LANGDALE, Marmaduke (c. 1598-1661)

Marmaduke Langdale came from a prominent Catholic gentry family with lands centred around Holme-upon-Spalding Moor in the area west of Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Sunderland, 13-23, 33. He was a leading figure in the opposition against Charles I’s extra-parliamentary taxation, for which he was punished by being ‘pricked’ as sheriff of Yorkshire in November 1639 so that he would be forced to comply with the government’s demands. J.T. Cliffe, The Yorks. Gentry from the Reformation to the Civil War, 313-20, 324. However, during the Civil War Langdale became the leading royalist cavalry commander in the north, and after the battle of Marston Moor he led the remnants of the cavalry divisions of the shattered Northern Army in a number of important engagements. In 1648 the prince of Wales commissioned him major general of the forces of the five northern counties for the concerted royalist uprisings of the Second Civil War and he led the English capture of Berwick and Carlisle in support of the Scottish invasion. He continued to campaign with the Scots until he was decisively defeated by Oliver Cromwell^‡ at Preston in August 1648. Clarendon, Rebellion, viii. 73-75; ix. 33, 39, 119, 123-6; xi. 14-18, 43-54, 72-77; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 388. After the execution of the king Langdale was, in March 1649, formally proscribed and banished by the Rump and sentenced to a summary death if found anywhere in the kingdom. CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 39. In September 1649 he was in Paris, and from 1652 he was based in the Low Countries, from whence he wrote frequent letters to Charles II’s secretary Sir Edward Nicholas^‡, offering himself as the leader of any projected royalist rising in the north, for he was seen as ‘the most popular, and the most entrusted both by Catholics and Protestants, in all the North; they desire to have none else sent to them there’. Ibid. 1651-2, p. 388; Eg. 2535, f. 109; Clarendon SP, ii. 383, iii. 154.

Neither Nicholas nor Sir Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, saw fit to employ Langdale in the abortive uprising of 1655 and appear to have found him and his constant promotion of the Catholic cause wearisome. CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 216, 221; Eg. 2535, ff. 122-3; Clarendon SP, ii. 169, 171, 172, 175. Langdale came from a Catholic family, but, according to John Aubrey, had been a Protestant before his exile. Three Prose Works ed. J. Buchanan-Brown, 99. He probably converted to open Catholicism while on the continent and in his letters from 1653 he argued constantly that religious toleration in England and a military alliance with Spain were the only means for the king to be restored, to the point where Nicholas wrote to Hyde that ‘Sir Marmaduke is as eager in pursuing the papists’ interest as any new popish proselyte ever was’. Nicholas Pprs. ii. 3.

From at least late December 1657 there were plans to make Langdale a peer, but it was not until 4 Feb. 1658 that his letters patent were sealed, creating him Baron Langdale of Holme on account of the ‘great fortitude, fidelity, prudence and industry’ he had showed in his service to Charles I. Eg. 2551, f. 6; Sunderland, 241-5. Langdale probably returned to England with the restored king in May 1660, and he first took his seat in the House on 19 June 1660, perhaps prompted and encouraged by the order made by the House the previous day freeing his estate from sequestration. On that first day he was added to the committee considering the acts and ordinances passed since the Long Parliament and he proceeded to be placed on a further 12 committees over the course of the remaining 66 sitting days that he attended before the summer adjournment. Among these committees were four which dealt with bills to assist fellow royalists reclaim their estates or pay their debts. On 6 Aug. he was among a select group of royalists given special licence by a committee of the whole House to bring in private bills against those otherwise protected by the bill of indemnity. In the last week before the adjournment of 13 Sept. 1660 Langdale was named to six committees alone, including those for the bills to protect the English shipping trade (the Navigation Act), to disband the standing army, and to annex Dunkirk, Mardijk and Jamaica to the English crown.

He never returned to the House after 13 Sept. 1660. Poverty played a part in keeping him away from Westminster. Civil war and exile had ruined Langdale’s estate : the royalist memorialist, David Lloyd, wrote that he returned to it ‘satisfied for £160,000 loss in his Majesty’s service, with the conscience of having suffered it in a good cause, and acquitted himself bravely’. D. Lloyd, Memoires of the Lives … of those Noble … Personnages (1668), 551. In April 1661 Langdale wrote to Nicholas asking him to convey his apologies to the king for his absence from the coronation, explaining that he was too poor to travel south and that his neighbours were unwilling to lend him money to enable him to do so. CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 564-5; CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 154 (misdated). He was, however, conscious of his responsibility to the House and he registered his proxy with the lord treasurer Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton, on 28 May 1661, three weeks into the first session of the Cavalier Parliament. Hull History Centre, DDHA/18/44.

Something else keeping him in the north was his appointment in October 1660 as lord lieutenant of the largest and most populous of the newly created lieutenancies of Yorkshire, that of the West Riding, even though his own principal estates were in the East Riding. TNA, SP 29/8/183-4. In March 1661 the separate city and ainsty of York was added to his remit and Langdale was anxious to show Nicholas that under his government corporations such as York ‘do not aim for an absolute government’. CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 526. Langdale was active in his northern office, writing letters to the secretary of state throughout 1661 in which, among other matters, he inquired about the proper procedures for raising a militia in the absence of a Militia Act and the king’s views on the proper treatment of Quakers, whose ‘exemplary lives’ he admired. He was also concerned about the large number of cashiered parliamentary officers and troops in his region ‘ready to fall into their old trade’. SP 29/28/13, 45; CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 466, 526. Langdale’s government of the West Riding was cut short when he died, apparently intestate, in August 1661, whereupon he was succeeded in his title by his elder surviving son, also named Marmaduke Langdale as 2nd Baron Langdale.