Luard was Registrary of the University from 1862 to his death in 1891. To this work he brought the same painstaking accuracy, and the same unselfish readiness to endure hard work, that distinguished his other labours. The ordinary duties of his office were discharged with marvellous rapidity, and almost painful attention to detail; and the records were admirably re-arranged. Mr Romilly, his predecessor, had brought order out of confusion, and prepared an excellent catalogue on modern lines; but Luard went a step farther. He bound the contents of Mr Romilly’s bundles in a series of volumes, each of which he indexed with his own hand. These separate indexes were then transcribed, and finally bound together so as to form a complete catalogue of the contents of the Registry. Every paper can now be found with the least possible loss of time, while each bound volume contains a complete history of the subject to which it relates, so far as it can be illustrated by documents in the Registry.
Luard’s duties as Registrary, added to the continuous strain of his historical work, would have been enough for most people; but he never forgot that he was a clergyman, as well as a man of letters, and he took care always to have some active clerical work to do. He was an eloquent preacher, and his sermons in the College Chapel used to be listened to with an interest that we did not always feel in what was said to us from that pulpit. They were plain, practical, persuasive; the compositions of one who was not above his congregation; who had nothing donnish about him, but who spoke to the undergraduates as one who had passed through the same temptations as themselves, and who was, therefore, in a position to show them the right road. On the same principles, for the twenty-seven years during which he was Vicar of Great S. Mary’s, he laboured in the parish in a spirit of true sympathy. There was no fussiness about him; he did not take part in movements; he did not ‘work’ a parish as a modern clergyman does, on the principle of perpetual worry, leaving neither man, nor woman, nor child at peace for a moment; he led his people to better things by gentle measures; he sympathized with their troubles; he relieved their necessities; in a word, he exercised an unbounded influence over them, while refraining from interference in matters of moral indifference. His memory will long be venerated there for active benevolence, and punctual discharge of all that it became him to do. I have heard that the full extent of his charities will never be known. He hated display, and avoided reference to what he was about unless it was necessary to stimulate others by mentioning it; but those who know best tell me that his labours among the poor were unremitting, and that his generosity knew no limits.