Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lloyd, John (d.1523)

1442242Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 33 — Lloyd, John (d.1523)1893Augustus Hughes-Hughes

LLOYD, FLOYD, or FLUD, JOHN (d. 1523), composer, appears to have been born either in the parish of St. Cadocks or in that of Christchurch, at Caerleon in Monmouthshire, near the end of the fifteenth century. Foxe, bishop of Winchester, writing to Cardinal Wolsey 20 July 1515, seems to refer to the composer when describing the unruly action of the canons of St. Augustine's, Bristol. He writes that ‘one Lloyd, of the king's chapel, is chief author of this mischief … a young fool.’ It may have been to atone for some youthful indiscretion hinted at here that Lloyd resolved, in January 1518, to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Whether he was the John Fludde who graduated B.A. at Oxford in 1519 is doubtful. Hawkins describes him as bachelor of music; he certainly took a musical degree, as he is styled in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 31922 ‘in armonia graduat,’ and his early death makes it improbable that he obtained a doctor's degree. In 1520 Lloyd, along with the other gentlemen of Henry VIII's Chapel, attended the king at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and in January in the following year he appears to have accompanied his royal master on a visit to the Duke of Buckingham at Thornbury Castle, Gloucestershire. At various times he received grants of corrodies in the monasteries of St. Augustine's at Bristol, Glastonbury, and Thetford. He died on 3 April 1523 ‘in the king's chapel,’ and was buried in the Savoy, being described on his tombstone there as ‘virtutis et religionis cultor.’ The only compositions of his extant are contained in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 31922, and consist of a round in three parts, ‘Deme the best of euery dowt,’ and two instrumental pieces, also in three parts.

[Cal. State Papers; Loftie's Memorials of the Savoy; copy of will at Somerset House.]

A. H.-H.