?Like many of his contemporaries, Priestley furnished his clients with architectural components as well as furniture. In September 6, 1826, he billed Edward V $7.60 for two feet of planed mahogany, five unturned mahogany newels, three unturned poplar newels, and “30 feet Mahogany for a Hand Rail.” Installed in the central passage at Wye House, Priestley’s handrail (fig. 61) undoubtedly replaced an older one. Perhaps the old rail had candle arms that became redundant when Edward V purchased a “passage chandelier” from Baltimore merchant R. A. Campbell. Priestley’s handrail is another Lloyd article that, given its proven service, has not required replacement.61
Like the shaving table ordered by Edward IV (fig. 31), the chamber table (fig. 62) valued at $15 in his son’s private inventory probably survived because it remained useful. The sophisticated design, crisp turnings, and stylish cut glass pulls of the chamber table suggest that it is a Baltimore product but not necessarily by Priestley.62
Despite the quantity and significance of household furnishings associated with Edward V, the interior spaces of Wye House do not reflect his taste any more than that of other proprietors. The rooms are an eclectic assemblage of one family’s prized and useful possessions. Family members saved, reproduced, and discarded items for a variety of reasons—some shifting from generation to generation. Fashion, sentiment, usefulness, historical importance, economics, and, more recently, the dictums of the colonial revival influenced which objects the Lloyd family saved and how these furnishings were arranged. Today, the rooms scrupulously combine objects of beauty and pride, such as the French mantle clock purchased by Edward V (fig. 63), with objects of comfort and utility, such as common chests of drawers (fig. 64). Like Edward III’s silver, the ormolu clock is decorated with implements pertaining to wheat farming, signifying the source of the Lloyds’ wealth. The clock has proudly graced the mantle of the small parlor or dining room since Edward V’s proprietorship. Like many French mantle clocks owned by American families, the Lloyd example was reputedly a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette. Although not documented, this history has some credibility since Edward V was the Marquis’ oYcial host when he visited Maryland in 1824.63
Upon the death of Edward V in 1834, his seven children received equal shares of his land, furnishings, and fortune. One incomplete inventory of Wye House taken before Edward VI moved in probably pertains only to the objects he inherited. Edward VI sold much less of his inheritance than the preceding proprietors. In November 1834, Captain William Powell paid him $228.62 for eighteen mahogany chairs, a sofa, a pair of pistols, an assortment of silver flatware, a silver siphon, bottles and canisters, a balance, a compass, and three cows. The latter’s receipt is the only evidence that Edward VI sold household furnishings.64
Edward VI: Fine Furnishings and Failing Finances
In 1824, Edward VI married Alicia McBlair (1806–1838) of Baltimore, and moved into Wye Heights, an old Lloyd plantation house specially redesigned for them. Three years later, “Edward Lloyd, Jr.,” as he was called during his father’s lifetime, purchased a “frame for a marble slab,” a liquor case, a mahogany bedstead, a maple bedstead, and mattresses and ticking from Edward Priestley. The pier table and liquor case (fig. 65) became part of the furnishings of the north parlor in Wye House when Edward VI moved there after his father’s death in 1834. The two pieces are listed consecutively in the former’s 1861 inventory, and photographs indicate that they have remained together ever since:
2 Large Gilt frame Mirrors 20.00
2 Girandoles 5.00
2 Card tables 5.00
12 Arm chairs 12.00
1 Marble slab 5.00
1 Liquor case & bottles 2.00
5 Groups of ornaments 5.00
9 Mantle ornaments 3.0065
Edward VI bought most of his furniture from Baltimore cabinetmakers John (fl. 1810–1837) and James (fl. 1818–1848) Williams. He and Alicia paid the brothers nine dollars to make a cradle for their first child Edward VII (1825–1907) in 1825 and $45 for a wardrobe the following year. The wardrobe illustrated in figure 66 may be the one the couple commissioned. Based on its late neoclassical cornice, thick reeded pilasters, and ring-and-ball turned feet, it appears to date from the mid-1820s. The decorative turned “capitals” are similar to the corner blocks on the window and door surrounds at Wye Heights. This motif is also common on mirror and picture frames, which tend to be highly architectonic.66
Five of eight wardrobes remain from those purchased during Edward VI’s proprietorship, but existing receipts do not provide enough information to identify them or their makers. Baltimore cabinetmaker Henry Dukehart charged Edward VI $20 for a wardrobe in 1834 and $32 for a comparable example the following year. Two years later Edward VI paid John and James Williams $24 for a maple wardrobe and $50 for a mahogany one. The Lloyds’ storage needs must have been considerable. In 1844, he commissioned the Williams brothers to make two more mahogany wardrobes for $45 each.
