ABSTRACT
A fresh tide was now running in Birmingham as in the country at large and the next twenty-five years were a surging time. The Seven Years’ War was over, * a spirit of expansion and improvement was in the air, and whether in trade and finance, in communications, in scientific enquiry and technology, or in matters of civic and human conscience, Birmingham kindled to it. The town had been growing steadily. Soon, with the new progress and prosperity, its population would quadruple. Previously its leading men may have been pushing and successful but they had been individualists. A new collective attitude, a readiness to band together, to canvass new projects, promote Acts of Parliament and raise subscriptions for large schemes was now the fashion, and changes of all kinds began to be made. It was not long before the Lloyds were drawn into this current and they played their own part in giving it momentum, for in addition to their iron interests they were now to engage in banking, a development as important for the town as for the family. In fact, whether in Birmingham or in London, no less than four of the five sons of Sampson Lloyd II became members of banking partnerships and both his daughters married bankers. As he had, however, two families, the girls coming in the middle, and as in 1764 when this chapter opens the younger sons were still in their teens, the story of Sampson, the eldest, can be followed first, leaving Nehemiah, Charles, John and Ambrose until later. Indeed the creation of the town’s first bank and the rise of Sampson Lloyd III must be, against the background of the new Birmingham, the next matters for our attention.
