LLOYD, John (1642-87)

Nominated to the see of St Davids by James II, John Lloyd was bishop for too brief a period to take his seat in the Lords and it is doubtful that he ever visited his bishopric. He was a graduate of Jesus College, Oxford, where he succeeded his friend Sir Leoline Jenkins^‡ as college principal in 1673. He became a prominent figure in Oxford politics after the exclusion crisis and was one of seven senior academics chosen to replace four aldermen on the commission of the peace for the university and city in February 1682. CSP Dom. 1682, p. 88. In the autumn of 1682 he was elected university vice-chancellor. Once installed, he was a tireless supporter of his chancellor, James Butler, earl of Brecknock and duke of Ormond, in their joint imposition on Oxford of ‘rampant’ Toryism. Seventeenth Century Oxford, 899.

Lloyd’s political strategy involved constant communication with Secretary Jenkins and the tireless promotion of loyal Tory views. The king approved ‘very well’ of Lloyd’s ‘courage’ in his dealings with discordant voices in Oxford, advising him to be watchful and ‘to have a strict eye on all the cabals and secret meetings of the disaffected’. CSP Dom. Jan.–June 1683, p. 203. After the discovery of the Rye House Plot in 1683 and the university’s celebrated decree against ‘impious, seditious, rebellious and atheistical principles’, Lloyd informed Ormond that the decree and symbolic burning of unorthodox books had affirmed the institution’s tradition of loyalty. HMC Ormonde, n.s. vii. 80; Bodl. Carte 69, f. 165. When the city of Oxford surrendered its charter in early 1684, Lloyd joined Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, James Bertie, earl of Abingdon, and John Fell, bishop of Oxford, in maintaining the rights of the university against an often hostile town.

On the accession of James II, Lloyd demonstrated his continuing support for the government by nominating Secretary Jenkins and Charles Perrot^‡ to serve as the university’s Members for a third term. Both men were chosen without opposition. In the wake of the rebellion of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, Lloyd willingly contributed university forces to serve under Abingdon; as a reward, in March 1686 James II nominated his pliant supporter to the see of St Davids. Seventeenth Century Oxford, 914–15; TNA, SP 31/2, f. 71; SP 44/53, ff. 188, 198, 480; CSP Dom. 1686–7, pp. 75, 125.

There was no parliamentary session during Lloyd’s brief tenure of the see and by 17 Jan. 1687 his health was failing. He informed William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, that he was ‘so very weak as hardly to be able to walk cross my room’. Bodl. Tanner 146, f. 128. He died on 13 Feb. 1687. Two days later he was buried in Jesus College chapel, next to his old ally, Sir Leoline Jenkins. Ath. Ox. iv. 870. Lloyd’s brief will, written the day before his death, bequeathed £100 to his college and the remainder of his estate, including lands in Montgomeryshire and Carmarthenshire, to two Jesus scholars, William Bevan and John Laugharne^‡. While his politics may have endeared him to the king and his Tory supporters, Anthony Wood dismissed him as ‘a bibing fellow … pedantical … of little or no behaviour’ and reported that Lloyd’s Convocation speech in 1685 was marred by sloppy Latin. Wood, Life and Times, iii. 132, 165.