ABSTRACT
On the day when her husband was sent to prison Elizabeth Lloyd had been married less than a year and her infant son was four weeks old. The daughter of a considerable family, she had been brought up in Pembrokeshire in the turbulent days of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth and she had come to Dolobran in Montgomeryshire in 1662 as the bride of the young Charles Lloyd. She did not know on that winter’s night that ten years would pass before her husband was discharged from prison, that she herself would join him there or that most of her children would be born under the surveillance of a Welshpool gaoler. All she knew was that her husband had been summoned, with a handful of others, to be interviewed by the authorities, that he would be expected to swear loyal allegiance to the newly restored monarchy, which he could not do, and that he had not returned. She was alone, she had only servants to rely on and her people were two hundred miles away.
