Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone

British Whig politician and banker

Samuel Jones Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone (25 September 1796 – 17 November 1883) was a British banker and politician.

Loyd was the only son of the Rev. Lewis Loyd and Sarah, daughter of John Jones, a Manchester banker. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Loyd's father had given up the ministry to take a partnership in his father in law's bank and became the founder of the London branch of Jones, Loyd & Co. Loyd joined his father's bank, and took control of the bank after his father retired in 1844. On his father's death in 1858 Loyd inherited an estate worth £ 2 million. In 1864 the bank became incorporated with the London and Westminster Bank.

Loyd sat in parliament as Whig member for Hythe from 1819 to 1826, Lord Overstone was a member of The Club (Literary Club) and the Political Economy Club and served as High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1838 and as President of the Royal Statistical Society from 1851 to 1853. In 1847 and 1848, he served on the committee of the British Relief Association, which raised almost half a million pounds on behalf of the famine victims in Ireland. (see, Christine Kinealy, Charity and the Great Hunger. The Kindness of Strangers'. Bloomsbury, 2013)

Lord Overstone married Harriet, daughter of Ichabod Wright, in 1829. They had one son, who died as an infant, and a daughter. The majority of Overstone's fortune was passed on to his daughter, Harriet. She was the wife of Robert Lindsay, who assumed the additional surname of Loyd and was created Baron Wantage in 1885. Overstone's relative Lewis Vivian Loyd, the son of his second cousin William Jones Loyd, inherited part of the estate, including the manor of Withybrook, Wolvey, Warwickshire.