cons. 16 Nov. 1673 bp. of BANGOR
First sat 12 Jan. 1674; last sat 2 July 1685
b. 1610, 3rd s. of Dr Richard Lloyd, vic. Ruabon, Denb. and Jane (d. c.1648), da. of Rhydderch Hughes, clergyman. educ. Jesus, Oxf. matric. 1628; Oriel, Oxf. BA 1630, fell. 1631, MA 1635, DD 1661. m. Jane, da. of John Griffith‡ of Cefnamwlch, Caern. and wid. of Edward Brereton of Borras, Denb. 4s.1 1da. (d.v.p.).2 d. 18 Jan. 1689: will 22 Dec. 1686–9 Jan. 1689; pr. 7 Mar. 1689.3
Preb. Ampleforth, York 1644, 1660–89, St Asaph 1661, Bangor 1676; vic. Ruabon, Denb. 1647 (deprived), 1660–73, Northop, Flint 1661–4, Gresford, Denb. 1673; dean St Asaph, 1663–74; adn. Bangor and Anglesey, 1673–89; rect. Llanrhaider-in-Kimmerch, Denb. 1679, Llandinam, Mont. 1683.
Also associated with: Bod-y-Fudden, Trawsfynydd, Merion.
Within one month of the onset of the first Civil War in 1642, Humphrey Lloyd had been imprisoned for declaring that ‘he had rather lend the king a thousand pound than one penny to the Parliament’.4 He celebrated the Restoration with a flurry of petitions to the king for ecclesiastical preferment.5 As a chaplain to Archbishop John Williams† of York, Lloyd had been presented to the prebend of Ampleforth in York in April 1644 but was denied installation by the advance of the Scots army. In 1660, having suffered for the royal cause, he was restored to that prebend, and the following year also given a prebend on the chapter of St Asaph. Promoted as dean of St Asaph in December 1663, he was in a position to serve the interests of Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, when a legal battle broke out in 1668 between the archbishop and the newly appointed bishop of St Asaph, Henry Glemham, over the disposal of the rectory of Whitford. Glemham had leased it to the Flintshire magnate and ardent royalist Sir Roger Mostyn‡, but the archbishop claimed that the disposal of the rectory was his, and sent his caveat protesting against the confirmation directly to Lloyd and to the chapter of St Asaph. Since the dean and chapter had not yet assembled to confirm the bishop’s act they were placed in the unenviable position of mediating between their bishop and their archbishop. During the dispute, Lloyd was in frequent and covert contact with Sheldon, who thanked him, in February 1669, for having acted with ‘justice’.6 Even after Glemham’s death and his replacement by Isaac Barrow, Lloyd was in frequent correspondence with Sheldon over the allocation of responsibility for rectifying the ‘ruinous condition’ of the cathedral between the new bishop and his dean and chapter. Responsibility for its repair remained a point of contention until Sheldon, irritated with all parties at ‘so critical a time’ in Church politics, referred the matter to the arbitration of Robert Morgan, bishop of Bangor, and to the chancellor of Chester.7
Lloyd’s reputation as a tenacious defender of the Church and his close connection with the archbishop paid dividends. On 18 Sept. 1673, after the congé d’elire had been issued for his election as bishop, Sheldon told Lloyd that he wished that the ‘dignity were in any wise equal to your worth’. On a rather more practical note, the archbishop was insistent ‘that the whole solemnity may be completed before the Parliament reassembles at what time there may be much occasion to make use of your assistance’.8 On 11 Oct. 1673 Lloyd was elected bishop and later in the month received into his commendam the archdeaconries of Bangor and Anglesey, the prebend of Ampleforth in York, and the vicarage of Gresford, where the living had fallen vacant on the death of Lloyd’s brother Samuel. He received his writ of summons on 8 Jan. 1674 and took his seat in the House on 12 January. 9 He spent much of the spring session at Westminster, attending this, his first session for just over 80 per cent of sittings, a far more regular attendance record than at any other point in his parliamentary career. He was not present for the brief session in autumn 1675 at all, registering his proxy on 18 Oct. in favour of John Dolben, of Rochester; it was used on 20 Nov. against addressing the king to dissolve Parliament.