An Egyptian-inspired winged wardrobe (fig. 67) is the most complex late neoclassical example in Wye House. It consists of three separately dovetailed cases set in a base. The center section has three drawers surmounted by two doors concealing linen trays and a pediment. Flanking this section are wings with tall doors, each having matching veneers in their vertical and horizontal panels. The maker also used the same flitch of veneer for the doors of the center section.67
Two later wardrobes are well developed examples of the form and style popularized by Baltimore architect John Hall in The Cabinetmaker’s Assistant (1840), but one (fig. 68) is far superior to the other (fig. 69). The wardrobe illustrated in figure 68 is solidly built and has high quality mahogany veneers, whereas its gothic counterpart is poorly constructed and has minimally figured wood. The gothic example does have its original finish and is significant in having been part of a bedroom suite, the remainder of which was discarded in the mid-twentieth century.
The most extraordinary wardrobe (fig. 70) remaining in Wye House hails from New Orleans. Beginning in 1837, Edward VI embarked on a speculative venture to cultivate cotton in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. He committed his strongest slaves to this enterprise and oversaw their work there until the early 1840s. While in the deep South, Edward VI acquired this early armoire which was among the “Domestics” returned to him from Madison County, Mississippi, by Jonathan H. Duvall Shipping of Baltimore in 1849. Although the armoire is the only object surviving from Edward VI’s sojourn, a low post bedstead marked “Edward Lloyd Jr Esq.” probably accompanied him during his travels. During the late 1820s and 1830s, he ordered several bedsteads from Baltimore cabinetmakers William Cook, Edwin S. Tarr, and John and James Williams.68
When compared with other furniture forms at Wye House, wardrobes survive in a disproportionately large number. The numerous sets of chairs acquired by Edward VI help put this in perspective. Between 1835 and 1840, he purchased 100 cane seat chairs from Richard “Boss” Tweed, a New York City chair maker who had a summer home near Wye House called “The Villa,” and his partner Hezekiah W. Bonnell (fig. 71). Only three examples from this order survive and most are in bad condition. Similarly, John and James Williams of Baltimore sold Edward VI twelve mahogany chairs in 1832, of which only two survive. The other furniture he ordered—center tables, sofas, occasional tables, bedsteads, washstands, window benches, rocking chairs, music chairs, and butler trays—is evident only through bills, receipts, and late nineteenth- and twentieth-century photographs.69
The Lloyd proprietors of the colonial revival era chose to keep wardrobes over other furniture forms for several reasons. First, the family continued to require more storage space than the house provided and wardrobes were costly to replace. These massive, durable forms were used in private spaces, thus they were less susceptible to changing tastes than the furnishings of public rooms. In contrast, seating forms and tables were more fragile and more movable; they could easily be divided among siblings or shifted from room to room as needs and fashions changed. The choice to save the wardrobes and discard other furniture from the same period was based largely on pragmatism, a powerful sentiment in molding the interiors of Wye House as they survive today.
