause, too habitual to him’) to Clarendon’s question whether he had done the Church service in helping to make Burnet bishop of Salisbury. Clarendon had heard that Lloyd had pressed Burnet’s candidacy so strongly on William ‘that he could have no quiet from his importunity till he had given it to Burnet’. Lloyd, now ‘deep in that comprehending project’, also told Clarendon that he would ‘by no means’ take a role in the coronation.79 On 31 Mar. when Sancroft refused to officiate at the consecration of Burnet, Lloyd assisted Compton instead. In April, despite what he told Clarendon, he assisted Compton in the coronation ceremony.80 In the Convention he was named as one of the managers of the conferences with the Commons on the bill for abrogating the oaths on 20 and 22 April. On 8 May, he managed the conference on the bill for the more speedy and effectual convicting and disarming of Catholics. On 31 May he voted against the reversal of the two judgments of perjury against Oates, and on 30 July voted to adhere to the Lords’ amendments on the reversal, votes that indicate clear doubts about the validity of Oates’s testimony. In late May Sancroft had complained to Clarendon about Lloyd ‘tormenting him’ about bringing Burnet to see him; Lloyd, he told him, was ‘strangely busy’ about persuading the clergy to take the oaths.81

In July 1689 it was rumoured that Lloyd would be translated to Worcester to replace the recently deceased William Thomas, but that post went instead to Stillingfleet.82 Such a remove would presumably have been welcome to Lloyd, who had only recently complained of his poverty, claiming to be unwilling to borrow as little as £10, for fear of inability to repay it, and whose self assessment for tax purposes stated that ‘I have not in my own possession or in the possession of any other in trust for me any estate in goods, chattels or personal estate whatsoever that yields any manner of yearly profit, except my books and such goods as are used for household stuff and a small stock upon my demesne.’83 Perhaps his poverty was shared by his staff for there is evidence that Lloyd’s secretary accepted money to secure the bishop’s recommendation for preferments.84 Lloyd spent much of the summer of 1689 discussing with Dissenters terms for a comprehension bill and in September was nominated to the ecclesiastical commission to review the liturgy.85 When the ecclesiastical commission opened in the Jerusalem Chamber on 10 Oct., Lloyd made the barbed comment that ‘those who were not satisfied about the commission might withdraw and not be spies on the rest’.86 Meanwhile he had continued to attend the House, including the last day of business 20 Aug. and the adjournment on 20 September. He was also present on 19 Oct. but absent when Parliament was prorogued on 21st.

Lloyd resumed his seat in the House a few days later, on the third day after Parliament resumed for the second session of the Convention, and attended 47 per cent of sittings. Preaching at Whitehall on 5 Nov. 1689 (and taking the opportunity to establish that the occasion was now a double anniversary in the Protestant calendar), Lloyd’s career was once more in the ascendant.87 He almost certainly had a hand in the promotion of his brother-in-law Jonathan Blagrave to a prebend at Worcester.88 In a list compiled sometime between October 1689 and February 1690 Carmarthen (as Danby had become) reckoned Lloyd to be a supporter of the court, although one to be spoken to. Although he had thrown his lot in with the new regime Lloyd was keen to maintain friendly links with Sancroft and the non-jurors and became something of a go-between. It was Lloyd for example who warned Lloyd of Norwich in December that the non-juring bishops would be deprived the following month. That month, with the king’s approval and backed by a ‘leading chief minister’, Lloyd and Compton opened negotiations with Sancroft, Turner and Lloyd of Norwich.89 Lloyd visited Clarendon on 16 Dec. and discussed possible exemptions with him and James Bertie, earl of Abingdon.90 But in the negotiations with the bishops, all of the expedients proposed (one of which was that there be a short bill ‘giving the king power to dispense with them during pleasure’) were rejected, the bishops answering ‘that they could do nothing; if the king thought fit for his own sake, that they should not be deprived, he must make it his business … and besides they were not now all together, and therefore could make no other answer’.91 After this failure, Lloyd had an argument at dinner with Clarendon on 7 Jan. 1690 when he told him that though he had voted for a regency, ‘now, things being as they are, and that the Prince of Orange was crowned king, he looked upon acquisition to beget a right’.92 In February, when the king learned that a ‘great concourse of people’ attended Turner’s chapel in Ely House, despite his deprivation, he used Lloyd as an errand-boy to advise Turner to desist.93 That month it was rumoured that Lloyd, Compton and Burnet would act as commissioners for the see of Canterbury in Sancroft’s place.94

In February 1690, after the dissolution of the Convention and the summons of a new Parliament, Lloyd wrote that although it was important to have ‘good men’ chosen for Convocation, he was far more concerned in the choice of ‘good Parliament men... if they are such as love the Church and will be firm to the government, there is now a door open to them’; he commended Dean Humphrey Prideaux on the political progress to such an end in Norfolk and sent news of the imminent poll in Westminster.95 But with Merioneth in the grip of veteran Tory Sir John Wynn^‡, Flintshire the preserve of a ‘charmed circle of greater gentry’ who rotated the representation, and neighbouring Denbighshire and the Denbigh boroughs dominated by the Tory Myddletons of Chirk Castle, there was apparently little scope for meddling in the 1690 elections.96

On 20 Mar. 1690 he attended on the first day of the new Parliament and thereafter was present for 76 per cent of sittings during the March to May session. On 8 Apr., when the Lords gave a third reading to the bill for recognizing the king and queen and for confirming the acts of the Convention, Lloyd was one of 17 members of the House (six of them bishops) to enter a protest on the wording of the last clause (a compromise deal had altered the original design which had been designed to expose the Tories to charges of disloyalty). Two days later he protested against the resolution to expunge from the Journals the reasons for that protest, on the grounds that to do so contravened privilege of peerage and led to a misrepresentation of their motives.97 Lloyd was not always in harmony even with the bishops with whom he worked so closely; in the debate of 2 May on the abjuration bill, he spoke ‘for another bill’, while Burnet was for committal and amendment at the committee stage and Compton wanted to reject it outright.98 In July, though ‘very sour and severe’ on Clarendon, who had been arrested on suspicion of treason, he visited him in the Tower until told by the queen to stop.99

Shortly before the beginning of the second session of the 1690 Parliament, on 1 Oct., he received the proxy of his old colleague from Bangor, Humphrey Humphreys, vacated at the end of the session. The next day he attended for the start of business and thereafter was present for 67 per cent of sittings. He was named to the three sessional committees and to the committee on a land exchange in Lincolnshire involving Philip Hildeyard. On 6 Nov. he voted against the discharge of James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, and Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower, with Carmarthen adding that he ‘is already converted’.100 On 25 Nov. 1690 he complained of a breach of privilege arising from the ejection of the rector of Llanwillyn. A week later, a report from the committee for privileges found in his favour and on 3 Dec. the House instructed the sheriff of Merioneth to reverse the ejectment.

