LLOYD, William (1637-1710)

LLOYD (FLOYD), William (1637–1710)

cons. 18 Apr. 1675 bp. of LLANDAFF; transl. 17 May 1679 bp. of PETERBOROUGH; transl. 4 July 1685 bp. of NORWICH; depr. 1 Feb. 1690

First sat 20 Apr. 1675; last sat 18 Feb. 1689

b.1637, s. of Edward Lloyd, rect. Llangower, Merion. educ. Ruthin Sch.; St John’s, Camb. matric. 1655, BA 1659, MA 1662, DD 1670 (royal mandate). m. Anne (d.1708), 2s. (d.v.p.), 1da. d. 1 Jan. 1710; will none found.

Chap. to Charles II.

Cur. Deptford, Kent bef. 1662; chap. to English Factory, Lisbon, to Thomas Clifford, later Bar. Clifford of Chudleigh, bef. 1673; preb. St Paul’s 1672–5; vic. Battersea, Surr. bef. 1675; rect. St Andrew’s, Llandaff 1675–9.

Also associated with: Bala, Merioneth; Acton, Mdx.; Hammersmith, Mdx.; Hoxton, Mdx.

Likenesses: oil on canvas by unknown artist, Corpus Christi, Oxf.

William Lloyd was the last Welsh-speaking bishop of Llandaff for 200 years. His family background and circumstances are obscure, and attempts to unravel the details are complicated by considerable confusion with his namesake and contemporary William Lloyd (successively bishop of St Asaph, Lichfield and Coventry, and Worcester). Equally uncertain is the state of Lloyd’s personal finances, a problem complicated by the apparent lack of probate material. His episcopal income clearly increased with successive translations. The diocese of Llandaff was notorious for its poverty, with an annual income in 1675, including commendams, of less than £550; Lloyd spent his four years as bishop there improving the revenue but the amounts involved were very low.1 In contrast, by 1683 his income as bishop of Peterborough amounted to nearly £700 a year after deductions, though here too there was a dispute over church property. In an undated, but c.1683, overview of the finances of the see he added that he had expended nearly £1,300 since being appointed to Peterborough and dropped a heavy hint that his predecessors had been somewhat negligent: ‘I am not willing to say anything of those who are gone to give an account of their stewardship, but this I must aver that few of those papers were transmitted to me from my predecessors’.2 He owned personal property (a ‘small pittance and estate’) in Acton, but appears to have experienced legal difficulties proving ownership after losing the deeds in a fire at the Temple in 1683.3 By 1689, in response to an official circular to provide self-assessment under the Act for a General Aid, he claimed that he had no personal estate apart from household goods and books and only £200 to support his family.4 His daughter later claimed that he had given James II £2,500 ‘out of his own slender fortune’.5

On 23 June 1670 the king recommended Lloyd for a Cambridge doctorate two years earlier than was customary because he had ‘taken great pains in the English factory at Lisbon’ and should graduate before returning to Portugal, where he was expected to remain for at least the next two years.6 Whether Lloyd did return to Portugal is something of a moot point, as the diarist John Evelyn noted hearing him preach on 10 July and 11 Dec. 1670; by 1673, as chaplain to Thomas Clifford, later Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, as a member of the chapter of St Paul’s and with a vicarage in Battersea, Lloyd had become well known at court through his Lent sermons.7 At the relatively young age of 40 he was ‘particularly recommended’ by Gilbert Sheldon, of Canterbury, to the king, who was determined to have a native Welshman elected to the see of Llandaff.8

Bishop of Llandaff, 1675–9

Lloyd took his seat in the House on 20 Apr. 1675, seven days after the start of a new parliamentary session. He then attended for some 45 per cent of sittings and was named to three select committees. In the brief autumn 1675 session, he was present for 71 per cent of sittings, but was named to only one select committee and to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions. Returning to Monmouthshire for the summer months, Lloyd engineered the dismissal from the county bench of Sir Edward Morgan‡, who had ‘strong inclinations towards Rome’ and who was related to Henry Somerset, 3rd marquess of Worcester (later duke of Beaufort).9

Lloyd attended the 1677–8 session for 83 per cent of sittings, being named to the sessional committees and to 41 select committees. In March 1678 he deputized for Sancroft, later archbishop of Canterbury, in preaching at court;10 the survival of a prolonged and affectionate correspondence between the two men reveals that they enjoyed a mutually supportive and close political alliance. In June 1678, as part of something of a crusade against ‘a stubborn schismatic who hath for these two years last past created me all the trouble and expense that he and his brethren could conceive’, he sought the assistance of Lord Chancellor Heneage Finch, Baron Finch (later earl of Nottingham), before cutting short his attendance at the first short session of 1678 and returning to his diocese, where, as he told Sancroft, ‘papists and sectaries are wonderfully bold’.11 He covered his absence by a proxy registered to Henry Compton, of London, on 6 June (vacated at the end of the session); the absence meant that his attendance for this session fell to just 25 per cent.

