This book is about the Quaker Lloyds in the time of the industrial revolution. Inspired at first by several finds of unpublished letters, it was foreseen as the biography of a family, but progressive researches while work on the material was being carried out have made it a family and business history combined. First in Wales and then in the growing town of Birmingham, making their way in early iron banking, the Lloyds for more than six generations were Quakers. Their Quaker period, from the 1660s to about the 1860s, is the period of this book, an era ending before the full onset of the modern time and before the present large-scale development of the Bank or of the manufacturing firms which carry on the name of the family today.