Unlike some other Welsh bishops, Humphrey Lloyd seemed less concerned with serving the specific pastoral needs of his Welsh-speaking flock than with defending the rights and patrimony of the Church. He was haunted by the political past and determined to rid Wales of puritanism. As a consequence, he suspected the underlying motives for the educational initiative of the Welsh Trust, describing its main promoter, Thomas Gouge, as ‘an itinerant emissary, entrusted by the leading sectaries, to insinuate into the affections of the credulous common people (he adventures also here and there upon the weaker gentry) and covertly to draw them into a disaffection to the government and liturgy of the Church’. He was also deeply sceptical of Gouge’s attempts to raise funds for a new Welsh edition of the Bible. Recognizing that it was impossible for the bishops of Wales to discourage such a pious objective, he suggested instead that Sheldon order an edition to be prepared in Oxford, under the supervision of two Welsh-speaking ministers. Sheldon shared his concerns but insisted that ‘considering the nature of it, the design, it must receive no open discouragement from us’ and that the best strategy was not to oppose it but to take steps ‘to secure the publication from any gross faults’.10
After Sheldon’s death in 1677, Lloyd’s familiar communications with Lambeth assumed a more formal character under his new metropolitan, William Sancroft. He attended just a quarter of all sittings in the autumn 1677 session and on 7 Jan. 1678 again registered his proxy in favour of John Dolben. Attending the winter 1678 session for 45 per cent of sittings, on 27 Dec. 1678 he voted against the committal of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, and on 10 May 1679 against the appointment of a joint committee with the Commons to consider a method of proceeding against the impeached lords. He did not attend the first session of the Exclusion Parliament but came up for the ten-week session from March to May 1679, attending 48 per cent of sittings.
On 30 Oct. 1680, shortly after the opening of the second Exclusion Parliament, Lloyd was recorded at a call of the House as travelling to London. He subsequently attended for nearly 30 per cent of sittings. He did not travel to Oxford for the brief Parliament in March 1681. In October 1682 he petitioned on behalf of his son Francis for the rectory of Llandwrnog, but met with objections from Sancroft, who had been told that the rectory was customarily held in commendam with the bishopric. Lloyd, who somewhat waspishly described Sancroft’s informant as ‘some one who thinks good to reach beyond his line into another man’s concerns’ responded with a long letter listing the incumbents of the rectory over the past 80 years in an attempt to establish the contrary.11 He was rather more intemperate in a letter to Sir Richard Lloyd‡ in which he insisted that he would dispose of his own as he thought fit. Sancroft did eventually agree to the appointment of Lloyd’s son, but he clearly had a low opinion of Lloyd and was anxious to improve diocesan revenues for the benefit of Lloyd’s successors, rather than for Lloyd himself. In response, in May 1683 Lloyd suggested that another rectory, Llandinam, be annexed to the bishopric so that the revenue could be used to maintain the cathedral, and that at Lloyd’s death the rectory of Llanrhaider (which he held in commendam) should also be annexed to the bishopric. Although it seems that Sancroft approved the project concerning Llandinam, it was not as easy to accomplish as Lloyd thought. After two reminders, he wrote again in September 1683 insisting that, despite the precedent of a similar appropriation in St Asaph having been achieved by legislation, ‘the patron, and the bishop and the king confirming are able to make a good appropriation in law’.12 Approached for advice, William Lloyd, bishop of Peterborough, told Sancroft in December that appropriating a rectory to the bishopric could be achieved by the bishop petitioning the crown:
When his Majesty grants this petition and signs it, and your Grace also as Archbishop of Canterbury and privy councillor and this act be entered in the Council Book I think there is no question but it will avail until there be a Parliament and then this act of Council may be (with little or no charge) tacked upon an Act of Parliament. By this short and safe way, the King[’s] hand is tied up from disposing of the sine cura otherwise and your Grace also to whom it may fall by option, lapse or otherwise, and the Bishop and his successors will be tied up by their own act and deed and that will be a considerable advantage to them.13