In October 1678, in anticipation of the autumn parliamentary session, Lloyd again registered his proxy in favour of Compton (vacated when he attended on 27 December). Interestingly he felt obliged to explain his absence not to his archbishop but to the lord treasurer, Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds). He told Danby that he had been subject to ‘a dangerous fit of sickness that confined me to my bed for eight weeks together’, before going on to express his concern about the ‘traitorous contrivances’ associated with revelations of a Popish Plot and to describe his own attempts to uncover further details of the plot by interviewing William Bedloe’s relatives.12 On 28 Nov. 1678 he was informed by Sir Joseph Williamson‡ that the information he had supplied about a pocket of some 80 Jesuits in the vicinity of Chepstow had not been correctly taken on oath. By early December Lloyd had rectified the error, but Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, was concerned that the information, once reported to the House, would ‘displease’ Worcester.13 Lloyd himself appears to have had few concerns about displeasing Worcester and had formed a political alliance with Worcester’s son, Charles Somerset‡, the Member for Monmouth; the two men ensured the restoration to the county bench of John Arnold‡, turned out of the commission by Worcester after a spate of political feuding.14

On 4 Dec. 1678 the House learned of an allegation by Lloyd that neither Francis Spalding, the deputy governor of Chepstow Castle, nor the garrison had received Anglican communion for the previous three years. The House ordered Lloyd, with the assistance of several local gentlemen, to enquire into the matter and report back to the House, and reiterated its order on 7 December. Worcester, who was responsible for the Chepstow garrison, informed his wife that Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, had used the information as a political weapon against the government, and had demanded an enquiry. Worcester tried and failed to have the matter examined by the House rather than referred to local investigators who were bound to include the bishop, openly stating that Lloyd ‘was not a fit person to whom to refer the case’ because of his quarrel with Spalding. However, he was eventually forced to accept what was in effect a mediation, whereby the matter would be examined by Lloyd and two of his assistants and three men on Worcester’s side.15

Lloyd attended the session on only two sitting days (27 and 28 Dec.), the first for the debate and vote on the committal of Danby – Lloyd voted with his fellow bishops in Danby’s support – and the second for the receipt by the House of further information regarding Catholic plotting. The session ended three days after the division on the committal of Danby. Within a fortnight, Lloyd had delivered to Secretary Williamson his report into the alleged nonconformity of Spalding and his garrison.16 He sustained pressure on the Catholic community and on 31 Jan. 1679 reported to Sir Robert Southwell‡ that he had converted 236 Catholics to the Church of England and had confiscated Catholic books which he was donating to Llandaff library.17

Lloyd was in London for the first Exclusion Parliament in March 1679 and attended five of the first six days of the abortive opening. He was absent when the new session opened on 15 Mar. but thereafter attended 69 per cent of sitting days and was named to the three standing committees and to four select committees, including, on 20 Mar., that to disable members from sitting in Convocation unless they had taken the oaths. He was not named to the committee that had been created on 11 Mar. to examine the late ‘horrid conspiracy’ but, as part of its investigations, was examined on oath about ‘Mr Berry’, denying that the person concerned had confessed anything to him.18

Despite his somewhat patchy attendance record, on 18 Mar. 1679 Lloyd’s loyalty was rewarded when the king issued a directive for his election as bishop of Peterborough.19 On 27 Mar., still technically bishop of Llandaff, Lloyd was in the House for the examination of Francis Spalding at the bar. Spalding had been imprisoned in the king’s bench prison on 21 Nov. 1678 but had subsequently been bailed. In what was presumably a new chapter in the ongoing local dispute, the House now learned of a fresh accusation against him. A deposition sworn before Lloyd in his capacity as a justice of the peace claimed that, while at Chepstow Castle, Spalding had been heard to say that had he had the chance he would have prevented William Bedloe from revealing details of the Popish Plot. Although Spalding denied the allegation, the House accepted that he had ‘misbehaved himself’ as deputy governor of the castle and ordered him back to prison.

Not surprisingly, Lloyd was still a supporter of the embattled lord treasurer and during April voted consistently against the proposed attainder. On 9 May 1679 it was noted at a call of the House that he was excused attendance, but he was present the following day when he voted against the proposal to appoint a joint committee of both houses to consider the method of proceeding against the impeached lords. He subsequently attended until three days before the end of the session at the end of May 1679.

Bishop of Peterborough, 1679–85

Lloyd was enthroned in Peterborough on 12 July 1679.20 His vigour was reflected in a huge workload: he confirmed nearly 8,000 people in the four years from 1679. By early October 1679 Lloyd had returned to London. He took his seat for the first time as bishop of Peterborough on 15 Apr. 1680 (a prorogation day) but was back in his diocese in August to do battle with the commissioners for the streets of Northampton, whose plans threatened a section of the old churchyard. He also conducted a visitation of his diocese, reporting ‘that the concerns of the Church are not in so bad a posture as some men would persuade and abuse the world’.21 He returned to Westminster for the first day of the second Exclusion Parliament on 21 Oct. 1680, thereafter attending 72 per cent of sittings and being named to two select committees. Loyal to the crown and James Stuart, duke of York, he voted on 15 Nov. in favour of putting the question that the Exclusion bill be rejected on its first reading, and subsequently voted to reject the bill. On 22 Nov. he examined the manuscript Journal. The following day he voted with the court against the motion for a joint committee with the Commons to debate the safety of the kingdom. He missed the first day of the March 1681 Parliament but attended each of the remaining six days.