In January 1691 following revelations of Francis Turner’s involvement in a Jacobite plot and of his assurances to the exiled king of the bishops’ support, the pressure to fill the vacant bishoprics intensified, with Lloyd, Compton, Nottingham and Carmarthen said to be at the forefront of the demands to do so. The king refused to act, still anxious to come to some accommodation with the non-jurors but in April Lloyd told Sancroft that the vacancies were at last to be filled. In May Lloyd tried, unsuccessfully, to get Sancroft to vacate Lambeth Palace so that John Tillotson could take possession; he also assisted at Tillotson’s consecration.101 During the year he published a pamphlet providing providential justifications for the revolution, which marked him out as a useful cog in the Orange propaganda machine.102 Lloyd did not attend the following parliamentary session and on 17 Oct. registered his proxy in favour of Edward Stillingfleet (vacated at the end of the session). On 2 Nov. he was listed as excused attendance at a call of the House. Lloyd remained in London, however, preaching the Restoration anniversary sermon at court on 29 May 1692 and preparing another propaganda tract in favour of the new regime in response to the threat of a French invasion.103

Lichfield and Coventry 1692-99

Thomas Wood, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, died in April 1692. In July a congé d’élire was issued for Lloyd’s translation to Lichfield.104 The non-juror Henry Dodwell to wrote to him, probably as a result, warning of the danger to his soul of being an ‘accessory to the schism now made in the Church by erecting new altars against the altars of the brethren, and to the ruining of your own church by owning the power of a lay authority sufficient to vacate your thrones’. Dodwell, who had already made his views clear in a conversation with Lloyd’s brother in law, Jonathan Blagrave, the previous year, now reminded Lloyd that Henry Compton had rejected the erastian position in 1686 when he challenged ‘the competency of a secular tribunal’ over an ecclesiastical one.105

On 4 Nov. 1692, the first day of the new parliamentary session, Lloyd took his seat in the House as bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. He attended 62 per cent of sittings and was named to the sessional committees for petitions and privileges. On 21 Nov. 1692 he received Stillingfleet’s proxy, which was vacated at the end of the session, using it when voting on 31 Dec. against committing the place bill. On 2 Jan. 1693 he may have voted to read the divorce bill for Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk. The following day he again used Stillingfleet’s proxy to support the court by opposing the passage of the place bill. That month the pamphlet King William and Queen Mary Conquerors re-ignited the contentious debate over the nature of William’s right to be king, and Bishop Burnet’s Pastoral Letter raised similar issues; after the Commons voted to have both burnt, Goodwin Wharton^‡ made an unsuccessful attempt to have Lloyd’s Discourse of God’s ways of Disposing of Kingdoms subjected to the same treatment.106 Perhaps bruised by the Commons’ comments, Lloyd dissuaded John Hough, then bishop of Oxford, from publishing his martyrdom sermon to the Lords since it would please neither party.107

In his visitation of his new diocese over the summer of 1693 Lloyd gave indications of his flexibility over ceremony, allowing public baptisms without the sign of the cross or the presence of godparents, as Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, learned.108 With the queen’s permission to miss the 1693-4 session entirely, Lloyd registered his proxy in favour of Stillingfleet, who, according to a note from Tenison sent in November, would respect Lloyd’s wishes in its use.109 He next attended the House on 6 Nov. 1694 for the prorogation, and then for the start of the 1694-5 session a week later on 12 November. He attended 56 per cent of the sittings of the session, and was named to the committee for privileges. On 20 Apr. 1695, reporting that both Houses of Parliament had been so absorbed with the bribery scandal involving Sir Thomas Cooke^‡ and the East India Company ‘that they have little attended other matters’ Lloyd advised Humphrey Prideaux, dean of Norwich, against seeking parliamentary assistance for his long cherished project to secure a Protestant ministry in India.110 On 29 Apr. 1695 he was sworn as a commissioner for ecclesiastical preferments during the king’s absences from the country.111

On 11 Oct., Parliament was dissolved, triggering parliamentary elections. Lloyd’s attempt the previous July to nominate the Lichfield senior bailiff, who was also its returning officer, may have been intended to enhance his control of the election there, but it was blocked by the corporation and Lloyd was forced to back down. In the event, the parliamentary election on 7 Nov. 1695 saw the return of the Whig Sir Michael Biddulph^‡ and the Tory Robert Burdett^‡; the extent to which Lloyd was involved in the choice of candidates in unknown.112

Lloyd attended the House on 22 Nov. 1695 for the first day of the new Parliament and attended 42 per cent of sittings. In spring 1696, he was known to be an opponent of the bill for altering the act abrogating the oath of supremacy in Ireland. The bill did not become law.113 During the session his influence was sought by his friend John Ashburnham, Baron Ashburnham, during his dispute with Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, over plans to build a private gallery for the Ashburnham family in Ampthill church.114 Lloyd signed the Association on 27 Feb. 1696 and on 10 Apr. 1696 subscribed the ‘repugnance’ at the absolution by two non-juring clergymen of the Jacobite conspirators Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend^‡.115 On 8 May he examined the Journal.

Lloyd was absent at the beginning of the next session in October 1696, having sent his proxy directly to Tenison.116 He eventually arrived on 7 Dec. in response to the order of the House of 30 Nov. that all members attend on pain of being taken into custody. He attended throughout the trial of Sir John Fenwick^‡ and into January and February 1697 before again absenting himself, attending for the last time that session on 15 February. He did not register his proxy (in favour of John Moore, bishop of Norwich) until 13 March. Overall he was present for only 17 per cent of sittings. On 23 Dec. 1696 he voted to attaint Sir John Fenwick. He left the House on 15 Feb., but did not register his proxy until 13 Mar. 1697 when it was again registered his proxy to Moore (vacated at the end of the session).

In 1697 Lloyd refused to ordain Henry Sacheverell, ostensibly for his poor Latin but possibly because Sacheverell was already identified with the more extreme Tories (though Sacheverell was successful on a second application).117 That same year Lloyd became involved in organizing a visitation of St Asaph, in connection with which he raised suspicions about simoniacal promotions under Edward Jones, his successor there.118 Early in October 1697, in the wake of news of the Treaty of Ryswick, Lloyd was said to be ‘full of fears’ about the forthcoming parliamentary session. He extrapolated from his knowledge of gentry discontent in Oxfordshire to a prediction ‘that it would be as difficult a matter to keep peace at home as ’twas to make it abroad’.119 Despite his fears he did not attend the winter 1697 session, and on 20 Dec. 1697 again registered his proxy in favour of John Moore. Pressing Moore to help him obtain relief of his first fruits, ‘and to give your vote for me as you think I would do if I were in the House’ in the case of the Welsh rectories, he promised to reimburse Moore’s costs by paying the fees for the proxy both in the present and previous sessions.120