In March 1684 Humphrey Lloyd was informed that Sancroft’s right to present to Llandinam was about to expire and that steps had to be taken to protect the archbishop’s interest. Lloyd then had to confess that (for fear as he claimed of just such an eventuality) he had actually presented himself to Llandinam the previous September, just before the right of presentation passed to Sancroft. He had done so privately in the presence of his son and nephews only. With a grovelling apology he requested Sancroft’s absolution, insisting that ‘whether I have done foolishly or not, we have gained thereby some longer time to consider what your Grace shall think expedient in this case’.14
Only the previous year Lloyd had been highly commended by the secretary of state, Sir Leoline Jenkins‡, for his wisdom and pious judgment in the disposal of preferments and Jenkins had promised ‘to watch a moment to lay it before the king and to put it as a pattern into the hands of the Lords for Ecclesiastical Preferments, hoping they will find opportunities to do the Church advantages by it’.15 Now Lloyd found himself dealing with an angry archbishop who took a very different view, and who regarded Lloyd’s actions as an open insult, seeing ‘plainly … how little consideration you had of me, or your see, when flesh and blood stood on the other side, and that you were resolved to put your son into that rectory’. Sancroft insisted that the annexation of Llandinam to the cathedral (‘you mean I suppose the dean and chapter’) required an act of Parliament,
For ’tis one thing to annex a benefice within the bishop’s patronage to the bishopric itself for ever, and quite another to alienate it from the bishopric and settle it upon another corporation. For neither can you grant it away, nor they receive it without an Act of Parliament … And that I suppose, might put you upon the design of turning Llandinam upon the dean and chapter (though still to your own use) because you were not capable of it yourself without quitting something else. For you hold already with the bishopric (as I understand) the vicarage of Gresford, the prebend of Ampleford your three archdeaconries and the sine cura of Llan-Rhaider and for ought I know, something else, though your commendam itself (monstrously large as it is) limits you to hold with your bishopric only two benefices with cure and 2 without cure. Or (not And) 2 dignities … That clancular action before your own children only discovers how mean an opinion you have of me and that you were so unkind as to interpret that the slow proceedings in your proposal (which yet was not practicable) had been with design to bring Llandinam into his own dispose by lapse, or at least, that you durst not trust me, though I had sent you word that I would not take that advantage. 16
In his defence, Lloyd attributed his large commendam to the benevolence of his friend Sheldon, to whom ‘he had the happiness to be long known’ since his youth in Oxford, and insisted that he would never ‘make a pretence of piety’ to cloak personal greed.17
James II’s decision to call a Parliament in 1685 gave Lloyd and Sancroft an opportunity to regularize the situation. Lloyd attended the House regularly (nearly 63 per cent of sittings), not least to oversee the passage of the Act for the repair of the Cathedral Church of Bangor. He was in the House for each sitting when the bill was discussed. From its first and second readings in the Lords on 22 and 23 June 1685, it passed speedily through its committee stage, was reported from committee by Henry Compton, bishop of London, and was subsequently returned unaltered from the Commons by Sir Richard Lloyd, who had provided the legal advice on which Sancroft had relied during his correspondence with the bishop and who had steered the bill through the Commons.18 Its speedy course through Parliament suggested that there was little opposition, but the circulation of a printed paper objecting to the bill and a response in its support indicates that, within his own diocese, Humphrey Lloyd’s motives and actions were not perceived as wholly altruistic.19
Lloyd’s last visit to the Lords coincided with the bill receiving the royal assent on 2 July 1685. His health was now failing. He returned to Gresford, claiming to be too frail to complete the financial enquiries that were necessary for the act to take effect. In September 1685, Sancroft and Lloyd finally attached their respective seals to the instrument which would make the act effective.20 When Lloyd returned the instrument to Lambeth in October, he excused himself from further parliamentary attendance on the grounds of age and illness and claimed that he had sent his proxy to his friends William Lloyd, formerly of Peterborough, now bishop of Norwich, and William Lloyd, of St Asaph, ‘persons trusty and well devoted to his Majesty’s and the Church’s service’.21 The Lords’ proxy book records that it was registered on 5 Nov. 1685 to Lloyd of Norwich.
