26 Jones Archives

ate Sir John Herbert Lewis, Liberal MP for Flintshire (then parliamentary secretary to the Local Government ArchivesArchives Board), wrote to thank him effusively for this ‘courageous act’, proceeding, ‘The Library will be at, I hope, a very distant date your literary mausoleum’. This hope has by now been largely Liberal Party Archives at the fulfilled. The seven Lloyd George archives may be enumerated as follows: National Library of Wales .Brynawelon group (NLW MSS ,–): Purchase J. Graham Jones . Earl Lloyd-George Papers (NLW MSS ,–, NLW MSS ,–, and NLW ex ): Purchase and ver since the foundation of the witnessed a sharp upsurge in the .William George Papers: Purchase ENational Library of Wales in , inflow of political archives, including the Department of Manuscripts and those of the Liberal Party. .Olwen Carey-Evans Papers (NLW Records has acted as a national archival This account is confined to archives MSS ,–): Purchase repository, and has acquired and and collections of papers dating from .A. J. Sylvester Papers: Purchase preserved the papers of a number of about . Only significant archives . Viscount Tenby Papers (NLW MSS prominent Welsh Liberal politicians. and groups of records are listed. A ,–): Purchase Many of the generation of distin- comprehensive guide to small archives . Frances Stevenson Family Papers: guished Liberal politicians who had and stray items relevant to the history Purchase been closely associated with the of the Liberal Party would have led to movement to set up a National Library a list of inordinate length. Among these archives, two groups of in the late nineteenth century were papers are quite outstanding – Lloyd themselves professional men, often George’s letters to his first wife Dame barristers, solicitors or academics, or David Lloyd George Margaret within the Brynawelon else they came from a commercial papers group, and those to his brother William background, and were thus archivally In any consideration of the personal in the William George Papers. Lloyd minded, fully sensitive to the historical papers of Liberal politicians, prec- George was at no time a prolific significance of their papers, and thus to edence must be given to those of correspondent, writing very sparingly the necessity of preserving them in David Lloyd George, Liberal MP for to both personal friends and political good order. the Caernarfon Boroughs, –, associates. But he did write regularly, By the s, however, there was a Chancellor of the Exchequer, –, often daily, to his wife Margaret, who growing awareness that many politi- and Prime Minister, –. The (at least during the early years of their cians and political activists were simply most extensive group of his political marriage) much preferred the domes- unaware of the historical importance papers, those which he bequeathed to tic tranquillity of Cricieth to the of the papers which they acquired, and his second wife Frances, and which she political bustle of Westminster, and to so too the officials of local political subsequently sold to Lord Beaverbrook his younger brother William, who parties and pressure groups. Many in (and hence originally held at conscientiously ran the Cricieth-based significant groups of political papers the Beaverbrook Library) are now in family legal practice Lloyd George & and the records of local parties had the custody of the Parliamentary George, and who acted as Lloyd ceased to exist. During the whole of Archive (the Record Office at the George’s election agent and ever-loyal the s, not a single significant House of Lords). But the National political lieutenant within the Caer- Liberal archive had come to hand. It Library of Wales now holds no fewer narfon Boroughs. Lloyd George wrote was in order to rectify these deficien- than seven important Lloyd George secure in the knowledge that both cies that the Welsh Political Archive archives, six of them acquired during groups of letters would be perused was established at the NLW in the the last twenty years. At the beginning anxiously and proudly by his revered spring of . Its original remit was of , after Lloyd George, as Chan- uncle and mentor Richard Lloyd wide-ranging: ‘to co-ordinate the cellor of the Exchequer, had agreed to (‘Uncle Lloyd’). Many of the series of collection of all materials – manuscript, a government grant of £, to the some , letters from Lloyd George printed and audio-visual – concerning embryonic National Library of Wales to Dame Margaret, – (NLW politics in Wales’. So hard-hitting has (as well as a special grant of £ a MSS – ) have been edited and been the impact of the Archive that the published by Professor Kenneth O. year for two years for cataloguing intervening seventeen years have manuscripts), his close political associ- Morgan. The even longer