Whether Lloyd intervened in the elections after the dissolution of 7 July 1698 is unclear although the election at Lichfield was controverted and the unsuccessful candidate, Humphrey Wyrley, complained of Tory intimidation.121 He was present on 6 Dec. 1698 for the start of the new Parliament and attended 68 per cent of the sittings of the 1698-9 Parliament. On 29 Mar. 1699 he entered his dissent against the resolution to address to the king on the matter of the London Ulster Society v. Bishop of Derry. He was present on the last day of the session, 4 May. A little while previously, on 23 Apr. the king had directed Lloyd’s translation to Worcester.122

Bishop of Worcester 1699-1717

Remaining in London, Lloyd was in the House on 1 June and 13 July 1699 for further prorogations. Over the summer he participated in the hearings at Lambeth of the case against Thomas Watson, the Tory bishop of St Davids, helping to find Watson guilty of simony and extortion.123 In August he went into his new diocese to be enthroned. For the Whigs, Lloyd’s translation to a more prestigious see merely enhanced their authority, but for the Tories it was a provocative move: Tory antagonists published a vicious assault on his character, beliefs and practice, suggesting that Lloyd neglected his pastoral function and gave heart to atheists: it was said that he preached only occasionally and then only at court when ‘pleas’d to harangue the auditory’.124 On 23 Nov. 1699 Lloyd arrived at the House one week into the session to sit for the first time as bishop of Worcester. He attended 42 per cent of sittings. On 23 Jan. 1700 he entered his protest against the resolution that the judgment be reversed in the writ of error R. Williamson v. the Crown. He voted against the adjournment during pleasure on 23 Feb. during the debate on the East India Company. Returning to his diocese slowly in April, preaching and confirming on the way and staying with (among others) Richard Verney, 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke at Compton Verney, and dining with Sir Henry Puckering^‡ in Warwick. Spending the summer in his diocese, busy with ordinations, confirmations, the assizes and other diocesan affairs (including the presentation of his son, William Lloyd, to the vicarage of Blockley), he visited William Bromley^‡, Edward Ward, 2nd Baron Ward and 8th Baron Dudley, and Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury (a couple of months before the departure of the latter for the continent), and received a letter from Clarendon asking him to help him in the administration of the deceased Lady Clarendon’s estate.125

Parliament was dissolved in December 1700, allowing Lloyd full rein for his electioneering activities. Lloyd’s translation, the succession of the whiggish Thomas Coventry, 2nd earl of Coventry, and the absence abroad of Shrewsbury, prevented a gentry meeting to ensure an uncontested election for the county.126 Now assisted by his son William, as chancellor of Worcester, Lloyd began to intervene on behalf of the Whigs and to skew the vote in favour of William Walsh^‡, a member of the Kit-Kat club and Junto candidate allied to John Somers, Baron Somers. The ‘vociferous and unrelenting’ Tory, Sir John Pakington^‡, was informed that Lloyd was sending out circular letters ‘but... to none but such as he has some sort of obligation upon; so that it will be difficult, if possible to gain any of his letters’. Pakington’s supporters retaliated with what Lloyd later described as ‘two libels against the bishops with malicious lies against several of them’.127 Lloyd was also involved in the elections in Lichfield, where one of the candidates was William Walmisley^‡, the diocesan chancellor. When Walmisley (who was later accused of misappropriating church funds to assist his campaign) became involved in a legal suit with a local rector, Lloyd intervened in an attempt to prevent any split in the cathedral interest.128

On 10 Feb. 1701 Lloyd arrived at the House on the fifth day of the new Parliament. He attended the session for 72 per cent of sittings and was named to the committee for the Journal but there is no further evidence about his activities in the House. His dislike of Pakington could only have been increased by that Member’s introduction of a bill in the Commons in the spring of 1701 to prevent the translation of bishops. He attended on 24 June 1701 for the prorogation and went back to his diocese where Worcestershire Whigs were adding their voice to the campaign for another general election in the hope of securing a Commons more in tune with the king’s foreign policy.129 In August 1701, the beleaguered Somers, was told by Sir Joseph Jekyll^‡ that Lloyd and the recently appointed William Talbot, bishop of Oxford, were working on his behalf: ‘Both the b[isho]ps seems to be very hearty, but especially Worcester, who mentioned the hardship of your lordship’s case at a meeting of his clergy of one of his deaneries’.130 Immediately after the dissolution in November 1701, Lloyd circulated letters to his tenants with instructions to canvass all voters to cast their votes for William Bromley and William Walsh on the grounds that Pakington was not ‘fit’ to serve ‘king and country’. The county returned Pakington and Bromley, pushing Walsh into third place by only 15 votes.131

Lloyd, back in London by Christmas 1701, joined Charles Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset, and Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, to ‘treat’ the imperial and Venetian ambassadors.132 He attended for the first day of the new Parliament on 30 Dec. 1701 and thereafter for 66 per cent of sittings. He was named to the committee for privileges, registered his dissent (with six other Whig bishops) against the resolution to continue the Quaker Affirmation Act on 26 Feb. 1702 and on 8 Mar. managed the conference on the death of William III and the accession of Anne. Remaining in London, he attended the House until 12 May 1702 but missed the last two weeks of business. Apparently thoroughly convinced that the Old Pretender was not the child of James II and his queen, after the accession of Queen Anne in 1702 he composed and circulated a lengthy set of ‘remarks upon the birth of the pretended prince of Wales … not taken notice of in other books on the subject’. One recipient of his missive condemned it for its ‘many blunders, false reasonings and childish ridiculous stories’. Another condemned him for deserting his brethren ‘upon such slight reasons’.133

In the summer of 1702, in the third set of elections since the beginning of 1701, Lloyd took up again his feud with Pakington. In August 1702, he identified Pakington as the author of the libels against the bishops circulated before the previous election and

I therefore sent him word that I thought myself obliged to do what I could to oppose his election and therefore to avoid this I begged of him not to stand but to transfer his votes to whom he would. This I did three times before I began to make any opposition. On his last denial being then to go my triennial visitation I did what I thought I lawfully could to engage the clergy against his election. And I have engaged as many as I can of the bishop’s tenants. The meanwhile there is come out a third libel which is against myself in particular for opposing the election of Sir John Pakington.134

A contemporary Tory account accused Lloyd of using his visitation to deliver ‘long harangues as formidable as he could’ against Pakington and when ‘his rhetoric and artificial insinuations could not prevail he then urged their canonical obedience... closeting of them, using all means imaginable to persuade or deter them from voting’ for Pakington. It was even said that Lloyd had refused institution and induction to some ‘unless the party would vote as ordered’.135 Remaining in Worcester for the election on 5 Aug., Lloyd was gratified that at least he had helped secure the election of Walsh who, according to Tory election propaganda, was not only a ‘creature’ of Somers, but an atheist.136 The anonymous contributions of Richard West (who castigated Tory churchmen in The True Character of a Churchman) and Henry Sacheverell (whose Character of a Low Church Man vilified Lloyd), fanned the flames. Pakington was nevertheless also elected.

