Sampson I Lloyd

Arms of Lloyd of Dolobran, Montgomeryshire, Wales (of which family were the Lloyd Quakers, bankers and steel manufacturers of Birmingham and Baron Lloyd of Dolobran: Azure, a chevron between three cocks argent armed crested and wattled or[1]

Sampson I Lloyd (1664–1724) was an iron manufacturer in Birmingham, then a small town in the county of Warwickshire, England, and was the founder of the Lloyd family of Birmingham, iron-founders and bankers, founders of Lloyds Bank, today one of the largest banks in the United Kingdom.

Origins

He was the younger son of Charles II Lloyd (1637-1698) of Dolobran in Montgomeryshire (now Powys), where the Lloyd family had been established gentry for many centuries. Sampson's mother was his father's first wife Elizabeth Lort (1633-1685), daughter of Sampson Lort (d.pre-1670) of East Moor in Pembrokeshire,[2] one of the three sons of Henry Lort of Stackpole Court in Pembrokeshire, Sheriff of Pembrokeshire in 1619, of whom the eldest was Sir Roger Lort,1st Baronet (d.1664), created a baronet in 1662.[3]

Sampson was born in 1664 "at Anne Eccleston's in Welshpool",[4] the rented house where his parents had been held for the previous two years under house arrest,[5] having been transferred from the Welshpool jail, and where they would remain for the next eight years,[6] having as Quakers refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to King Charles II (1660-1685) as required by the Quaker Act of 1662, the swearing of oaths being forbidden by the Quaker religion.

Career

He adhered to the Quaker faith which had been adopted by his father and aged 34 in the year 1698, the year of his father's death, leaving his elder brother Charles III Lloyd (1662-1747), who had inherited Dolobran, he deserted the "uncharitableness of his native Wales"[7] and moved about 62 miles south-east of Dolobran to the town of Birmingham in Warwickshire (home of his brother-in-law John Pemberton), a town especially tolerant of Quakers and religious dissent. There he could escape the harassing and ruthless legal penalties of the Conventicles Act and Five Mile Act, for as Birmingham was not a borough, dissenting preachers were not barred from preaching there. He might have been tempted to follow thousands of other Welsh dissenters in emigrating to the new American colony of Pennsylvania,[8] which course had been chosen by his uncle Thomas Lloyd (1640-1694) a quaker and preacher who assisted William Penn in the establishment of that colony, which he served as Deputy-Governor and President from 1684 to 1693.

However, Birmingham had other attractions than religious toleration to Sampson. It was a place where due to the absence of guilds controlling trade and industry, it was easy to establish a business or factory. There he "soon found scope for his energies and capital"[9] and became an ironmaster and established a slitting mill at the botton of Bradford Street, Birmingham, on the bank of the River Rea, where by use of water power, sheet iron was cut-up to form nails.[10] Slitting mills were especially plentiful on the River Stour between Stourbridge (where Sampson's father-in-law Ambrose II Crowley operated) and Stourport. He also started business as an iron merchant in Edgbaston Street, Birmingham, in which he resided at number 56.[11] He had a profitable career in the firm he founded called "Sampson Lloyd and Sons".[12]

Description of Lloyd's mills

In a map of Birmingham dated 1731, 7 years after Samuel I's death, Lloyd's slitting and corn mills are shown with access from Digbeth by Lower Mill Lane. A later map dated 1751 shows the slitting-mill with a mill pool and a large garden. A description of the slitting mill survives in a letter dated 31 July 1755 written by visitors from London to the Pembertons, Lloyd cousins:[13]

"Next Morning (Monday) [July 1755] we went to see Mr. L 's Slitting Mill, which is too curious to pass by without notice. Its use is to prepare iron for making nails. The process is as follows: they take a large iron bar, and with a huge pair of shears, work'd by a water-wheel, cut it into lengths of about a foot each; these pieces are put into a furnace, and heated red-hot, then taken out and put between a couple of steel rollers, which draw them to the length of about four feet, and the breadth of about three inches; thence they are immediately put between two other rollers, which having a number of sharp edges fitting each other like scissors, cut the bar as it passes thro' into about eight square rods; after the rods are cold, they are tied up in bundles for the nailor's use. We din'd and spent the evening (after walking again to Dudson) at Mr. Lloyd's."

Marriage and progeny

He married twice:

Property and landholdings

He owned a large house at 56 Edgbaston Street, Birmingham and freehold property in Stourbridge and had a residence at Lea, near Leominster, in Herefordshire.[22]

Death

He died aged 60 on 3 January 1724. The executors to his will were his widow, his son Sampson II, his son-in- law John Gulson and his brother-in-law John Pemberton.[23]

Sources & further reading

Lloyd Family History

References

  1. ↑ Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, pp.1392-3
  2. ↑ Burke's LG, 1937, p.1392, where spelling given as "Eastmoor", given by Lowe, p.9 as "East Mear"
  3. ↑ Dictionary of Welsh Biography, "Lort family, of Stackpole and other seats in Pembrokeshire"
  4. ↑ Lloyd, Humphrey, 1975, p.23
  5. ↑ Gilbert, p.3
  6. ↑ Lloyd, Humphrey, 1975, p.1
  7. ↑ Gilbert, p.4
  8. ↑ Lloyd, S., p.21
  9. ↑ Lloyd, S., p.21
  10. ↑ Gilbert, p.4
  11. ↑ Lloyd, S., p.22
  12. ↑ Lloyd, S., p.22
  13. ↑ Lloyd, S., pp.25-6
  14. ↑ Lloyd, S., 1907, p.21
  15. ↑ BLG, 1937, p.1392
  16. ↑ Lowe, p.17
  17. ↑ Lloyd, S., 1907, p.21
  18. ↑ http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/articles/Wednesbury/Lloyd/Birmingham.htm
  19. ↑ The Town Mill was originally a corn mill. Per 'Economic and Social History: Mills', in A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 7, the City of Birmingham, ed. W B Stephens (London, 1964), pp. 253-269: "In the early 18th century it ("Town Mills") was used, at least partly, as a slitting mill, and was called Farmer's Slitting Mill. James Farmer, ironmonger, was paying rent for the 'Town Mill' in 1720, and in 1728 Joseph Farmer obtained a lease of 'a water corn mill called the Town Mill'. Charles Lloyd occupied the mill in 1731, when it was called Lloyd's Slitting and Corn Mills"
  20. ↑ Birmingham: Archives, MS 28/330
  21. ↑ BLG, 1838, p.110
  22. ↑ Lloyd, S., 1907, p.22
  23. ↑ Lloyd, S., 1907, p.22
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