series of 26 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 26: Spring 2000 , letters from Lloyd George to acquiring a long sequence of more than highly influential Baner ac Amserau William, – – often fuller, letters, –, from the Labour Cymru. more revealing and more intensely MP Philip Noel-Baker (–) to Sir John Herbert Lewis (–). MP political than his epistles to Margaret – Megan with whom she shared a very for Flint Boroughs, –, have been used by only a small number close, if intermittent, relationship from Flintshire, –, and the University of writers and researchers. The William until . Mervyn Jones’s highly of Wales, –; Junior Lord of the George Papers also include ten pocket acclaimed biography of Lady Megan is Treasury and a Liberal Party Whip, diaries kept by the young Lloyd largely founded on this substantial series ; parliamentary secretary to the George from (when he was only of letters. Local Government Board, –; fifteen years of age) until . Although small groups of corre- Parliamentary Secretary to the Board The papers of Lloyd George’s spondence and papers and stray items of Education, –. devoted principal private secretary from will undoubtedly come to light in , Albert James Sylvester (–) future, it may be noted with confi- A. C. Humphreys-Owen (–). include many files of correspondence dence that no major Lloyd George MP for Montgomeryshire, –; and papers potently illuminating his archive now remains in private hands. close confidant of Stuart Rendel. employer’s activities and aspirations after Stuart Rendel (–). MP for his fall from power in . There is also Montgomeryshire, –, first a long series of very detailed typescript Contemporaries of Lloyd chairman of the Welsh Parliamentary diaries which include much important George Party from ; close friend to W. E. material beyond that published by The National Library also holds Gladstone. Colin Cross in . Among the substantial archives of the papers of Viscount Tenby Papers purchased in many of the distinguished Liberal J. Bryn Roberts ( – ). MP for the is much material concerning politicians who were Lloyd George’s Eifion division of Caernarfonshire, Major Gwilym Lloyd-George, first Viscount early contemporaries at Westminster. – . Tenby (–), the Liberal (later Among them are: D. A. Thomas (–). MP for National Liberal) MP for Merthyr Tydfil, – January , Pembrokeshire, – and –, David Davies, Llandinam (–). and for Cardiff, January–December who later served from – as the MP for Montgomeryshire, –; ; Baron Rhondda, January ; National Liberal and Conservative MP parliamentary private secretary to D. Viscount Rhondda, June ; for Newcastle-upon-Tyne North, and Lloyd George when he was Minister of President of the Local Government who became Home Secretary and Munitions and Prime Minister, – Board, –; Food Controller, Minister for Welsh Affairs under Prime ; founder of the New Common- –. Ministers Churchill and Eden. The wealth Association; created the first most recent acquisition, purchased only Baron Davies of Llandinam, . Also in the custody of the National in January of this year, is a small ‘residue’ Sir Owen M. Edwards (–). MP Library are groups of papers of the of the papers of Frances Stevenson, the for Merionethshire, –; first following Liberal politicians and public Dowager Countess Lloyd-George of Dwyfor chief inspector of schools in Wales figures: ( – ), which Ruth Longford used under the new Welsh Education as the basis of her graphic and vivid Department, . A. H. D. Acland ( – ). MP for study of her grandmother published in Rotherham, –, and for the . Thomas Edward Ellis (–). MP for Chiltern Hundreds, –; The Brynawelon group also in- Merionethshire, –; second created th Baronet in . cludes a few of the papers of Lady Liberal whip under Gladstone, ; Sir Alfred T. Davies (–). Per ma- Megan Lloyd George (–), the chief whip under Rosebery, . nent Secretary to the Welsh Depart- youngest of the five children of David There is also a substantial group of ment of the Board of Education, and Margaret Lloyd George, who was papers relating to T. E. Ellis among –. the Liberal MP for Anglesey, – those of his close friend and confidant (in the former year becoming the first- D. R. Daniel (–), and among Ellis W. Davies (–). MP for the ever woman MP in the history of those of his son Dr T. I. Ellis (– Eifion division of Caernarfonshire, Wales), and, who, having formally ). –; unsuccessfully contested embraced socialism in April , Sir Samuel T. Evans (–). MP for Caernarfonshire in ; MP for the served as the Labour MP for Mid-Glamorgan, –; Solicitor- Denbigh division of Denbighshire, Carmarthenshire, – . A notori- General, –; President of the – . ously lax correspondent, Megan was Divorce, Probate and Admiralty Court,

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