Lloyd arrived in London on 17 Oct. 1702, six days before the opening of the new Parliament.137 Attending the House for the first day of business, he subsequently attended 65 per cent of the sittings of the 1702-3 session. He soon found that he was himself the subject of parliamentary business. On 2 Nov. 1702, Pakington complained to the Commons about Lloyd’s electoral interference. Secretary of state Sir Charles Hedges^‡ initially hoped that the Commons would carry the matter no further, but feelings ran high and by 16 Nov. William Nicolson, of Carlisle, feared that Lloyd was in danger of being taken into custody.138 On 18 Nov. Pakington presented a formal petition to the Commons, producing as evidence witnesses and letters written by Lloyd in July to his clergy and ‘friends’. The House resolved

That the proceedings of William, lord bishop of Worcester, his son, and his agents, in order to the hindering the election of a Member for the county of Worcester, has been malicious, unchristian, and arbitrary, in high violation of the liberties and privileges of the Commons of England.

They also requested that the queen dismiss him as lord almoner and ordered the prosecution of Lloyd’s son after the lapsing of his privilege as a sitting member of Convocation.139

The House of Lords came to Lloyd’s defence. On 19 Nov. 1702, Lloyd was present when three Whig peers (Charles Boyle, 2nd earl of Burlington, Mohun and Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron Wharton) secured a debate on the Commons resolutions and an address to the queen to maintain Lloyd in post until ‘some crime shall be legally proved against him’. Nottingham maintained that this would be to constrain the royal prerogative, but he was overruled.140 Lloyd was absent for the following four days, not returning until 23 November. Meanwhile, the prospect of a breach between the Houses and the partisan nature of the dispute raised fears of impeachment. On 20 Nov. Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, delivered the queen’s carefully worded response to their address in which she acknowledged the right of any accused person to make a defence, asserted that she had received no complaint about Lloyd and pointedly affirmed that it was her ‘undoubted right, to continue, or displace, any servant attending upon my own person, when I shall think proper’. A lengthy debate ensued before the Lords resolved ‘that no lord of this House ought to suffer any sort of punishment by any proceeding of the House of Commons, otherwise than according to the known and ancient rules and methods of Parliament’. In the Commons the queen’s reply to the Commons’ address (in which she agreed that Lloyd would no longer exercise the office of almoner, though she did not actually say he would be removed) was presented by Sir Edward Seymour^‡, who successfully moved for thanks for as a means of pressurizing the queen into taking action against Lloyd.141 The decision of Convocation to thank the Commons for having respected its privilege in the case of Lloyd’s son, is suggestive of some hostility to Lloyd as well as of an alliance between the Tory lower clergy in Convocation and the Commons.142

Lloyd resumed his seat on 23 Nov., by which time he had been dismissed from the post of almoner and the occasional conformity bill had been revived in the Commons. Two days later the Commons ordered that Lloyd’s offending letters be printed. Business in the Lords was dominated by discussion of the instructions given to James Butler, 2^nd duke of Ormond, concerning the attack on Cadiz and nothing further was done on Lloyd’s matter. The occasional conformity bill arrived in the Lords on 2 Dec., and on the next day, Lloyd voted for Somers’ wrecking amendment to the bill together with Tenison and nine other Whig bishops.143 Six days later, he signed the resolution against tacking. Unsurprisingly reckoned by Nottingham to be opposed to the occasional conformity bill, on 16 Jan. 1703 Lloyd voted in favour of another Lords’ amendment to it. On 19 Jan. he was one of 28 members of the House to protest against the inclusion in the bill providing an income for Prince George, duke of Cumberland, of a clause clarifying his right to hold grants and offices from the crown after the death of the queen.

After the prorogation at the end of February 1703, Lloyd left London for Oxford, where he remained for several months, interspersed by journeys to Bath and to various friends.144 In August the Tory John Sharp, archbishop of York gently suggested that Lloyd might stay away from the next session of Parliament in order to concentrate instead on his latest publication—a work on the early Church and Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s ministry and death.145 He did miss the first month of parliamentary business in the 1703-4 session, not arriving until 7 Dec. 1703. He attended for 28 per cent of its sittings. Estimated by Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, as an opponent of a renewed attempt to pass the occasional conformity bill, he duly opposed it on 14 December. On 28 Jan. 1704 a bill to establish a workhouse in Worcester, in which Lloyd must have had a guiding hand, was given its first reading; he was named to the committee on 1 February. Somers reported back to the House on 8 Feb. and the bill received the royal assent on 24 February. Lloyd attended the House for the last time that session on 25 Feb. 1704, and missed the last five weeks of business during which the Lords and Commons entered into an angry procedural and constitutional dispute over the investigation in to the Scotch Plot. When the Lords challenged the right of the lower House to address the crown directly without first calling for a conference, the Commons cited their request for Lloyd’s dismissal in November 1702 as a precedent. On 28 Mar. 1704 the Lords, in their turn, rehearsed their grievance that Lloyd had been voted ‘unchristian, which surely is aspersing the innocent without possibility of reparation, as well as it was condemning him without a trial’. The session ended in deadlock between the two Houses and Parliament was prorogued on 3 April. Lloyd spent most of the summer in his diocese.

Meanwhile Lloyd worried that his dismissal from the post of almoner meant that he was under the queen’s displeasure and had to be reassured by John Sharp that ‘she seems on the contrary to have a kindness and respect for you’.146 Perhaps through Sharp’s intervention, Lloyd had a long audience with the queen at Windsor on 12 Sept., followed by dinner.147 He took his seat for the 1704-5 session on 16 Nov., and attended 44 per cent of sittings. On 14 Dec. he received Moore’s proxy (vacated on 10 Jan. 1705). On 27 Feb. 1705 he was named to the committee to consider points for discussion with the Commons at the conference on the Aylesbury men. He attended the House for the last time that Parliament on 5 Mar. 1705, nine days before the end of the session, leaving the same day for Oxford and remaining there for seven weeks.148 He was back in Worcester shortly before the elections, certainly by 5 May 1705 when Sir Edward Goodere^‡ informed Pakington’s wife that Lloyd was ‘now here and doing all the mischief he can’.149 Lloyd told Tenison that any of his tenants who supported Pakington would be prosecuted in the consistory court.150 It also emerged that the Whigs had attempted to rush the election writ to Worcester while Pakington was absent in Buckinghamshire and had colluded in a ‘scurrilous pamphlet’ aimed at Pakington. On 23 May, Pakington was returned with Bromley; in a repeat of the 1701 poll, Lloyd’s candidate William Walsh was once again driven into third place but this time by a far greater margin.151 Pakington had capitalized on the ‘Church in danger’ theme, carrying a banner depicting a falling church. As his campaign supporters marched through Worcester’s Foregate, they encountered Lloyd’s coach whose horses, according to local legend, were startled and turned away from the hustings.152 Pakington did not repeat his complaint to the Commons but instead on 6 June 1705 wrote to Lloyd in an attempt to put an end to their feud. He insisted that he believed episcopacy to be the best form of Church government and painted himself, with some justification, as a hapless victim of Lloyd’s persecution:

I forbear to mention many vexatious and unneighbourly proceedings against your own tenants. But your lordship must give me leave to tell you once more, that this way of acting neither consists with Christian charity in respect of yourself, nor with the liberty of a free Parliament in respect to the votes; it being contrary to the constitution, that threats or any compulsive methods should be made use of to gain or hinder any elector from voting for whom he pleases. I have nothing more to add but to assure your lordship that it lies wholly in your power to put an end to these disputes by ceasing to persecute my friends; but if your lordship does not I must with great regret endeavour again to right myself and them.153

During the summer of 1705, Lloyd conducted his visitation.154 He arrived in London on 24 Oct., attending the House the following day for the first day of the new Parliament, and attended 30 per cent of sittings in the 1705-6 session.155 On 2 Nov. he attended a meeting at Whitehall on Queen Anne’s Bounty.156 Ten days later, however, it was noted at a call of the House that he was excused attendance and on 15 Nov. he registered his proxy in favour of William Talbot. That proxy was vacated on 27 Nov. when Lloyd attended for the queen’s speech on victory in Spain, so on 29 Nov. 1705 he registered his proxy again, now in favour of John Moore (vacated the following day). He was present on 6 Dec. 1705 for the ‘Church in danger’ debate, but what, if any, contribution he made to the debate is unknown. On 13 Mar. 1706 Lloyd attended the session for the last time. He spent the summer and autumn months in Oxford and Worcester, attending his diocese for the August assizes and treating the mayor and aldermen. On 15 Sept. 1706, in an indication of warmer relations than hitherto, Pakington and his wife visited Lloyd, bringing three of their daughters for confirmation; the following week, Lloyd visited the Pakington’s estate at Westwood.157

Lloyd did not attend the 1706-7 session of Parliament until 24 Jan. 1707. Thereafter he attended for only 15 per cent of its sittings. Nevertheless, Lloyd was in touch with the Whig managers in the Lords since on 21 Jan. 1707 John Hall, bishop of Bristol, wrote to tell Somers that he had not previously sent a proxy but had been told by Lloyd the previous Saturday that he needed to send it ‘speedily upon account of some motion made in the House by the earl of Nottingham’. The issue concerned, discussed over dinner at Lambeth on 25 Jan., was Tenison’s bill of security for the Church.158 On 6 Feb. Lloyd registered his own proxy in favour of John Moore (vacated on 6 March). On 25 Feb., the House was informed of a breach of Lloyd’s privilege after two men entered his property and removed timber while Parliament was sitting; both were taken into custody. Lloyd attended on 4 Apr., but missed the last four days of business. He did not attend the brief pre-Union session later that month at all.

Lloyd attended for only one day, 8 Oct. 1707 of the 1707-8 session of Parliament. Despite the previous year’s apparent cessation of hostilities, his battle with Pakington was far from over. The death of William Bromley, Pakington’s partner in Worcestershire, had seen Lloyd behind an electoral pact (proposed on his behalf by Anthony Lechmere^‡) which would avoid a by-election and delay the poll until the general election due to be held in summer 1708 under the terms of the Triennial Act. The pact was to ensure the shire representation was shared between the Tory Samuel Pytts^‡ and the Whig Sir Thomas Cookes Winford^‡, on the assumption that Pakington would stand down in the interests of county harmony. (Lloyd had been a frequent visitor to Winford’s uncle, Sir Thomas Cookes, and had been instrumental in persuading him to leave his money to found a new Oxford college, Worcester, before his death in 1702.) When Lloyd’s involvement in the scheme became public knowledge, however, the plan collapsed.159 Nevertheless, on 3 Dec. 1707 Winford was returned at the contested by-election. Meanwhile, in October, upset by the delays caused by the right of appeal to the court of arches, Lloyd had lobbied Tenison into hurrying along the hearing in a case involving some ‘vile clergymen’ at Stratford upon Avon.160

Parliament was dissolved in April 1708 and Lloyd went to Worcester for the general election and for his visitation.161 On 19 May 1708, despite Lloyd’s electoral campaign, Pakington was again returned for the county, this time partnered with Winford. Lloyd did not attend the first session of the 1708 Parliament. His efforts at the time were concentrated on charitable works. An enthusiastic supporter of French Protestants, Lloyd produced a scheme of union between Anglicans and the protestant stranger churches.162 Together with Tenison, he was nominated in the will of Francis Newport, earl of Bradford, to distribute bequests to French Protestant refugees.163 Despite his age (he was now 82), Lloyd was considered by one observer to be ‘vigorous beyond... expectation... at least 20 years short of his age’: he would live for another twenty if he avoided the ‘poison’ of the Westminster air.164

Lloyd did not attend the 1709-10 session either and was thus absent throughout the Sacheverell debates and trial. His distaste for Sacheverell was nevertheless clear. He described the reception received by Sacheverell on his progress from Oxford towards Wales as ‘a very high affront to the highest court of judicature in this kingdom and such as ought not to be suffer’d by any that are in government ecclesiastical or civil’. He ordered the clergy and church wardens in his diocese not to ring bells ‘upon any occasion whatsoever’ during Sacheverell’s triumphal return to London.165 The Whig bishops applauded him for his stance: William Nicolson commented to William Wake, then bishop of Lincoln, later archbishop of Canterbury, that their ‘heroic old friend at Worcester’ had ‘slain the dragon’ of Sacheverell’s ‘overacted’ posturing.166 The Sacheverell camp naturally took a rather different view, recalling that Lloyd had once been called ‘antichristian and uncharitable’ by the Commons and describing the bishop’s instructions to his diocese as

so ridiculous, it must be attributed to the old gentleman’s infirmities, as well as to the inveterate prejudice of his hot importunate son… We have very little ringing of bells in any part of the diocese where he and his son come, and that may be the reason why they envy’d Dr Sacheverell this small compliment.167

In the elections that followed the dissolution on 21 Sept. 1710, Lloyd was involved not only in Worcestershire but also in his former diocese. On 9 Oct., he told Wake that he had persuaded William Walmisley to stand again for Lichfield, ‘the only man I know will do her majesty or the Church of England faithful service’. Since ‘we must not lose a vote that we can gain for him, nor suffer any other to come that we can keep away’ he also asked for Wake’s assistance in preventing the Tory chancellor of Lincoln from exercising his vote in the city. He was nevertheless confident ‘that God will take care of his Church, even in this sinful nation; and will not suffer it to be destroyed by them that have so long cried it was in danger and now at last done w[ha]t they could to bring it to be so’.168 In the event, Walmisley was beaten by two Tory opponents despite all of Lloyd’s efforts to mobilize the clerical vote, and, following the national trend, Pakington and Samuel Pytts won both seats for the Tories in Worcestershire.169