Having returned to Peterborough after the abrupt dissolution, by June 1681 Lloyd was reported to be conducting a visitation on Sancroft’s behalf.22 A loyal supporter of the Tory reaction, in July he secured a ‘moderate’ diocesan address approving the dissolution of the previous two Parliaments. Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins‡ promised to ensure that it was given proper priority at the printers and by the end of the month the address, subscribed by Lloyd, most of his clergy, the grand jury and nearly 6,000 inhabitants, was in print.23 In October, concerned to outwit ‘those ecclesiastical proctors who sit and watch vacancies in the church’, Lloyd informed Sancroft of a vacancy on his chapter and his choice of candidate.24 By December he had begun a parochial visitation and sent Sancroft an account of Catholics there.25 A later account of the state of his diocese may refer to this period. On his arrival in the diocese he had counted himself ‘lucky in his post’ but soon realised that the information supplied by parochial churchwardens was misleading. Accordingly he revived the ‘decayed discipline of rural deans’ appointing ‘the most loyal and confiding clergymen that I could think of’ to provide accurate information. As a result he discovered ‘that there were above three and thirty clergy-men that wore no surplices in officiating at Divine Service. I found that others mangl’d the divine offices and said the prayers by halves and not as the law directs’ and that most of the churches were decaying and dilapidated. Furthermore there were 29 ‘capital conventicles’ that were flourishing as a result of ‘the midwifery of the late popish plot’.26 In January 1682 Lloyd expressed delight at the appointment of Christopher Hatton, 2nd Baron Hatton, as custos for Northamptonshire.27 An alliance with Hatton and other local worthies, including Sir Roger Norwich‡, the stalwart (and unpopular) Anglican Member for Northamptonshire, ensured a vigorous enforcement of the laws against Dissenters by the local magistrates. By the time he wrote his account of the diocese, probably in or after 1683, the result was that even the ‘boldest obstinate fanatics’ had been brought to heel and whilst ‘there may be (according to the watchful and crafty humour of the schismatics) some sly and secret conventicles . . . especially among the Quakers and Anabaptists’ there were no longer ‘any great and public conventicles’. Over 2,000 individuals had been presented for not taking the sacarament almost all of whom had subsequently complied. Additionally there were 66 popish recusants, most of them under threat of excommunication for contumacy.28

By March 1682, back at his home in Acton and suffering from a fever, Lloyd nevertheless prepared to undertake another visitation of Canterbury as Sancroft’s suffragan. Such was the unease caused by Lloyd’s visitation that at least one local clergyman contacted Sancroft as a go-between on behalf of the mayor and aldermen of Canterbury, who were worried that their political loyalty might have been misrepresented.29 Punctiliously, Lloyd in August checked the text of the Act for the better observation of the Sabbath to see whether the clergy were required to read it from the pulpit.30

From June 1682 Lloyd was also involved as a member of the court of delegates tasked to adjudicate in the Hyde–Emerton affair, a dispute about the validity of the marriage of the heiress Bridget Hyde to her cousin John Emerton, which had become politicized through Danby’s determination to secure her as a wife for his son Peregrine Osborne, Viscount Osborne of Dunblane [S] (later 2nd duke of Leeds). Lloyd did not even attempt to maintain a façade of impartiality: he advised Danby on the management of the case, lobbied his fellow delegates (his namesake William Lloyd of St Asaph and William Gulston, bishop of Bristol) and continued to express his admiration for Danby’s zeal for the government and the Church. When it became apparent that Lloyd of St Asaph would not travel to London for the hearing, he joined with Danby in an attempt to secure St Asaph’s attendance. Not surprisingly, in October Lloyd voted against the validity of the Hyde–Emerton marriage.31

In July 1683, in the wake of the Rye House Plot, Lloyd drafted another loyal address for presentation by the grand jury and justices of the peace of Northamptonshire, submitting it to Sancroft for approval.32 Quite apart from his normal ecclesiastical and parliamentary duties, his legal advice was clearly much valued by the archbishop. An undated letter to Sancroft that appears to have been written in 1683 or 1684 contains an opinion on whether a presentation by the lord keeper could be recalled. In December 1683 Lloyd described the process for annexing a living to a bishopric; as no Parliament was then sitting he advised that an act of the privy council would ‘avail’ until the next Parliament, at which point the matter could be ‘tacked’ to a new statute.33

During the summer of 1684, together with Henry Compton, Lloyd mediated in the dispute involving Sancroft’s disciplinary case against Thomas Wood, of Lichfield and Coventry. Lloyd, acting on behalf of Sancroft, and Compton, acting for Wood, met frequently at Fulham Palace to discuss the case.34 Following the death of Peter Gunning, of Ely, in July, Lloyd appears to have harboured hopes of a translation to that see but ‘submitted’ to the judgment of his superiors in appointing Francis Turner, York’s chaplain, instead.35