The sideboard table illustrated in figure 72 was not included in the 1834 inventories of Wye House, but it was listed in the passage in 1861. While cabinetmakers working in other urban centers often applied gilt stencilled ornament and ormolu mounts to contemporary pier tables, Edward V and VI evidently preferred examples with bold turnings, figured veneers, and restrained carving as did many of their Maryland peers. During the late nineteenth century, the Lloyd table resided in the passage, but by the early twentieth century, it had a less charitable home—the screened-in north porch. In 1997, the current proprietress had the table conserved and moved into the narrow hallway leading to the plantation oYce.70
Like his father who owned numerous mahogany and hickory rocking chairs, Edward VI embraced the nineteenth-century rage for this seating form. In 1833, he bought an expensive upholstered rocking chair from J. Hancock & Co. of Philadelphia. Regrettably, it is not among the furnishings remaining in Wye House. Edward VI purchased a set of at least fifteen rocking chairs (see fig. 73), presumably for use under the north portico (fig. 74), where they appear in late nineteenth-century photographs of Wye House. Most likely the products of a local turner or chair maker, these objects have flat arms carved with dates and the names and initials of at least two generations of Lloyd children (see figs. 75, 76). In the eyes of later family members, this grafitti elevated the chairs from the mundane to the sacred.71
Because the plantation economy that funded the Lloyd family’s lifestyle began to decline during the 1830s, Edward VI spent less money acquiring new furnishings and devoted more attention to repairing old household items. Slaves were no longer utilized, as they had been before, to maintain the furniture and move it as seasons and the number of people living at Wye House changed. From 1834 to 1844, Sally Lloyd hired a handyman named William Ross to put up and take down beds, blinds, and carpets; mend blinds and windows; and repair and polish furniture.72
Edward Lloyd VI was powerless over the fact that the extravagant lifestyle to which his family had become accustomed over the past 200 years was slowly coming to close. When he died on the eve of the Civil War, his son made little eVort to redecorate Wye House. Only a few objects associated with his proprietorship survive, including a blue painted bedroom suite (fig. 77) that Edward VII purchased when he married Mary Lloyd Howard (1831–1923) in 1851. Mary was still alive when her son Charles Howard Lloyd began refurbishing Wye House in the 1910s and 1920s. By the early twentieth century, her marriage furniture and the room it decorated—known since her marriage as the “blue room”—had acquired a fond aura of bygone years that no Lloyd family member would dare disrupt.73
Sparked by the Centennial in 1876, the Lloyds gained renewed appreciation for the history of their nation, state, and family. Rather than acquire new furnishings, Charles Howard Lloyd and his daughter Elizabeth Lloyd Schiller worked throughout the twentieth century to re-fashion Wye House in a style that honored their family. Respect for the Lloyds’ historical legacy is equally apparent among family members today. As this article attests, the current proprietress and her children have supported research on the buildings and furnishings at Wye and are devoted to their conservation and preservation.
In the eyes of many, the surname Lloyd in an object’s provenance does not immediately evoke prestige. If it does, it usually fails to register like that of Edward IV’s brother-in-law John Cadwalader. The fact that John and Elizabeth received only one-third of her father’s estate puts Edward III’s vast wealth into perspective. Moreover, the silver, bureau bookcase, and pier glasses surviving from his proprietorship eclipse most objects owned by contemporary members of the colonial elite.
The reminiscences of Frederick Douglass (b. 1818, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, d. 1895), who belonged to the Lloyds’ schooner captain Aaron Anthony and lived at Wye during the proprietorship of Edward V, provide a glimpse, albeit somewhat romantic, of the Lloyd estate during the mid-nineteenth century. Late in life, Douglass visited Wye House as the guest of Charles Howard Lloyd. The former slave described Edward V as “a gentleman of the olden time, elegant in his apparel, dignified in his deportment, a man of few words and weighty presence, and I can easily conceive that no governor of the State of Maryland ever commanded a larger measure of respect.” Douglass also described the natural and man-made landscape at Wye in detail:
There were barns, stables, store-houses and tobacco houses; blacksmiths’ shops, wheelwrights’ shops and coopers’ shops,...but above all there stood the grandest building my eyes had ever beheld, called, by every one on the plantation, the “Great House”...The great house was surrounded by numerous and variously shaped out-buildings. There were kitchens, wash-houses, dairies, summer-houses, green-houses, hen-houses, turkey-houses, pigeon-houses, and arbors, of many sizes and devices, all neatly painted, and altogether interspersed with grand old trees, ornamental and primitive, which aVorded shade in the summer, and imparted to the scene a high degree of stately beauty. The great house itself was a large, white, wooden building, with wings on three sides of it. In front, a large portico, extending the entire length of the building, and supported by a long range of columns, gave to the whole establishment an air of solemn grandeur. It was a treat to my young and gradually opening mind, to behold this elaborate exhibition of wealth, power, and vanity. The carriage entrance to the house was a large gate, more than a quarter of a mile distant from it; the intermediate space was a beautiful lawn, very neatly trimmed, and watched with the greatest care. It was dotted thickly with delightful trees, shrubbery, and flowers. The road, or lane, from the gate to the great house, was richly paved with white pebbles from the beach, and, in its course, formed a complete circle around the beautiful lawn. Carriages going in and retiring from the great house, made the circuit of the lawn, and their passengers were permitted to be-hold a scene of Eden-like beauty. Outside this select inclosure, were parks, where—as about the residences of English nobility—rabbits, deer, and other wild game, might be seen, peering and playing about, with none to molest them or make them afraid. The tops of the stately poplars were often covered with red-winged blackbirds, making all nature vocal with the joyous life and beauty of their wild, warbling notes. These all belonged to me, as well as to Colonel Lloyd, and for a time I greatly enjoyed them.74
Although few of the buildings that Douglass recalled still stand, the house, furnishings, and greenhouse provide a window into nearly three centuries of the Lloyd family’s past. All of the objects that survive are the result of choices made over and over by individuals with diVerent tastes, aspirations, and attitudes about historical value and family identity. As such, they are more informative and intimate than comparable objects in institutional collections, which are typically associated with an original owner, shop, region, or stylistic period. Like the great country houses of Britain, Wye House and its contents are a rare and valuable resource for present and future scholars.

acknowledgments  For assistance with this article, the author thanks Gavin Ashworth, Luke Beckerdite, Dennis A. Carr, Joanna Lloyd Garbisch, Roger D. Kirtley, Marion Smith, Joanna Lloyd Tilghman, John A. S. Tilghman, and Beverly W. and Richard C. Tilghman. For her constant encouragement, inspiration, and assistance in the study of the Lloyd family objects, and her devotion to their preservation, the author gives special thanks to Mary Donnell Tilghman.
1. As quoted on <www.newguineaart.com>.
2. Much of the research contained in this article came from Alexandra A. Alevizatos, “‘Procured of the best and most Fashionable Materials’: The Furniture and Furnishings of the Lloyd Family, 1750–1850” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1999). Detailed construction and condition notes for most of the furniture illustrated in this article is in appendix d. Edward Lloyd I was born around 1610, perhaps in Wales or Elizabeth City. He matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford University on March 16, 1626. His father was also a graduate of Magdalen. Edward I was in Virginia by 1637 and was elected a burgess for Lower Norfolk in 1644. He worked with his brother Cornelius (d. 1654) to establish viable trade routes to serve London merchants and also sought religious freedom as a Quaker. Edward I was excommunicated from the Colony of Virginia for refusing to recite the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed and moved to Maryland in 1648. He founded Provincetown, south of Annapolis, on the Severn River, which he named after the Severn River in Wales. Edward I rose to immediate political, economic, and social prominence, thus initiating what would become a patrimony of Lloyd-dominated politics, economics, and society. The Lloyds quickly abandoned Edward I’s Quaker beliefs in favor of the Anglican faith. For more information on Edward I, see <www.ancestry.com>; J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, English Origins of American Colonists (New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, 1903–1916), p. 10; and George Henry MacKenzie, Colonial Families of the United States of America, 7 vols. (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1912), 2: 454.
3. For more on Edward IV, see <www.ancestry.com>. Edward Lloyd VII to Charles and Mary Lloyd, April 23, 1906, Talbot County, Maryland, Deed of Property Transfer, Land Records, Liber TGW, no. 147, fl. 78. Plumbing was added inside the house in 1917. Confronted with a daunting preservation eVort, Elizabeth and Joanna Lloyd toyed with the idea of donating Wye House to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Instead, Elizabeth and her husband Morgan B. Schiller decided to use the money required to endow Wye House as a National Trust property to make it their permanent home. They added electricity and heat to Wye House in 1949.