Lloyd was listed, naturally, by Harley in October 1710 as an opponent of the new Tory ministry. He did not attend the first (1710-11) session of the new Parliament, but remained politically active locally. In April 1711 when a cleric who had entertained Sacheverell on his progress was invited to give the assize sermon, Lloyd and William Talbot prevented him from doing so; the sheriff of the county ostentatiously boycotted the sermon given by their replacement candidate.170 Lloyd did not travel to London for the start of the December 1711 parliamentary session. That month, on learning from Richard Foley^‡ of the possibility of an imminent peace, he shared with him his apocalyptic interpretation of biblical prophecies, and then wrote to Robert Harley (now earl of Oxford), warning him that a lasting peace was impossible for ‘we are certainly within a very few years of that war of religion which will last till the final destruction of pope and popery’. It followed therefore that an attempt to secure a peace would ‘bring many and great mischiefs on her majesty and her kingdoms; and destruction upon you and your family, and on all others that shall be found to have joined with you in it’. As he told Harley, when he had tried to explain the biblical evidence to Foley, Foley made his excuses and left, ‘and so we parted’, wrote Lloyd,

which indeed was on my part very unwillingly, for I would gladly have shown him those things which he might have shown your lordship at his coming to London. They were such as I believed might have stopped that speed with which your lordship is said to be advancing in this negotiation.171

Lloyd attended the session on two days only (5 and 6 June 1712) almost certainly for consideration of the bill ‘for enlarging the time for the ministers in Scotland to take the abjuration oath’ and for the queen’s speech on the peace negotiations. Lloyd never returned to the Lords. On 7 June 1712 he registered his proxy in favour of John Moore (vacated at the end of the session). Two accounts suggest that he visited the queen in order to dissuade her from the peace because of the inevitability of a war of religion. According to one account this was early in June, and the queen answered ‘let us then have peace in the meantime that we may be the better able to engage in a new war’. Whilst it is possible to interpret this remark in a kindly light, it seems likely that when Lloyd was invited to a second interview at the end of June in order to debate the issue with Oxford, the purpose was to make fun of the old man.172 Jonathan Swift wrote of the interview that

the old bishop of Worcester, who pretends to be a prophet, went to the queen by appointment, to prove to her majesty, out of Daniel and the Revelation, that four years hence there would be a war of religion; that the king of France would be a Protestant, and fight on their side; that the popedom would be destroyed, &c.; and declared that he would be content to give up his bishopric if it were not true. Lord treasurer [Oxford], who told it me, was by, and some others; and I am told lord treasurer confounded him sadly in his own learning, which made the old fool very quarrelsome.173

Apocalyptic visions of the destruction of popery apart, Lloyd’s political sensibilities were constantly offended by the new government. When Simon Harcourt, Baron (later Viscount) Harcourt, pressed for Sacheverell’s elevation, Lloyd is said to have claimed that ‘thoughts of death are nothing near so terrible’ as the possibility of Sacheverell succeeding him in the episcopate.174 Lloyd was equally concerned with his son’s career, nagging Sharp to use his interest with the queen to advance it. Sharp eventually told Lloyd that the sticking point was the younger Lloyd’s violent and vocal opposition to the ministry. Lloyd accused Pakington (‘that debauch’d gentleman’) of maligning his son and then wrote directly to the queen, complaining of the ‘malice’ of ‘party displeasure’ that had blighted his son’s career ever since Pakington’s complaint in the Commons back in 1702.175

Despite Lloyd’s absence from the House, he was listed by Oxford as a certain opponent of the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. In the elections of August 1713, Lloyd, unable to let a general election pass without an attempt to unseat the Tories, was foiled by an electorate satisfied with what the Tory, Pytts, described as ‘the good things... lately done for the public’.176 Pytts and Pakington were again returned for the county. By now nearly 90 years of age, Lloyd did not attend the new Parliament, despite the politically highly charged debates concerning schism and the danger to the Protestant succession. As he had not made an appearance he was unable to enter his proxy. He was, by then, very frail. A letter that can be dated by internal evidence to February 1715 suggested that his death was imminent; he himself wrote the following month of being too frail and infirm to venture out and of his dependence on his chancellor and archdeacon. Later that year John Potter^†, then bishop of Oxford, later archbishop of Canterbury, undertook to ordain candidates on Lloyd’s behalf, ‘he being unable to undergo that fatigue himself’.177

Given fresh heart by the accession of George I and prospect of a general election, Lloyd resumed his electoral crusade against Pakington, who nevertheless came top of the poll, although in a partial triumph for Lloyd, Pytts lost his seat. News of the Jacobite rebellion led Lloyd to circulate a printed letter to his clergy together with the declaration of Tenison and the other bishops gathered in London, exhorting them to read both from the pulpit during divine service and to ‘endeavour by example as well as doctrine, to instruct your people in the duty they owe to our most gracious sovereign King George’.178

In the autumn of 1716 he again sought assistance in carrying out ordinations. He took the opportunity to secure further advancement for his son (and chancellor), pointing out to Wake that,

all other parts of my episcopal office are duly discharged for me by my chancellor, who is perfectly well acquainted with all the concerns both spiritual & temporal of this bishopric; and who might also make me easy in these respects, if I could prevail to have him consecrated as a coadjutor or suffragan to me... and entirely submit to your great wisdom, whether I shall take any further step towards it.

Still vengeful against Pakington, he refused a request for a faculty from Pakington’s domestic chaplain who, Lloyd maintained, had given ‘false evidence’ before the Commons in 1702 and been rewarded for it with Pakington’s gift of the rectory of Hampton Lovett.179

On 26 Jan. 1717 Lloyd was taken ill, prompting Edward Chandler^†, the future bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to lobby hard for the expected vacancy at Lichfield, consequent on the translation of Hough to replace Lloyd at Worcester.180 Going into a final decline in July, Lloyd died on 30 Aug. 1717 at Hartlebury Castle, 12 days after his ninetieth birthday. Hough was so confident of succeeding him that the very next day, he asked for the congé d’élire to be sent without the formality of kissing the king’s hand, ‘for I would fain stay here till the ordination is over, & many persons in this diocese & that of Worcester will be disappointed if I do not’.181 Lloyd’s true wealth is difficult to estimate. The see of St Asaph was worth an annual £800, that of Lichfield some £1,000 and, at the time of his death in 1717, his episcopal revenue from Worcester was estimated to be in the order of £1,200 a year. He had homes in Oxford and London, apart from his episcopal residences in Worcester and Hartlebury; but he also spent heavily on projects to refurbish Church property.182 He bequeathed the bulk of his estate to his son; his daughter was already provided for, having married Walter Offley, a Cheshire rector who became dean of Chester in 1718. Lloyd’s widow was named sole executrix; she and their son outlived the bishop by little more than two years.183 A codicil to the will (regarding his co-trusteeship of lands owned by Flower, Lady Clarendon) bequeathed all remaining trust lands to Dr Richard Willis^†, then dean of Lincoln (later bishop of Winchester) and to Richard Minshull of the Inner Temple. Lloyd was buried on 10 Sept. 1717 at the parish church of Fladbury where his son held the living.