The reign of James II, 1685–9

At the accession of James II, Lloyd was informed by Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, that the new king was ‘well satisfied’ with the bishop and wanted him to use his ‘utmost endeavour and … interest’ to ensure the election to Parliament of ‘persons of approved loyalty and affection to the government’.36 Yet, even at this early stage, Lloyd was worried about the impact of the king’s religious policies on his diocese. By April 1685, when back at Peterborough, he observed that the Dissenters were ‘brisk and active’ following the royal pardon, in the hope that they would receive an indulgence in the ensuing Parliament, and were crowing that ‘the bishops’ domineering time’ was over. Individuals imprisoned on excommunication process were being released on bail and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, had ordered the high sheriff not to pursue recusants for fines. An exasperated Lloyd blamed the king for ‘at one blow’ destroying his drive for conformity over the previous four years.37 He also attacked Edward Stillingfleet, later bishop of Worcester, for publishing an apology for the erastian constitution of the Church; Lloyd demanded ‘by what authority he undertook to barter away the rights and discipline of the established church’ and hoped that Convocation would ‘humble him and the trimming tribe’.38

In expectation of a new Parliament, Sancroft and Lloyd had already discussed the question of the bishops’ parliamentary strategy when Compton visited Lloyd at Acton on 2 May 1685 to confer on the same subject. Compton and Lloyd both,

agreed that it was the interest, as well as the credit and safety of the bishops, to be unanimous in their votes and that it was not expedient, or perhaps safe, to propose or desire any new laws at the ensuing Parliament, how plausible soever they might seem to be.

In order to attain this aim Compton proposed that Sancroft call a meeting of the bishops and ‘press that point upon them’. When Lloyd, who made a point of telling Sancroft that he had not disclosed anything of their discussions on ecclesiastical affairs to Compton, noted that this tactic would leave the bishops open to an action of praemunire,

my lord of London did agree that it was no way expedient for the bishops to come in a troop to your grace upon such an occasion, but rather, that your grace should let the bishops of your province (as they come occasionally to wait upon you) know singularly as much of your mind in the point as your grace shall think meet to impart unto them and we doubted not but any kind of hint from your grace would make the bishops of your province entirely unanimous.39

On 19 May 1685, Lloyd attended the House for the first day of the new Parliament. Thereafter, he was present for 80 per cent of sittings and was named to 11 select committees as well as the three sessional committees. Only a few days later the royal warrant was issued for his election as bishop of Norwich.40 He was enthroned by proxy in his new diocese on 23 July but did not travel to Norwich until the end of September, receiving, by his own account, a rapturous reception from the mayor, aldermen and other local worthies, and preparing to embark on a new round of setting things to rights. His latest project became so absorbing that he asked Sancroft for leave of absence from the autumn session of Parliament, since a trip to London would merely ‘perplex and confound’ his plans.41 By November he had submitted, with ill grace, to Sancroft’s desire that he attend the House.42 He arrived on 12 Nov., already in possession of the proxies of Humphrey Lloyd, of Bangor, and William Thomas, of Worcester, both vacated at the end of the session. He then attended for the remaining eight days of the short session. On 16 Nov. he examined the Journal and three days later he was present in the House for the ill-tempered debate on the king’s determination to retain Catholic officers in the army.

By 11 Dec. 1685 Lloyd was back in Norwich, complaining about the problems caused by his diocesan officials, many of whom were non-resident. He attributed disputes in the chapter to ‘running after sordid lucre to the oppression of the country, the dishonour of the Church and its regular discipline’; he also complained of the excessive number of surrogates, whose existence allowed the county to be ‘eaten up by so many caterpillars’. Determined to stay in the diocese and conduct a spring visitation, he sought Sancroft’s permission to absent himself from preaching at court. Given his past concerns about nonconformity, his comments on rumours of a possible toleration were curiously neutral: he merely remarked that just as it was ‘a matter of great joy to some, so it is a great grief to others’.43 Although Lloyd does seem to have been uneasy about the king’s promises on religion, loyalty to the crown, and being perceived to be loyal, seems to have overridden other concerns. In January 1686, in case the matter should be ‘oddly represented above’, he hastened to distance himself from the sentiments of an ‘odd and imprudent’ sermon delivered in his cathedral by a local clergyman and designed ‘to put his auditors into some degree of distrust of his majesty’s late gracious declaration and therefore would intimate and suggest that we were all sailing to Rome’. In order to prevent a recurrence, he declared that he would in future vet all cathedral sermons before they were delivered.44