4. The author thanks Mary Donnell Tilghman for recounting the oral tradition concerning Charles, Mary, and Elizabeth giving away objects and having reproductions made.
5. For more on Cadwalader, see Nicholas B. Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur in Philadelphia: The House and Furniture of General John Cadwalader (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1964).
6. For unexplained reasons but likely as a result of the argument over his estate, the ledgers, purchase orders, and accounts books that would have provided the details about Edward III’s business transactions and purchases of furnishings do not survive. The missing ledger of Edward III is referenced in the Lloyd Papers (Maryland Historical Society, hereafter cited MHS) and the Cadwalader Papers (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, hereafter cited HSP) as “Ledger A.” For biographical information on Edward III, see Edward C. Papenfuse, Alan F. Day, David W. Jordan, and Gregory A. Stiverson, Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635–1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 535. Will of Edward Lloyd III, signed March 6, 1750 and probated March 26, 1770, ms. 2001, box 14, vol. 5 or reel 25, MHS. The inventories for Edward III, 1770; IV, July 21, 1796; V, after June 1834 (this will be referred to as Edward V’s inventory, but it is actually “A List of Articles Left in Wye House Novr 1834”); VI, April 16, 1862; and Elizabeth Tayloe Lloyd, March 29, 1825 (this is actually “A List of Articles belonging to Edward Lloyd [V] Esquire in his House in Annapolis”), ms 2001, reel 40, MHS. Edward III’s estate consisted of 43,000 contiguous acres of land in five Maryland counties, 174 slaves, 5 schooners, £10,961.3.7 in household furnishings, £11,462 in bills owed to the estate, and £8,200 in cash (Inventory of the estate of Edward Lloyd III). An entry in the estate ledger notes “By 1 large Blank Book purchased of Mr. Wallace & Co. for his own but afterwards made use of containing Receipts to prevent future claims from Mr. Cadwallader & Capt Lloyd on the Administrator” [Edward Lloyd IV] (Cash Book for the Estate of Edward Lloyd III, August 1776, ms. 2001, box 15, vol. 9, MHS). Despite always suspecting that Edward IV was taking more money from the estate than John Cadwalader felt he was due, the latter enjoyed a close and brotherly relationship with Edward IV, visited him often in Annapolis, and entertained Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth (Tayloe) in Philadelphia. The problems in the division of Edward III’s estate persisted beyond the death of John Cadwalader, whose sons by his second marriage continued to claim rights to the Lloyd money (Receipt of Money Paid to Thos. Cadwalader [$137], 1815, ms. 2001, box 57, MHS). Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III.
7. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. For more on upholstered armchairs, see John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), figs. 1142–46; and Robert F. Trent’s entry for catalogue no. 91 in Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast, edited by Brock Jobe (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1993), pp. 335–37.
11. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III.
12. Ibid.
13. N. Hudson Moore, The Old Clock Book (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, Co., 1911), pp. 227, 259. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. Photographs at Wye House.
14. Several objects listed in the probate inventory are not in the private inventory; for example, a nine-drawer chest. For the Philadelphia sale, see Edward Lloyd III Estate Ledger, ms. 2001, box 14, vol. 5, MHS. For the Annapolis sale, see Edward Lloyd III Estate Daybook, 1770–1774, box 15, vol. 6, MHS.
15. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III. AZeck’s bill is reproduced in Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, p. 44. The bill totaled £119.8. The carvers’ bills were tallied in a separate column and do not appear to have been included in AZeck’s total. John J. McCusker, How Much Is That in Real Money (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 2001), p. 70, table b1.
16. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III. The inventories list nearly every silver form imaginable—castors, salts and shovels, wine funnels, dish crosses, teapots, coVeepots, chocolate pots, cups, candlesticks, salvers, tankards, canns, goblets, plates, knives, forks, spoons, and toothpicks. Silver tankards, candlesticks, taper sticks, and candle arms also survive from Edward Lloyd III’s proprietorship. When Elizabeth Lloyd married John Cadwalader in 1768, Edward and Anne gave them a five-piece tea set made in London in 1763 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). “Savalls” are pans on candlesticks to save the candle ends. The branch candlesticks probably had the Lloyd coat of arms engraved on them as well. The candle arms do not appear in any inventory of the Cadwalader’s townhouse (Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, pp. 52–57, 72–73).