B.A./R.P.

• 1 Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake mss 20, ff. 275-6.
• 2 TNA, PROB 11/561.
• 3 A. Tindal Hart, William Lloyd, 15-16.
• 4 Carpenter, Tenison, 100 n.
• 5 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 158.
• 6 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 473.
• 7 CSP Dom. 1699-1700, p. 267.
• 8 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 466; A. Tindal Hart, Life of Sharp, 234.
• 9 CSP Dom. 1702-03, p. 313.
• 10 Nicolson, London Diaries, 297.
• 11 CSP Dom. 1700-02, p. 358.
• 12 W. Shippen, Faction display’d (1704), 5-6.
• 13 Diary of Francis Evans ed. R. Robertson (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1903), 4.
• 14 Burnet, i. 344, 347; W. Lloyd, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of John, Lord Bishop of Chester (1675).
• 15 Wood, Ath. Ox. i. pp. xxxviii-xxxix.
• 16 Bodl. Tanner 146, f. 70.
• 17 W. Lloyd, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hall (1668); The Late Apology in Behalf of the Papists… Answered (1667); A Seasonable Discourse Shewing the Necessity of Maintaining the Established Religion, in Opposition to Popery (1673); A Conference between two Protestants and a Papist (1673); A Reasonable Defence of the Seasonable Discourse (1674); Considerations Touching the True Way to Suppress Popery (1676).
• 18 Tindal Hart, William Lloyd, 15, 80; Tanner 34, f. 164; Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c 29; Burnet, i. 423-4.
• 19 W. Lloyd, Considerations Touching the True Way to Suppress Popery (1677).
• 20 Add. 32095, f. 57.
• 21 Add. 38693 f. 143.
• 22 Verney, ms mic. M636/30, W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 15 Nov. 1677.
• 23 Tanner 34, f. 164.
• 24 W. Lloyd, A Sermon at the Funeral of Sr Edmund-Bury Godfrey (1678), 2-3, 26-34.
• 25 W. Lloyd, A Sermon Preached at St Martins in the Fields, on November the fifth, 1678 (1678); A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hall. The 24th. of Novemb. 1678. (1678).
• 26 Burnet, ii. 156, 157.
• 27 L’Estrange, A Brief History of the Times (1687) iii. 66-71.
• 28 CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 592.
• 29 Tindal Hart, William Lloyd, 32, 33, 40.
• 30 W. Lloyd, A Sermon Preached before the House of Lords, on November 5. 1680. (1680).
• 31 Tanner 37, f. 201.
• 32 E. Calamy, Mems. of the life of John Howe (1724).
• 33 State Trials, vii. 1351-2.
• 34 CSP Dom. 1680-1, pp. 136, 166.
• 35 W. Lloyd, Seasonable Advice to all Protestant people of England (1681).
• 36 Add. 4274, f. 225; Add. 70014, f. 230; Tanner, 34, f. 299; LPL, VX 1B/2g/3; W. Lloyd, A Sermon upon Swearing (1720).
• 37 Tanner 30, f. 124.
• 38 Tanner 35, ff. 31-2, 119; Add 28051, ff. 123, 137, 142, 144, 148; Eg. 3334, ff. 23-24, 66-67; Eg. 3384, ff. 22-25; CSP Dom. 1682, p. 489; Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/2/1, no. 52; Bodl. ms Eng. Lett c. 196 f. 27.
• 39 Tanner 35, ff. 113, 119, 135, 151.
• 40 Tindal Hart, William Lloyd,47; Tanner 35, f. 159; Articles of Inquiry Concerning Matters Ecclesiastical, Exhibited by… William… Lord Bishop of St Asaph (1682); Concilia Magnae Brittanae et Hiberniae ed. D. Wilkins (1737), iv. 609.
• 41 Tanner 146, f. 32.
• 42 Tanner 31, ff. 1, 2; Sir G. Mackenzie, A Defence of the Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland (1685); Sir G. Mackenzie, The Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland Farther Cleared and Defended (1686); Stillingfleet, Works, ii. 419-38.
• 43 Tanner 31, f. 52.
• 44 Add. 72481, f. 87.
• 45 Tanner 31, f. 294.
• 46 Tanner 31, ff. 166-74.
• 47 Tanner 30, f. 24.
• 48 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/2/1, no. 79.
• 49 L’Estrange, A Brief History of the Times, iii. 66-86.
• 50 Tanner 33, f. 4.
• 51 Tanner 30, f. 124.
• 52 Tanner 30, f. 145.
• 53 Tanner 30, ff. 170, 172.
• 54 Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 186; Lacey, Dissent and Parl. Pols, 193.
• 55 Tanner 29, f. 39.
• 56 Tanner 29, f. 118.
• 57 S. Parker, Reasons for Abrogating the Test Imposed upon all Members of Parliament (1688); [W. Lloyd], An Answer to the Bishop of Oxford’s Reasons for Abrogating the Test (1688) 1-2, 3-5.
• 58 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 167, 171- 172, 478-80.
• 59 CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 203; J. Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, i. 347-51.
• 60 Tanner 28, f. 141.
• 61 Add. 74246, ff. 100-105v.
• 62 NLW, ms 11020E, f. 33.
• 63 Leics RO, DG 7 p.p. 148, pp. 10-11.
• 64 Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 314, 316, 321; Publick Occurrences Truly Stated, 28 Sept. 1688; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 193.
• 65 Gutch, i. 440.
• 66 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 201-5.
• 67 Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 353.
• 68 Beddard, Kingdom without a King, 71-2.
• 69 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 224, 225, 227-8.
• 70 Works of Symon Patrick ed. A. Taylor ix. 514-5.
• 71 CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 381; Dalrymple, Mems. (1773), ii. app. pt. 1, pp. 336-7.
• 72 Beinecke Lib. OSB mss fb 210, ff. 319-20.
• 73 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 507-8; S. Patrick, Works of Symon Patrick, ix. 516-17.
• 74 Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 475.
• 75 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 247.
• 76 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 257.
• 77 NLW, Ottley Corresp. 1466.
• 78 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 266-7.
• 79 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 269.
• 80 Morrice, Entring Bk. v. 74, 85; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 516.
• 81 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 277.
• 82 Add. 70230, J. Hall to R. Harley, 4 July 1689.
• 83 Tanner, 27, f. 15; Chatsworth, Halifax Coll. B. 48.
• 84 LPL, VX 1B/2g/3.
• 85 Morrice, Entring Bk. v. 142; Lathbury, Hist. of Convocation, 321.
• 86 Parl. Pprs, 1854, liv. ‘Copy of the Alterations in the Book of Common Prayer’, 97, 103.
• 87 W. Lloyd, A sermon preached before Their Majesties at Whitehall, on the fifth day of November, 1689 (1689).