Lloyd began his visitation in April 1686 and reported that in the space of three months he had trebled the number of communicants in the diocese.45 A clergyman who had been imprisoned and then pardoned by the king was denied a preaching licence until he had given ‘public satisfaction for his scandalous practices’.46 In such manner, Lloyd supported all of Sancroft’s attempts to strengthen the Church against the incursions of Catholicism. His own measures against both Catholic and Protestant nonconformity were, he claimed, bearing fruit: by February 1686 he had cajoled the mayor and aldermen of Norwich to attend cathedral communion in a single group and during Lent confirmed over 7,000 people.47 Roger Morrice (not without bias) reported that Lloyd, who had initially given ‘great encouragement to religion, and set up evening exercises in his family … and explained the whole duty of man’, had now become even more severe against nonconformity, appointing a set day for Dissenters to receive the sacrament; if they failed to attend, he promised to ‘proceed against them with all severity’. Even many churchmen, according to Morrice, ‘always had and still have very hard thoughts of him’.48

Throughout 1686 and 1687 Lloyd was in frequent correspondence with Sancroft, providing intelligence from Norwich and soliciting Sancroft’s advice on tricky ecclesiastical cases; in return, he received information about events in London, including an account of the proceedings against Henry Compton.49 In the spring of 1687, after the issuing of the first Declaration of Indulgence, Lloyd fretted over the status of the oaths required by law but now set aside by the toleration: ‘what shall a country bishop do … who hath no lawyer to consult … the law requires the oaths, the toleration sets them aside. What then is to be done?’50 Plans for the clergy to present a loyal address of thanks for the Declaration caused him further anguish. On 30 Apr. Thomas Watson, bishop elect of St Davids, sent him an encouraging reminder about the clerical address, pointing out that ‘your care to have the address subscribed by the clergy in Norfolk and Suffolk &c will be very well accepted by the king’. Even some of Lloyd’s diocesan clergy began to question why he was ‘not so forward as others’ in the address; telling them ‘that things of that nature ought to move deliberately and regularly and that in convenient time I should acquaint them with what was meet to be done in that case’, he sought Sancroft’s advice. His fear was that if he failed to promote an address others would do so. Pressure for an address was redoubled in the autumn with the arrival of Robert Paston, 2nd earl of Yarmouth. In September Lloyd reported that the mayor and aldermen of Norwich had gone to wait on Yarmouth ‘and I suppose this matter will be offered unto them’; even worse, the corporation of Yarmouth had already produced an address ‘agreeable to the whole tenor of the declaration’.51

Not surprisingly, by November 1687 Lloyd’s name had appeared in the lists of the king’s political opponents. Throughout the spring of 1688 he corresponded with Sancroft about the state of his diocese and the attempts to regulate local corporations. In February he reported that ‘six honest men’ had been removed from Yarmouth corporation and replaced by Independents; he feared that the ‘same storm’ would hit Norwich but more heavily. He also fretted about his own security:

The papists here have frequent meetings and at the same time they entertain themselves by drinking confusion to all that will not consent to take off the penal laws. This they do publicly and without any remorse. They were the last week intending to draw articles against me from somewhat I preached here last Christmas day, they have had several meetings about it, as I am well informed by one who is of their gang. How far they will proceed besides drinking my confusion a little time will discover. They have their spies in our churches and watch all opportunities for our ruin.52

Alongside news of a major purge of the county bench, it was perhaps some comfort that the corporation of Norwich decided to take the sacrament en masse in the cathedral ‘to let us see they are of our communion’, even though they did so in expectation of an imminent regulation.53

Lloyd was not in London on 18 May 1688 for the presentation of the petition by the Seven Bishops but he arrived to sign the petition on 23 May and supported his colleagues while they were held in the Tower.54 Meanwhile, in his diocese, when the king required the admission of 38 Quakers to the freedom of the city of Norwich in July, churchmen and nonconformists were temporarily united in opposition to the demand.55

Amid fears of an invasion, Lloyd received a list of approved parliamentary candidates from the court. He told Sancroft on 26 Sept. that he believed that the county would return Sir Jacob Astley‡ and Sir William Cook‡, both of whom opposed the repeal of the Test Acts. The situation in the corporations was rather different, for all of them except Norwich were ‘so regulated and terrified from above that I doubt I shall not be able to give your grace so good an account … as I heartily wish’. He pinned his hopes on Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, who ‘seems to me very steady for the established government’. Norfolk had drunk to Sancroft’s health ‘with great expressions of service … and this was the same day known everywhere in this place and reckoned as a mark of his zeal for the Church of England’. As for the way the court was trying to lobby support among the bishops, Lloyd hoped ‘that no court holy water shall be able to slacken or shatter the present good understanding among the nobility, clergy and gentry of the Church of England’.56

Alongside matters of high political moment, Lloyd was still dealing with issues of personal and ecclesiastical concern. A long-running dilapidations dispute with Thomas White, his successor at Peterborough, led to an order to pay £164. When Lloyd deducted from this sum the value of goods that he had left behind at Peterborough, he received a monition from Sir Thomas Exton‡, diocesan chancellor of London (and Member for Cambridge University). Lloyd was incensed; he questioned the authority of a lay chancellor ‘to inflict the censure of the Church upon a bishop’ and sought to appeal his case to Sancroft.57

