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.
From the guide to the Loyd family papers, 1814-1883, (Senate House Library, University of London)
