LLOYD, DAVID (1597 - 1663), dean of St Asaph

Name: David Lloyd

Author: John James Jones

son of David Lloyd, born in 1597 at Berth-lwyd, Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire. He matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1612, and graduated B.A. in 1615, being incorporated at Cambridge the following year. He became Fellow of All Souls 1618, B.C.L. 1622, and D.C.L. 1628. He was appointed chaplain to the 6th earl of Derby in 1639. After a period as rector of Trefdraeth, Anglesey, he was, in July 1642, instituted to the living of Llangynhafal and in December of the same year, to the vicarage of Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd. The same year, also, he was made warden of Ruthin. He was deprived of his benefices by the Long Parliament, but was reinstated at the Restoration, and promoted to the deanery of St Asaph. In 1662 he was presented to one of the comportions of Llansannan. He died 7 September 1663. The epitaph which he had himself composed, but which was not used, his resting-place at Ruthin being left without a monument, is printed by Wood (Athenae Oxonienses, iii, 653). In it he confesses to an inordinate fondness for the pleasures of the table. He was an ardent Royalist, and in his petition for reinstatement (1660) at the Restoration he states that he had ‘often entertained princes Rupert and Maurice, and once the late King himself.’ Lloyd is chiefly known as the author of The Legend of Captain Jones, 1631, a good-natured burlesque on the exploits of an Elizabethan seaman. The braggart captain is to be regarded as a type rather than as a real person. The Legend immediately became popular and went through several editions.