As William of Orange was landing his invasion force at Torbay, Lloyd denied (almost certainly truthfully) any knowledge of the prince’s plans. On 14 Nov. 1688 he suggested to Sancroft that, in the absence of a Parliament, an emergency council of peers could be called in accordance with the precedent established by Charles I (in the face of the Scottish invasion); ‘Such a council’, he wrote, ‘might be highly useful to prevent the calamities that now threaten us’. Still in Norwich, he informed the archbishop that the Norfolk gentry supported the petition to the king for a free Parliament and that he was himself prepared to support Sancroft’s advice to the king in favour of a Parliament.58 Summoned to London on 18 Dec. by Sancroft on account of the recent ‘great revolutions … and the perplexed state of affairs’, Lloyd duly hurried to the capital, where, on the afternoon of 27 Dec., together with Francis Turner he dined with Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, to discuss their preferred option of a regency, before visiting Danby.59

On 22 Jan. 1689 Lloyd attended the first day of the Convention but thereafter was present for only 10 per cent of sittings. Accordingly he was named to the three sessional committees but to only one select committee. Together with ten of the other bishops present that day he was ordered ‘to draw up a form of prayers and thanksgiving to almighty god, for having made his highness the Prince of Orange the glorious instrument of the great deliverance of this kingdom from popery and arbitrary power’. On 29 Jan. he voted for a regency and two days later, in a Committee of the whole House, he voted against declaring William and Mary to be king and queen. Throughout the debates of 4 and 6 Feb. he voted consistently against the use of the word ‘abdicated’ and appointed to manage the subsequent conferences on 4 and 5 February. On 6 Feb. he registered his dissent against the resolution to agree with the Commons that the king had abdicated and that the throne was thus vacant. Somewhat surprisingly, given his opposition to the decision to proclaim William and Mary as king and queen, he attended Parliament on 18 Feb., when, in response to the new king’s request for a speedy political settlement, a bill was presented to the House to regularize the status of the Convention. This proved to be his last appearance in the House.

Non-juror, 1689–1710

In an attempt to evade implementing an order of the House made on 8 Mar. 1689 specifically directing the clergy in his diocese and in the diocese of Winchester to pray for William and Mary, Lloyd informed Sancroft that a Privy Council order would be of ‘infinite more authority’ than his own directions as diocesan. Later that month he reported rumours circulating in the diocese that James II had ‘lodged’ at his house, rumours almost certainly designed to incite mob violence against him. Fearful of an imminent invitation to the coronation, he sought Sancroft’s advice: he had already sworn an oath at a coronation and considered himself ‘not free to do so again’.60 By the end of April he was preparing for another trip to London to ‘resolve of my measure’ in the matter of the new oaths, and, together with Francis Turner, he was directly involved in putting pressure on Thomas Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, not to take the oaths.61

Lloyd had effectively embarked on a new career as Sancroft’s most trusted non-juring ally. He was suspended on 1 Aug. 1689 and by the end of the month was involved in the preparation of a justification of their cause. The propaganda campaign continued when, after attending the deathbed of his fellow non-juror John Lake, of Chichester, Lloyd carried Lake’s final profession of faith (defending the Church’s doctrine of non-resistance) to Lambeth, whence it was dispersed as an encouragement to other non-jurors wrestling with their consciences.62 In October he warned Sancroft that a projected scheme to ‘fend off’ deprivation which centred on giving recognizances for good behaviour might be hemmed in with ‘luring and consequential snares’, since the definition of good behaviour might be open to a variety of interpretations, and that they should not involve themselves in it personally. He went on to suggest that it might ‘be very improper to stir the point, till we see in what temper the gent[lemen] are that meet at St Stephen’s Chapel’. In December, at a meeting with Sancroft, Lloyd and Turner, Compton and Lloyd of St Asaph pressed a similar expedient on them, only to be told that ‘if the king thought it fit for his own sake, that they should not be deprived, he must make it his own business’. Compton, Thomas Lamplugh, of York, and Gilbert Burnet, of Salisbury, were equally unsuccessful when they pressed Lloyd and other senior non-jurors at a meeting on 6 Jan. 1690.63 Lloyd was finally deprived of his bishopric and episcopal duties on 1 Feb. 1690.

Such was the unpopularity of the non-jurors that on 4 Aug. 1690 Lloyd was forced out of his house in order to avoid the ‘rabble’ who had been inflamed against the bishops by ‘the fanatics’.64 His situation was made still worse in January 1691 by allegations of Turner’s involvement with Richard Grahme‡, Viscount Preston [S], in Jacobite plotting and of Turner’s assurances to the exiled court of the support of several non-juring bishops, including Lloyd. As Lloyd soon discovered, the revelations incensed ‘the whole court and in a manner all sorts of people’. Lloyd of St Asaph, Compton, Carmarthen (as Danby had become) and Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, now ‘vehemently pressed’ for their replacement. Lloyd countered a demand that he and the other non-jurors vindicate themselves from involvement in Jacobitism by saying that ‘experience taught us … [that] if we did not come up to the terms expected at court, we should but provoke more than vindicate, and thereby bring greater hardship upon ourselves’. Such an answer was clearly never going to be considered satisfactory to William III’s courtiers, who thought the issue was a very simple one: either Lloyd was involved in Jacobite plotting or he was not.65

