LLOYD, David

A Welshman, Lloyd became a member of Henry VI’s household by 1438, as a minor official.3 E101/408/25, f. 8. He served under the King’s kinsman John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, in the garrison at Cherbourg between September 1439 and March 1440,4 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. mss, 25775/1430; Clairambault mss, 164/78. before returning to the Household as one of the master cooks of the kitchen. Together with another royal servant he then received a grant of forfeited goods, and a year later, in March 1444, as ‘King’s esquire’ he was rewarded for his service in the French wars with a grant for life of the agistment of the beasts of men dwelling in the Welsh forest of Glyncothy, Carmarthenshire. This grant was reiterated, with the addition of two water-mills in the forest, in September 1445. In the meantime, Lloyd had been a member of the party sent to France to escort Henry VI’s queen Margaret of Anjou to England in the winter of 1444-5, taking up the position of master cook in her household for which he was paid wages of 18d. a day. As the queen’s master cook he regularly received special rewards of £2 p.a., and was still holding the office in Michaelmas term 1453 when she gave him a gold bracelet.5 Add. 23938, f. 14d; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 175, 259, 374; Myers, 185, 218, 226; E101/410/8, 11.

Meanwhile, in May 1446 Lloyd had been granted together with John Blakeney, the clerk of the signet, custody of the gaol in Guildford castle, to hold for term of their lives in survivorship, and sharing between them a daily wage of 2d. from the issues of Surrey and Sussex and any profits from the ‘castell gardeyn’.6 E159/224, recorda Mich. rot. 15d. Lloyd’s grants in south Wales appear to have been resumed under the Act of Resumption of 1450,7 B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 261. but he seems to have not been troubled in his post at Guildford. His position as keeper of the gaol there led to his election for the local borough to the Parliament summoned to meet at Coventry in November 1459, in the aftermath of the Yorkist defeat at Ludford Bridge. In the Commons he joined several other royal servants, sure to be loyal to the Lancastrian crown, and to support the proscription of the Yorkist lords. Nevertheless, in reversed political circumstances the burgesses of Guildford re-elected him to the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster on 7 Oct. 1460, following the Yorkist victory at Northampton. Lloyd had attested the indenture recording the election of the knights of the shire for Surrey at the shire court held at Guildford on 17 Sept.8 C219/16/6. There is a possibility that the MP was the David Lloyd listed as being among those beheaded with Owen Tudor after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross in February 1461, although the name is not uncommon. In September that year the new King Edward IV appointed Richard Patyne as gaoler at Guildford, a post perhaps the equivalent to the one granted to Lloyd and Blakeney by Henry VI.9 J. Stow, Annales, 413; CPR, 1461-7, p. 43.