Sampson Lloyd (iron manufacturer)


Sampson Lloyd[John Burke (genealogist)|] 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, which went on to found Lloyds Bank, today one of the largest banks in the United Kingdom.

Origins

He was the younger son of Charles Lloyd of Dolobran in Montgomeryshire, where the Lloyd family had been established gentry for many centuries. Sampson's mother was his father's first wife Elizabeth Lort, daughter of Sampson Lort of East Moor in Pembrokeshire, 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, created a baronet in 1662.
Sampson was born in 1664 "at Anne Eccleston's in Welshpool", the rented house where his parents had been held for the previous two years under house arrest, having been transferred from the Welshpool jail, and where they would remain for the next eight years, having as Quakers refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to King Charles II 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 Lloyd, who had inherited Dolobran, he deserted the "uncharitableness of his native Wales" and moved about 62 miles south-east of Dolobran to the town of Birmingham in Warwickshire, 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, which course had been chosen by his uncle Thomas Lloyd 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" 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. Slitting mills were especially plentiful on the River Stour between Stourbridge and Stourport. He also started business as an iron merchant in Edgbaston Street, Birmingham, in which he lived at number 56. He had a profitable career in the firm he founded called "Sampson Lloyd and Sons".

Description of Lloyd's mills

In a map of Birmingham dated 1731, 7 years after Samuel'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:

Marriage and children

He married twice. His first wife was Elizabeth Good, by whom he had four daughters. After her death, he remarried in 1695 to Mary Crowley, whose sister Sarah Crowley had married his elder brother Charles Lloyd of Dolobran. Mary and Sarah were daughters of Ambrose Crowley, a Quaker Blacksmith in Stourbridge, Worcestershire and Sheriff of London. The brother of the two sisters was Sir Ambrose Crowley, an ironmonger, whose daughter Elizabeth Crowley was the wife of John St John, 11th Baron St John of Bletso. During the time of Sir Ambrose III's management, the Crowley Iron Works at Winlaton, Winlaton Mill, and at Swalwell, all in County Durham were probably Europe's biggest industrial complex. Sir Ambrose lent large sums to the government which appointed him a founding director of the South Sea Company. By his second wife Mary Crowley he had four sons and two daughters including:
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.

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.

Lloyd Family History

*
Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, pp. 1392-3, pedigree of Lloyd of Dolobran