Early in February 1691 Lloyd learned of the publication of the aspersions on ‘the reverend club’ of Lambeth in the anti-Jacobite tract A Modest Enquiry into the Causes of the Present Disasters in England. He pressed Sancroft to authorize a response ‘not in a way of vindication but purely in a method to divert the noise of the common people’.66 The two men remained in close contact, exchanging news and gossip; then in April they learned that the non-juring vacancies were being filled.67 Lloyd remained fearful of the government’s intentions. In March he had warned Sancroft ‘not to send any writing … beyond the dyke’; now he interpreted letters received from Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, and from a Mr Bertie, one of several brothers of Robert Bertie, 3rd earl of Lindsey, either as part of a continuing design to implicate him in the Preston and Turner plot or as an attempt to buy him off by encouraging him to petition for the thirds of the bishopric. It soon transpired that it was the financial option that concerned ‘the talkative Mr Bertie’, who was clearly acting on behalf of ‘his great brother-in-law [Carmarthen] who is so well versed and deeply engaged in the intrigues of the Court’. Carmarthen was indeed holding out hopes of an income in return for a declaration that would distance the non-jurors from Jacobitism. Sancroft was dismissive of the proposals but he and Lloyd nevertheless discussed them with Thomas White and Compton; once again, nothing came of the negotiations.68

It was symptomatic both of the moral dilemma posed by deprivation and of Lloyd’s local popularity that, as ‘the vengeance of the new oaths’ started to bite, he sought Sancroft’s opinion on how best to advise his sympathizers in the Norwich chapter who shrank from electing his replacement. He was also instrumental in persuading William Beveridge, later bishop of St Asaph, to refuse the see of Bath and Wells.69 The problems associated with deprivation continued. Lloyd took legal advice about the ability of the non-juring bishops to retain possession of their episcopal palaces and was advised that to do so would render them liable to costs and ‘hard questions’. He was, however, delighted to learn of quarrels among William’s courtiers: ‘let them scuffle like the creatures of old in the amphitheatre’.70 Lloyd and Sancroft, rarely out of contact for more than a day or two, continued to support each other in their uncompromising stance towards the new regime; both were dismayed to learn of the accommodation reached between Robert Frampton, the non-juring bishop of Gloucester, and Edward Fowler, who replaced him in the autumn of 1691.71

On 2 June 1691 Lloyd’s bishopric was filled by John Moore.72 Yet he refused to quit public life. He remained socially active, dining with a range of figures including the diarist John Evelyn and bishop Richard Cumberland, of Peterborough, and earned Sancroft’s admiration for his willingness to ‘jeopard’ himself ‘to the utmost in the high places of the field’.73 On 9 Feb. 1692 Sancroft formally delegated his metropolitan authority to Lloyd and at Sancroft’s death in November 1693 Lloyd was recognized by the non-jurors as archbishop of Canterbury.74 He took the non-juring schism to a new level in February 1694 when he performed the covert consecration of Thomas Wagstaffe as bishop of Ipswich and George Hickes as bishop of Thetford. And he was so intransigent that in 1698 he absented himself from the burial service for Thomas White because it was to be read by a juring minister.75 In 1700 he opposed the negotiations between Thomas Tenison, of Canterbury, and Henry Dodwell that were designed to heal the schism.76

On 1 Jan. 1710, following a fall, Lloyd died at Hammersmith and was buried in the church there. His political legacy was a mixed one. His studied refusal to compromise over the oaths or to accept the need to deny any involvement in Jacobite plotting clearly made him an object of suspicion. Those suspicions were redoubled when Sir John Fenwick‡ alleged at his trial in 1696 that Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, regularly showed correspondence from the exiled king to Lloyd at his house in Hoxton.77 Lloyd’s insistence that the non-jurors represented the true Church of England, and that it was those who accepted the change of regime who were schismatic, contrasts oddly with his son John’s ability to take the oaths required to graduate at Cambridge (albeit from the non-juring stronghold of St John’s) and then to marry the daughter of Humphrey Humphreys, successively bishop of Bangor and Hereford. His dominant influence within the non-juring communion meant that it was only after his death that other prominent non-jurors such as Henry Dodwell felt free to rejoin the mainstream Church.

B.A.

