Loyd family papers

Correspondence and papers of Samuel Jones Loyd and the Loyd Family. The correspondence touches on a wide range of social and political history from the 1830s to the 1880s. There are a few items relating chiefly to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and the financial crash of 1797. There is also material on Loyd's religious life; political career; cultural activities; plantations in Ceylon and a detailed description of the island of Mauritius. The family correspondence is particularly illuminating on the life of a nineteenth century upper class family.

Samuel Jones Loyd was born on 25 September 1796. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1818 and an MA in 1822. Loyd's father, the Reverend Lewis Loyd, accepted a partnership in Jones' Manchester Bank to form Jones, Loyd & Co. On Lewis Loyd's retirement in 1844, Samuel Loyd took control of the bank which merged with the London and Westminster Bank in 1863. Samuel Loyd was also involved in politics. He sat as the Liberal member for Hythe from 1819 to 1826 and in 1832 he unsuccessfully contested Manchester as a Liberal. In 1832, Loyd gave evidence before a parliamentary committee which was working on the Bank Act. Loyd warned against multiplying the issue of paper and permitting more than one bank of issue. He later went on to publish his evidence in 1837 in a work entitled Reflections on the State of the Currency . He again gave evidence before the committee of the House of Commons upon the banks of issue in 1840. The Bank Act, 1844, incorporated many of the ideas expressed by Loyd. During the 1840s and 50s Loyd published many pamphlets on financial matters and became a parliamentary advisor. Loyd was chairman of the Irish Famine Committee of 1846-9, received a peerage as Baron Overstone of Overstone and Fotheringhay in 1850. That same year he became a trustee of the National Gallery and, in 1851, he was a Commissioner of the Great Exhibition. He died at his house, 2 Carlton Gardens, London on 17 November 1883.

Access to the items in the collection is unrestricted for the purpose of private study and personal research within the controlled environment and restrictions of the Library's Palaeography Room

Presented by C L Loyd in May 1972

Paul Kelly, The Overstone Papers: A Handlist , London (1972); D.P. O'Brien, The Correspondence of Lord Overstone , Cambridge (1971)

The Public Record Office, London, holds letters to Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, 1854-1864 (Ref: PRO30/29); the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York University, has letters to Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax, 1846-1881 (Ref: Halifax papers A4).

Copies may be made, subject to the condition of the original. Copying must be undertaken by the Palaeography Room staff, who will need a minimum of 24 hours to process requests.