Owen Lloyd Esq. 1631 : Short Biography

Owen Lloyd Esq. (d.1664) was an army captain and the first possessor of the 'Lloyd of Croghan' Roscommon estate, in which shire he acquired 3,000 acres.  He married Elizabeth Fitzgerald (daughter of Sir Luke Fitzgerald). Owen’s father-in-law, Sir Luke Fitzgerald, of Tyroghan (aka Ticroghan near Kinnegad) was a grandson of the illustrious Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, direct ancestor of the ducal house of Leinster, and of the other noble branches of that family. Owen’s father, Thomas Lloyd Esq. of Wrexham (North Wales) had moved to Ireland because his wife, Honor Price, had married him against her ‘friends’ consent. (At first they stayed with a relative in Co. Down and later took up residence in Carrick Drumrushe  aka Carrick-on-Shannon at the seat of his cousin, Sir Maurice Gryffyth aka Griffith. There, acquiring an estate of 1,200 acres in Co. Leitrim, Thomas & Honor Lloyd settled, never to return to Wales). In the 1641 Down Survey, Thomas Lloyd (Protestant) is recorded as a landowner in the parish of Cloone (barony of Mohill) Co. Leitrim.

Between 1641 and 1653 Ireland was devastated by Oliver Cromwell's English reconquest of the island. By 1659, Owen Lloyd Esq., (d.1664) and wife, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, were living at Abbey, Boyle, Co Roscommon. They may also have owned land in Barnane, co. Tipperary. He is possibly the ‘Captain Owen Lloyd’ included in Cromwell's general pardon of Parliamentarians in 1661.

Owen Lloyd died in 1665 leaving a young family of 3 sons & 3 daughters. The girls married in Elphin. The youngest son, Owen Lloyd Jr, was a senior fellow at the University of Dublin (aka Trinity College). His second son, Col. Richard Lloyd  was also educated at Trinity College and prior to his father's death, was already a successful planter in Jamaica and a member of the general assembly on that island. Upon his death in 1665, Owen Lloyd Esq. was suceeded initially by his eldest son Col. Thomas Lloyd (1657-1689) who died without issue.  In 1670, we can see that Col. Thomas Lloyd (Protestant) had acquired 17 townlands in  Co. Roscommon; primarily the property of the McDermotts (Catholics) in the parishes of Estersnow and Ardcarn, that of William Mulloy (Catholic) in the parishes of Killukin and Ardcarne, and of Josias Lambert (Protestant) in the parish of Killummod. The Lloyd property in Co Leitrim had also been retained. 

However, Col. Thomas Lloyd died young, age 32, without issue, so ultimately it was the Hon. Richard Lloyd of Jamaica (and later Westminster) who inherited the Roscommon & Leitrim property and became the next ancestor from whom of the Lloyds of Croghan descend.