  • 1 Bodl. Tanner 146, ff. 163–5; Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake mss 10, f. 136.
  • 2 Bodl. Rawl. D 1163, ff. 1–6; Tanner 147, f. 39; TNA, C 6/250/66.
  • 3 Tanner 34, f. 116.
  • 4 Chatsworth, Halifax Collection B.62.
  • 5 Add. 70318, petition of Hannah Browne (née Lloyd), n.d.
  • 6 CSP Dom. 1670 and Addenda 1660–70, p. 292.
  • 7 Evelyn Diary, iii. 552, 565; iv. 3.
  • 8 CSP Dom. 1675–6, p. 472.
  • 9 HP Commons, 1660–90, iii. 97.
  • 10 Tanner 40, f. 206.
  • 11 Tanner 39, f. 47.
  • 12 Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 6, Box 1, folder 9, W. Lloyd to Danby, 15 Nov. 1678; Box 2, folder 26, examinations of Gregory Appleby et al. [Nov. 1678].
  • 13 CSP Dom. 1678 and Addenda 1674–9, pp. 544, 550, 593.
  • 14 HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 545.
  • 15 HMC 12th Rep. ix. 75.
  • 16 CSP Dom. 1679–80, p. 20; LJ, xiii. 401.
  • 17 LPL, ms 2028, f. 7.
  • 18 Morrice, Entring Bk. ii. 108.
  • 19 CSP Dom. 1679–80, p. 103.
  • 20 CUL, Peterborough ms 14, f. 134.
  • 21 Articles of Visitation … Diocess of Peterborough (1680); Tanner 37, ff. 139, 141.
  • 22 Tanner 147, f. 42; Tanner 155, f. 32.
  • 23 HP Commons 1660–90, i. 342–3; CSP Dom. 1680–1, pp. 375, 533.
  • 24 Tanner 36, f. 146.
  • 25 Ibid. f. 185.
  • 26 Bodl. Rawl. D1163, ff. 8-12.
  • 27 Add. 29584, f. 47.
  • 28 Bodl. Rawl. D1163, ff. 12-17, 20-9.
  • 29 Tanner 33, ff. 163, 167, 170; Tanner 123, f. 59; Tanner 125, f. 70.
  • 30 Tanner 35, f. 72.
  • 31 Eg. 3384, ff. 22–25, 90; Add. 28051, ff. 133–4, 150, 153; Add. 28053, f. 289; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 233–4.
  • 32 Tanner 34, f. 77.
  • 33 Tanner 124, f. 199; Tanner 147, f. 41.
  • 34 Tanner 104, f. 311; Tanner 131, ff. 95, 101–3, 105–6, 115, 154, 155; HMC Downshire, i. 32–33.
  • 35 Tanner 131, f. 115.
  • 36 CSP Dom. 1685, p. 21.
  • 37 Tanner 31, f. 19.
  • 38 E. Stillingfleet, Works, ii. 419–38; Tanner 31, f. 52.
  • 39 Tanner 31, f. 52.
  • 40 CSP Dom. 1685, p. 164.
  • 41 Tanner 31, ff. 211, 217.
  • 42 Tanner 138, f. 36.
  • 43 Tanner f. 37; Tanner 134, ff. 27, 58.
  • 44 Tanner 31, ff. 246, 249; Tanner 138, f. 60.
  • 45 Tanner 30, f. 37.
  • 46 Tanner 138, f. 45.
  • 47 Tanner 31, f. 273; 138, f. 65.
  • 48 Morrice, Entring Bk. iii. 255.
  • 49 Tanner 138, f. 52.
  • 50 Tanner 29, f. 8.
  • 51 Ibid. ff. 12, 21, 75.
  • 52 Ibid. f. 133.
  • 53 Ibid. f. 135.
  • 54 Tanner 28, ff. 35, 48, 78.
  • 55 HP Commons 1660–90, i. 332.
  • 56 CSP Dom. June 1687–Feb. 1689, pp. 272–3; HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 563, ii. 119; Tanner 28, f. 183.
  • 57 Tanner 28, f. 200.
  • 58 Ibid. ff. 232, 248, 258.
  • 59 LPL, ms 3894, f. 5; Browning, Danby, i. 420.
  • 60 Tanner 28, ff. 374, 377.
  • 61 Tanner 27, ff. 18, 32.
  • 62 Ibid. ff. 74, 77–78; Stowe 746, f. 116; A Defence of the Profession which the Rt. Rev. Father in God John, Late Lord Bishop of Chichester, Made upon his Death-bed (1690).
  • 63 Tanner 27, f. 92; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 299; Morrice, Entring Bk. v. 368.
  • 64 Tanner 27, f. 176.
  • 65 Ibid. f. 237.
  • 66 Ibid. f. 239; [W. Sancroft], A Vindication of the Archbishop and Several Other Bishops, from the Imputations and Calumnies Cast upon Them by the Author of the Modest Enquiry (1690).
  • 67 Tanner 26, f. 82; LPL, ms 3894, f. 11.
  • 68 Tanner 26, ff. 81, 87; LPL, ms 3894, ff. 7, 49.
  • 69 LPL, ms 3894, f. 13; Tanner 26, f. 84.
  • 70 Tanner 26, f. 59.
  • 71 Tanner ff. 55, 57; LPL, ms 3894, f. 27.
  • 72 CSP Dom. 1690–1, p. 405.
  • 73 Evelyn Diary, v. 59; LPL, ms 3894, f. 40.
  • 74 Overton, Nonjurors, 41.
  • 75 Evelyn Diary, v. 289.
  • 76 LPL, ms 930, ff. 38–339.
  • 77 WSHC, 2667/25/7, Fenwick pprs.