In March 1686 Lloyd of St Asaph was already making recommendations for a successor at Bangor, expecting that the see would soon be vacant; a month later he reported that the bishop of Bangor was ‘again about the house, though very feeble’ and increasingly anxious about letting Bangor House in Holborn, a concern that was not entirely without self-interest: ‘He is very solicitous’ reported St Asaph, ‘to know that he may do to improve the bishopric for his successors by letting Bangor-House, and yet not to lose the fine he might have had before the passing of the Act that enables him to let for 40 years’. As St Asaph pointed out, gratifying Humphrey Lloyd in this point would be beneficial as the act gave Lloyd of Bangor personal powers to make a building lease for Bangor House, and those powers – and ‘all the benefit of the act’ – would die with him.22 Frail as he was, Humphrey Lloyd still managed to outmanoeuvre his archbishop. By July 1686 he had taken full advantage of his power and had let Bangor House on a building lease for 40 years at no more than the old rent. His own son benefited to the tune of £300. St Asaph was shocked at what was essentially sharp practice on Lloyd of Bangor’s part but was cautiously hopeful that it was ‘so plain an abuse of the power that was given him by the Act … that the next bishop may make it void at the next sitting of a Parliament, and then in all probability he will have the ground ready built upon fall into his hands’.23
Expectations of Humphrey Lloyd’s imminent death proved to be misplaced. In December 1686 he was still managing the diocese, notwithstanding a ‘great weakness and dimness of … sight’.24 Nor did his enthusiasm for the Anglican polity diminish. Predictably, in 1687 he was listed as a probable opponent of the repeal of the Test and as an opponent to the religious policies of James II. By that time he had become blind and was unable to perform most of his episcopal duties without support.25 He eventually died ‘after a very tedious sickness’ on 18 Jan. 1689 and two days after the return to the Convention of his step-son, Edward Brereton‡.26 He bequeathed over £1,000 in cash legacies to his sons, to numerous other family members, and to the poor of seven parishes. He was buried in the grave of his predecessor, Henry Rowlands†, in Bangor cathedral.27
B.A.- 1 TNA, PROB 11/394.
- 2 Bodl. Willis 38, f. 561.
- 3 PROB 11/394.
- 4 Wood, Life and Times, i. 62.
- 5 CSP Dom. 1660–1, pp. 111, 219, 225; HMC 7th Rep. 107.
- 6 Bodl. Add. C 308, ff. 124–5, 136v–138v; T. Richards, ‘The Whitford Leases: A Battle of Wits’, Trans. of the Honourable Soc. of Cymmrodorion (1924–25); Bodl. Add. C 308, ff. 125, 131, 136v–137.
- 7 Harl. 7377, ff. 18v, 32v–33v, 35v, 36, 37, 39v; Bodl. Add. C 305, f. 321; Bodl. Tanner 146, ff. 44, 46.
- 8 Harl. 7377, f. 48v.
- 9 TNA, C 231/7, 468.
- 10 Tanner 40, ff. 18–19.
- 11 Tanner 146, ff. 73, 81.
- 12 Ibid. ff. 86–87, 89, 90, 99.
- 13 Tanner, 147, f. 41.
- 14 Tanner 146, f. 83.
- 15 CSP Dom. Jan–June 1683, p. 148.
- 16 Tanner 146, f. 99.
- 17 Ibid. f. 106.
- 18 CJ, ix. 751, 753.
- 19 Tanner 146, ff. 91, 93–94.
- 20 Tanner 31, f. 191 ; Tanner 146, ff. 78, 102.
- 21 Tanner 31, f. 209.
- 22 Tanner 30, f. 14; Tanner 31, f. 294.
- 23 Tanner 30, f. 3.
- 24 Tanner 146, ff. 63, 80.
- 25 Tanner 29, f. 80.
- 26 Tanner 28, f. 325.
- 27 Willis 38, f. 561.