17. Wye Plantation Inventory, 1770, ms. 2001, reel 40, MHS. The tobacco leaf service does not appear on Edward III’s private inventory. The term “tobacco leaf” was used in the eighteenth century to refer to this pattern, but it was not used in inventories of the Lloyds until the twentieth century. Charles Howard Lloyd kept two hundred pieces of the tobacco leaf service for himself and dispersed the remainder among his seven siblings in 1907.
18. Edward Lloyd V had a sixty-ton boat with cannons that made a “thunderous report” (Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America in 1789, 1799, and 1800, 2 vols. [London, 1805], 1: 230). Admiral Buchanan was the first superintendent of the United States Naval Academy. The Lloyd family donated the land for the Academy to the United States Government in the 1840s. During the Civil War, Admiral Buchanan sided with the Confederacy and captained the USS Merrimack in 1861 (Elihu S. Riley, “The Ancient City”: A History of Annapolis in Maryland, 1649–1887 [Annapolis, 1887], pp. 266–67).
19. Richard Bennett Lloyd moved to England in 1773 to purchase a commission in the Cold Stream Guards. In the enlistment book, he was identified as “Gent.” He entered as an ensign in 1774 and was painted as the OYcer of the Day in the antiquated uniform of 1773 by Benjamin West (fig. 4). As war with America loomed, he resigned his commission in February 1776, having achieved the rank of captain. Richard then began a family with his new wife Joanna Leigh Lloyd, a woman of noted beauty from the Isle of Wight. In fulfillment of his marriage contract, Richard and Joanna moved to France (from 1777 to 1780), where Richard acted as Edward IV’s agent and sent them the latest French goods. He and Joanna set up home in Maryland by 1782, but by the time he died in 1787, his estranged wife had returned to England with their four children (Dennis A. Carr, “Carving out a Colonial Identity: The Revolutionary Era Portrait Commissions of Richard Bennett Lloyd,” unpublished manuscript submitted for the Yale University History of Art Ph.D. program, spring 2002.). Because of Richard Lloyd’s youth and peripatetic nature, most of the silver he inherited was described in Edward III’s inventory as “on loan” to Elizabeth and John Cadwalader (Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III). The furnishings listed in Richard Bennett Lloyd’s estate inventory appear to be those he inherited from his father, suggesting that his household goods were stored until he returned to claim them. (Inventory of the Estate of Richard Bennett Lloyd, January 12, 1788, ms. 2001, reel 16 and ms. 721, MHS.) For more on Shrewsbury Farm, see Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, pp. 61, 62, 66–68, 71, 76, 126, 155. Shrewsbury Farm burned in 1812. After Elizabeth died in 1776, John Cadwalader, his second wife, and then a cousin raised Elizabeth’s three daughters. Although the daughters’ birth right to the furnishings inherited and purchased by John and Elizabeth is noted in the Cadwalader and Lloyd papers, no manuscripts documenting the sisters’ receipt of furnishings is known. For more on the wall colors, upholstery and curtain fabrics, and carpets in the Cadwaladers’ townhouse, see Wainwright, Colonial Grandeur, pp. 30, 31, 40–43, 50–52, 69; and Luke Beckerdite and Leroy Graves, “New Insights on John Cadwalader’s Commode-Seat Side Chairs,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2000), pp. 160–68, nt 10. For the latest research on the chair illustrated in fig. 15, see Beckerdite and Graves, “New Insights,” pp. 152–68.
20. Edward IV’s library contained the following architectural design books: Abraham Swan’s A Collection of Designs in Architecture (1757), Isaac Ware’s translation of Andrea Palladio’s The Four Books of Architecture (1738), a collection of Palladio’s designs titled Architecture, Revised, Designed, and Published by Giacomo Leoni (1742), and James Gibbs’ Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture (1738) (Edwin Wolf II, “The Library of Edward Lloyd IV of Wye House,” Winterthur Portfolio 5, [1969]: 87–122). All of these books are in the library at Wye along with Edward IV’s sterling silver surveying instruments made by E. Nairne of London. The instruments are in their original shagreen case lined with embossed paper and velvet. Ledger of Edward Lloyd IV, 1770-1791, ms. 2001, box 15, vol. 7, MHS.