• 88 CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 362.
• 89 Bodl. Rawlinson Letters 98, ff. 93-4; Lansd. 1013, f. 15.
• 90 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 297-8.
• 91 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 299.
• 92 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 300.
• 93 Tanner 27, f. 101; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 303.
• 94 Morrice, Entring Bk. v. 397.
• 95 NLW, ms 4750B.
• 96 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 798-804, 810.
• 97 Timberland, i. 402.
• 98 Eg. 3347, ff. 4-5.
• 99 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 324-5.
• 100 Browning, Danby, iii. 181.
• 101 Tanner, 27, f. 237; LPL, ms 3894, ff. 11, 21; Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 238.
• 102 W. Lloyd, A Discourse of God’s Ways of Disposing of Kingdoms (1691).
• 103 W. Lloyd, A Sermon Preached before Her Majesty, on May 29, being the Anniversary of the Restauration of the King and Royal Family (1692); [W. Lloyd], The Pretences of the French Invasion Examined (1692).
• 104 CSP Dom. 1691-2, pp. 374, 456, 474.
• 105 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/2/1, no. 141; Stowe 746, f. 142.
• 106 Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 1, box 3, folder 113; Tanner 25, f. 2; HP Commons 1690-1715, v. 832.
• 107 Tindal Hart, William Lloyd, 227.
• 108 Add. 70235, Sir E. to R. Harley, 7 July 1693.
• 109 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/2/1, nos. 160, 161.
• 110 Tanner, 24, f. 32; The Life of the Reverend Humphry Prideaux (1748), 151-83.
• 111 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 466; Add. 46527, f. 62.
• 112 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 533.
• 113 HP Commons 1690-1715, v. 874-80.
• 114 E. Suss. RO, ASH 840, p. 137.
• 115 State Trials, xiii. 413.
• 116 LPL, ms 930, no. 42.
• 117 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/2/1, no. 216; Holmes, Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 9-10.
• 118 LPL, ms 930, ff. 43, 45-6.
• 119 Surr. Hist. Cent., Somers, 371/14/L21.
• 120 Tanner 22, ff. 61-2.
• 121 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 533.
• 122 CSP Dom. 1699-1700, pp. 143, 146, 148, 202, 210.
• 123 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 533; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 334.
• 124 [E.D.], A Letter to the Late Lord Bishop of L. and C. upon his Translation to W. (1699).
• 125 Evans Diary, 18-37; Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/1/10, pp. 31-2.
• 126 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 700-5.
• 127 Worcs. RO, Pakington ms 705: 349/4657/iii/p.7; HP Commons 1690-1715, v. 72; Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/1/6, p. 71.
• 128 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 533, v. 768.
• 129 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 700-5.
• 130 Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers, 371/14/01/12.
• 131 Evans Diary, 57; HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 700-705; v. 62-73.
• 132 Add. 70075, newsletter, 27 Dec. 1701.
• 133 Add. 38851, f. 31; Add. 32096, ff. 13, 20; Add. 33286, ff. 5-11.
• 134 Worcs. RO, Lloyd pprs, 970.5:523/71.
• 135 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/4/25; Add. 72498, f. 74.
• 136 Evans Diary, 73; HP Commons 1690-1715, v. 785-8.
• 137 Evans Diary, 75.
• 138 Add. 72498, f. 74; Add. 61119, ff. 85-6; Nicolson, London Diaries, 127.
• 139 CJ, xiv. 40; The Evidence given at the Bar of the House of Commons, upon the Complaint of Sir John Pakington (1702).
• 140 Nicolson, London Diaries, 129.
• 141 HP Commons 1690-1715, v. 409-41.
• 142 CJ, xiv. 40; Nicolson, London Diaries, 131.
• 143 Nicolson, London Diaries, 137-8.
• 144 Evans Diary, 78-9.
• 145 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/1/42, pp. 79, 105; Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers, 371/14/D/9.
• 146 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/1/42, pp. 79-83.
• 147 Evans Diary, 106.
• 148 Evans Diary, 108.
• 149 Worcs. RO, Hampton (Pakington) ms, 705:349/4657/(i)/134.
• 150 LPL, ms 931/16.
• 151 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 700-5.
• 152 HMC Portland, iv. 189.
• 153 Hearne’s Colls. i. 125-6.
• 154 Articles of Visitation and Enquiry … Exhibited to the Ministers and Church-wardens of every Parish within the Diocese of Worcester (1705).
• 155 Evans Diary, 119.
• 156 Nicolson, London Diaries, 297.
• 157 Evans Diary, 128, 130, 132.
• 158 Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers, 371/14/D/10; Nicolson, London Diaries, 411-12.
• 159 HP Commons 1690-1715, iv. 600-1; Evans Diary, 19, 33, 35.
• 160 Add. 28015, f. 118.
• 161 Articles of Visitation and Enquiry… at the Triennial Visitation of… William,Lord Bishop of Worcester (1708).
• 162 LPL, ms 930, f. 42, 1029, ff. 29, 109; ms 1029, f. 109; Tanner 35, f. 124.
• 163 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/1/6, pp. 171-2.
• 164 Wake mss 23, f. 196.
• 165 W. Kennet, The Wisdom of Looking Backward (1715), 51-2.
• 166 Wake mss 17, f. 259.
• 167 A Letter from a Citizen of Worcester to his Friend in London (1710), 1.
• 168 Wake mss 17, f. 266.
• 169 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 700-5; v. 768-9.
• 170 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 193-4.
• 171 Add. 70028, f. 321.
• 172 Add. 72500, ff.100-1; Bodl. Ballard 19, f. 36.
• 173 Jnl. to Stella ed. Williams, ii. 544.
• 174 Holmes, Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 260.
• 175 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, Sharp to Lloyd, 14 Apr. 1713, Lloyd to Sharp, 20 Apr. 1713; D3549/2/4/25, Lloyd to Queen Anne, 30 Apr. 1713.
• 176 Add. 70204, S. Pytts to Oxford, 24 July 1714.
• 177 Add. 61612, f. 91; Herts ALS, DE/P/F14; Oxf. Wake mss 5, ff. 217-8.
• 178 Stowe 228, f. 178.
• 179 Wake mss 7, ff. 174-5.
• 180 Wake mss 20, ff. 315, 319, 327-8, 343.
• 181 Wake mss 20, f. 445.
• 182 Wake mss 9, f. 140, Wake mss 20, f. 343; Hirschberg, ‘Episcopal Incomes’, 215; Evans Diary, p. viii.
• 183 Wake mss 16, f. 222.