LLOYD, EDWARD (1845–), English tenor vocalist, was born in London on the 7th of March 1845, his father, Richard Lloyd, being vicar choralist at Westminster Abbey. From 1852 to 1860 he sang in the abbey choir, and was thoroughly trained in music, eventually becoming solo tenor at the Chapel Royal. He began singing at concerts in 1867, and in 1871 appeared at the Gloucester Musical Festival. His fine evenly-produced voice and pure style at once brought him into notice, and he gradually took the place of Sims Reeves as the leading English tenor of the day, his singing of classical music, and especially of Handel, being particularly admired. At the Handel Festivals after 1888 he was the principal tenor, and even in the vast auditorium at the Crystal Palace he triumphed over acoustic difficulties. In 1888, 1890 and 1892 he paid successful visits to the United States; but by degrees he appeared less frequently in public, and in 1900 he formally retired from the platform.
LLOYD, WILLIAM (1627–1717), English divine, successively bishop of St Asaph, of Lichfield and Coventry, and of Worcester, was born at Tilehurst, Berkshire, in 1627, and was educated at Oriel and Jesus Colleges, Oxford. He graduated M.A. in 1646. In 1663 he was prebendary of Ripon, in 1667 prebendary of Salisbury, in 1668 archdeacon of Merioneth, in 1672 dean of Bangor and prebendary of St Paul’s, London, in 1680 bishop of St Asaph, in 1689 lord-almoner, in 1692 bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and in 1699 bishop of Worcester. Lloyd was an indefatigable opponent of the Roman Catholic tendencies of James II., and was one of the seven bishops who for refusing to have the Declaration of Indulgence read in his diocese was charged with publishing a seditious libel against the king and acquitted (1688). He engaged Gilbert Burnet to write The History of the Reformation of the Church of England and provided him with much material. He was a good scholar and a keen student of biblical apocalyptic literature and himself “prophesied” to Queen Anne, Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, William Whiston, and John Evelyn the diarist. Lloyd was a stanch supporter of the revolution. His chief publication was An Historical Account of Church Government as it was in Great Britain and Ireland when they first received the Christian Religion (London, 1684, reprinted Oxford, 1842). He died at Hartlebury castle on the 30th of August 1717.
LLOYD, WILLIAM WATKISS (1813–1893), English man of letters, was born at Homerton, Middlesex, on the 11th of March 1813. He received his early education at Newcastle-under-Lyme grammar school, and at the age of fifteen entered a family business in London, with which he was connected for thirty-five years. He devoted his leisure to the study of art, architecture, archaeology, Shakespeare, classical and modern languages and literature. He died in London on the 22nd of December 1893. The work by which he is best known is The Age of Pericles (1875), characterized by soundness of scholarship, great learning, and a thorough appreciation of the period with which it deals, but rendered unattractive by a difficult and at times obscure style. He wrote also: Xanthian Marbles (1845); Critical Essays upon Shakespeare’s Plays (1875); Christianity in the Cartoons [of Raphael] (1865), which excited considerable attention from the manner in which theological questions were discussed; The History of Sicily to the Athenian War (1872); Panics and their Panaceas (1869); an edition of Much Ado about Nothing, “now first published in fully recovered metrical form” (1884; the author held that all the plays were originally written in blank verse). A number of manuscripts still remain unpublished, the most important of which have been bequeathed to the British Museum, amongst them being: A Further History of Greece; The Century of Michael Angelo; The Neo-Platonists.
See Memoir by Sophia Beale prefixed to Lloyd’s (posthumously published) Elijah Fenton: his Poetry and Friends (1894), containing a list of published and unpublished works.
LLOYD GEORGE, DAVID (1863–), British statesman, was born at Manchester on the 17th of January 1863. His father, William George, a Welshman of yeoman stock, had left Pembrokeshire for London at an early age and became a school teacher there, and afterwards in Liverpool and Haverfordwest, and then headmaster of an elementary school at Pwllheli, Carnarvonshire, where he married the daughter of David Lloyd, a neighbouring Baptist minister. Soon afterwards William George became headmaster of an elementary school in Manchester, but after the birth of his eldest son David his health failed, and he gave up his post and took a small farm near Haverfordwest. Two years later he died, leaving his widow in poor circumstances; a second child, another son, was posthumously born. Mrs George’s brother, Richard Lloyd, a shoemaker at Llanystumdwy, and pastor of the Campbellite Baptists there, now became her chief support; it was from him that young David obtained his earliest views of practical and political life, and also the means of starting, at the age of fourteen, on the career of a solicitor.
Having passed his law preliminary, he was articled to a firm in Portmadoc, and in 1884 obtained his final qualifications. In 1888 he married Margaret, daughter of Richard Owen of Criccieth. From the first he managed to combine his solicitor’s work with politics, becoming secretary of the South Carnarvonshire Anti-tithe League; and his local reputation was made by a successful fight, carried to the High Court, in defence of the right of Nonconformists to burial in the parish churchyard. In the first county council elections for Carnarvonshire he played a strenuous part on the Radical side, and was chosen an alderman; and in 1890, at a by-election for Carnarvon Boroughs, he was returned to parliament by a majority of 18 over a strong Conservative opponent. He held his seat successfully at the contests in 1892, 1895 and 1900, his reputation as a champion of Welsh nationalism, Welsh nonconformity and extreme Radicalism becoming thoroughly established both in parliament and in the country. In the House of Commons he was one of the most prominent guerrilla fighters, conspicuous for his audacity and pungency of utterance, and his capacity for obstruction while the Conservatives were in office. During the South African crisis of 1899–1902 he was specially vehement in opposition to Mr Chamberlain, and took the “pro-Boer” side so bitterly that he was mobbed in Birmingham during the 1900 election when he attempted to address a meeting at the Town Hall. But he was again returned for Carnarvon Boroughs; and in the ensuing parliament he came still more to the front by his resistance to the Education Act of 1902.
As the leader of the Welsh party, and one of the most dashing parliamentarians on the Radical side, his appointment to office when Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman became premier at the end of 1905 was generally expected; but his elevation direct to the cabinet as president of the Board of Trade was somewhat of a surprise. The responsibilities of administration have, however, often converted a political free-lance into a steady-going official, and the Unionist press did its best to encourage such a tendency by continual praise of the departmental action of the new minister. His settlement of the railway dispute in 1906 was universally applauded; and the bills he introduced and passed for reorganizing the port of London, dealing with Merchant Shipping, and enforcing the working in England of patents granted there, and so increasing the employment of British labour, were greeted with satisfaction by the tariff-reformers, who congratulated themselves that a Radical free-trader should thus throw over the policy of laisser faire. The president of the Board of Trade was the chief success of the ministry, and when Mr Asquith became premier in 1908 and promoted Mr Lloyd George to the chancellorship of the exchequer, the appointment was well received even in the City of London. For that year the budget was already settled, and it was introduced by Mr Asquith himself, the ex-chancellor; but Mr Lloyd George earned golden opinions, both at the Treasury and in parliament, by his industry and his handling of the Finance Bill, especially important for its inclusion of Old Age Pensions, in the later stages.
It was not till the time came nearer for the introduction of the budget for 1909–1910 that opinion in financial circles showed the change which was afterwards to become so marked. A considerable deficit, of about £16,000,000, was in prospect, and the