21. Memoranda Book of Edward Lloyd IV, ms. 2001, box 15, vol. 10, MHS. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV. The information on Gardiner and Eaton is from Ledger of Edward Lloyd IV.
22. List of Goods Sent from Arthur Bryan to Edward Lloyd IV, March 1788, ms. 2001, reel 21, MHS. The pier glasses were valued at £30. Only the mahogany bed, silk bed curtains, window curtains, and six chairs with silk bottoms together added up to more than the pier glasses (Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III).
23. Microscopy performed by conservator Richard Wolbers in March 1999 revealed that the pier glasses were gilded twice. The earliest strata—gesso followed by bole and gold leaf—are consistent with the water gilding processes commonly used during the eighteenth century. The leaf and areas of the gesso were worn and soiled, obviously from exposure. The later strata—oil, litharge followed by gesso, a yellow, oil-bound layer, gold leaf, and a thin film of oil—are
consistent with oil gilding. The author thanks Richard Wolbers for his continual assistance in analyzing materials from Wye House. For comparable designs, see Batty and Thomas Langley, The Builder’s Jewell, or Youth’s Instructor (1741), pl. 78; and William Jones, The Gentleman or Builder’s Companion (1739), pls. 43, 45, 47. John Fleming and Hugh Honour, The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts (New York: Viking, 1989), p. 375.
24. The author thanks Mary Donnell Tilghman for information on room designations. Receipt from George Dudley documenting major repairs in Wye House and re-hanging the pier glasses, December 6, 1823, ms. 2001, reel 26, MHS.
25. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd V. Edward V ordered three “pairs” of girandoles from London merchants Thomas Eden, Christopher Court & Co. in 1810, but the firm sent six. Edward V clearly intended for each of his girandoles to have two branches, but the agent understood “pair” to mean two individual girandoles. A nine-year battle ensued during which Edward refused to pay the merchants £800 for the unwanted girandoles. In 1818, Edward V sold three of the six girandoles to Robert Oliver, a prominent merchant of Baltimore, for the dollar equivalent of £1053 (£800 plus £253 in interest) (Debit entry dated September 15, 1818, Account Book of Edward Lloyd V, 1803–1820, facsimile at Wye House). The third girandole survives and matches the two in front of the pier glasses. A note in a box of girandole prisms recently retrieved from the basement stated that the third girandole stood in front of the third pier glass in the large dining room. (The names of the rooms at Wye House varied during diVerent periods of proprietorship and cultural fashion. The large north parlor was occasionally referred to as the “dining room.”) In one of the four partial inventories taken after Edward V’s death in 1834, “Three large looking Glasses, Gilt Frames” are listed in the large north parlor. The third looking glass does not appear in Edward VI’s inventory.
26. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd III. Ledger of Edward Lloyd IV. The author thanks Mary Donnell Tilghman for the information on Charles and Mary Lloyd selling beds and Elizabeth Schiller rescuing beds.
27. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV.
28. Elizabeth met Edward IV through her father John Tayloe. Both men imported racehorses from the same broker in London (Papenfuse et al., Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, p. 536). The quote is from a letter written by William Eddis on August 9, 1771 (William Eddis, Letters from America, edited by Aubrey C. Land [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1969], p. 57). Edward IV owned a copy of Eddis’ Letters (Inventory of the Estate of Edward Lloyd IV). Marcia M. Miller, “The Chase-Lloyd House” (master’s thesis, George Washington University, 1993). Buckland trained in London and came to Virginia in 1755. He designed Gunston Hall for George Mason and interior woodwork for Mount Airy, the house of John (1721–1779) and Rebecca (1731–1787) Tayloe in Richmond County, Virginia. Edward IV and Elizabeth convinced Buckland to come Annapolis in 1771. For more on Buckland and his Virginia commissions, see Luke Beckerdite, “William Buckland and William Bern