GEORGE, David Lloyd, British states man: b. at 5 New York Place, Chorlton-on Medlock, Manchester, 17 Jan. 1863. His father, William George (born 1820), who came of farming stock in South Wales, married Eliz abeth Lloyd (died 1896), daughter of David Lloyd of Llanystmdwy, North Wales. He was a Unitarian schoolmaster and held schools in Lancashire; two of his children were born in Manchester. Under the strain of city life, his health began to fail; he took a farm at Haver fordwest, in Pembrokeshire, and there suc cumbed to pneumonia 7 June 1864. In her distress the widow appealed to her bachelor brother, Richard Lloyd, the village shoemaker of Llanystmdwy, and he invited her to bring her family to share his home. Richard Lloyd (d 1917) was a man of strong personality, who, in addition to his ordinary avocation, nun istered to the local congregation of the Church cif Christ or the Disciples—the community to which President Garfield was attached— and into fellowship with which the future prime minister was in due time baptized.
Lloyd George's upbringing was Spartan in its simplicity, and the environment of his youth, raised as he was on the edge of the poverty line, is significant of much in is outlook on the world. His uncle's "home was comfortable, but thrifty and pinched. Our bread was home made; we scarcely ate fresh meat, and I re member that our greatest luxury was half an egg for each child on Sunday mornings? But if there was barely a sufficiency to eat, the in tellectual and spiritual atmosphere was both nourishing and stimulating. His uncle's shop was the rendezvous for the village, "the centre of gossip, of disputation, of all the conflicts of religious and political creeds? The 'atmosphere was that of militant non-conformity; Church and Squire were the powers that be, and they were allied: to the one non-conformists — the great majority of the Welsh people—were compelled to pay tithes, and by the other his tenants were expected to support the political candidate for Parliament to whom he gave support, or evic tion might be the result. It is told of Lloyd George that in school he headed a revolt against the Ash Wednesday parade of the village school in which was taught the Church creed and catechism compulsorily—with such effect that it was afterward abandoned. In order that he
might pass the entrance examination for the Incorporated Law Society, he and his uncle learned French together, by laboriously spell ing out of an old French dictionary and out of a grammar the rudiments of the language. The examination passed, he was in his seventeenth year articled to a solicitor at Portmadoc. He then began to contribute articles to the native Welsh press, and he served in the volunteers. In 1884 he was admitted a solicitor; and so poor was he that he could not afford three guineas for his robes, and had to wait till he got a few cases before he could meet this outlay. He be gan practice at Criccieth — then and now his home — and the following year opened an office at Portmadoc. As a member of the Portmadoc Debating Society he steadily cultivated the talent for platform oratory which from his boy hood he was seen to possess, and came to be almost as much at his ease in English as in his native Welsh. In 1886 he organized the Farm ers' Union, and became secretary to the Anti Tithe League of Carnarvon. His practice as a solicitor began to grow rapidly; he acquired a reputation as a reliable, industrious and astute pleader, and he was not in the least daunted by the frowns or illwill of the local magnates who filled the magistracy. In 1888 the principality was thrown into a turmoil by the Llanfrothen Burial Case. Under the Morgan Burials Act of 1880, non-conformists were permitted, on for mal notification to the parish clergyman, to bury their dead in the parish churchyards of Wales, and with their own rites. The rector of this parish endeavored to defeat the act in the case of the interment of a quarryman who had de sired to be buried beside his daughter; and he claimed the right to select the spot where the man should be buried. Lloyd George advised that the rector's action was illegal, the gates of the churchyard were forced, and the interment took place in accordance with the quarryman's last wishes. The case was fought out in the courts, and in the end the young solicitor's action was fully vindicated. In the same year he married Miss Maggie Owen, of Mynydd Edynfed Fiwr, Criccieth. Four children — two sons and two daughters — have been born of the union.