# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lloyd, Charles Dalton Clifford

​LLOYD, CHARLES DALTON CLIFFORD (1844–1891), servant of the crown, eldest son of Colonel Robert Clifford Lloyd of the 68th Durham light infantry, by his wife, a daughter of Captain George Savage of the 13th light dragoons, was born at Portsmouth on 13 Jan. 1844. His grandfather was Bartholomew Lloyd [q. v.], provost of Trinity College, Dublin, 1831–7, and the same office was afterwards held by his uncle, Humphrey Lloyd (1800–1881) [q. v.] He was educated at Sandhurst, but instead of the army he entered in 1862 the police force in British Burmah, where he subsequently filled the offices of assistant and deputy-commissioner and inspector-general of registration. He came home in 1872 and read law at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar in Trinity term 1875, having already been appointed, 16 Feb. 1874, resident magistrate for co. Down, Ireland. In this capacity he displayed equal energy and discretion, and in January 1881 was entrusted with the onerous duty of restoring order in co. Longford. Though not expressly invested with extraordinary powers, he acted from the first on the assumption that all the forces of the crown within his jurisdiction were at his disposal, and by this means, and also by making a liberal use of the power of remand, whereby he dispensed in most cases with the necessity for further proceedings, effected the pacification of the county in a few months. In May he was transferred to Kilmallock, co. Limerick, where the land league had become the de facto government. By the arrest, however, under the Protection of Person and Property Act, on 20 May of Father Sheehy and other leading representatives of the league, followed by that of other leaguers at Kilfinane, and by a steady and vigorous administration of the ordinary law, Lloyd gradually restored its authority. During this period he was made the subject of violent attacks in the House of Commons and the Irish press, and he was in hourly danger of assassination. Fully alive to the defects of the Protection of Person and Property Act, which he held could only be put in force with advantage against combinations, he concerted with Mr. Forster in December 1881 a scheme for infusing new vigour into the administration of the ordinary law. The country was divided into five districts, each presided over by a special resident magistrate, invested with executive authority over the entire forces of the crown within his jurisdiction. Himself appointed special resident magistrate for the Limerick district, he organised during the winter of 1881–2 an efficient system of combined military and police protection. He was also mainly responsible for the administration of the Prevention of Crimes Act of 1882 within his district; and when in September 1883 the state of the country enabled his services to be dispensed with, he was able to boast that no case of grave agrarian crime had occurred within his district during his tenure of office.
Lloyd entered the service of the khedive of Egypt as inspector-general of reforms in 1883, and was soon advanced to the post of under-secretary at the home office. With characteristic energy he threw himself into schemes for sanitation, local self-government, and the cleansing of the Augean stables of justice. His proposals for the reform of prison management, formulated in January 1884, and partially carried into effect during the spring, excited the opposition of the Mudirs, whose powers they abridged, of Procureur-Général Sir Benson Maxwell, who was committed to another scheme, and finally of the Egyptian minister, Nubar Pasha, who in April talked of resigning in consequence. Lloyd, though supported at the outset by Sir Evelyn Baring, found his position untenable, and towards the end of May resigned. On his return to England he explained his plan of reform in a letter to the ‘Times,’ 30 June 1884 (see also the Times of 7 and 10 July following, and 29 Sept. 1888).
In the spring of 1885 Lloyd resumed the duties of resident magistrate in Ireland, ​being gazetted to serve for co. Londonderry on 12 March. In the winter he embarked for the Mauritius, where he had been appointed (23 Nov.) lieutenant-governor and colonial secretary. Here unfortunate differences with the governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, led to his transfer to the Seychelles (a charge which he never took up) in August 1886, and eventual resignation of office in 1887. For some time he remained without a post, and employed his leisure in writing a ‘Narrative of Personal Experiences’ in Ireland during the struggle with the land league. On 15 Sept. 1889 he was appointed consul for Kurdistan, where his exertions in the cause of the Armenians were cordially appreciated by Sir William White, the English ambassador at Constantinople. He died of pleuro-pneumonia at Erzeroum on 7 June 1891.
An autobiographical fragment, with a brief biographical preface, appeared in 1892 under the title, ‘Ireland under the Land League: a Narrative of Personal Experiences,’ London, 8vo. It covers the period from the summer of 1880 to the winter of 1881–2, and presents an extremely lively picture of the state of Ireland at that crisis as seen from the point of view of an eminently humane, capable, brave, and resolute official. Though a staunch unionist, Lloyd was by no means a partisan of the landlords, and was strongly in favour of the decentralisation of the Irish administrative system (cf. his letter to the Times of 21 Aug. 1885, headed ‘Political Necessities in Ireland’).
[Besides the works noticed above, see Parl. Papers (H. C.), 1884, vol. lxxxviii., Egypt, No. 1 p. 73, No. 5 pp. 16–19, vol. lxxxix., Egypt, No. 18 p. 27, No. 25 pp. 38–42, and 94–103, 1887 vol. lviii. c. 5101; Times, 18, 19, and 27 Sept. 1883, 22 and 27 March, and 7–10 April 1884, 21 Feb., 7 and 14 March, and 21 Aug. 1885, 25 Aug. 1886, 20 May, 16 June, and 28 Dec. 1887, 26 Nov. 1888, 18 March, 15 Sept., and 8 Nov. 1889, and 8 and 10 Jan. 1891; Dublin Gazette, February 1874 and March 1885; London Gazette, November 1885; Foreign Office List, 1890; Ann. Reg. Chron. p. 136.]
J. M. R.