LANGDALE, Marmaduke (1628-1703)

Marmaduke Langdale inherited the depleted estates and the Catholic faith of his father. He spent much of the rest of his life trying to recover what he could of his damaged patrimony in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Ibid. 1661-2, p. 251; 1664-5, pp. 346-7; 1670, p. 192; Add. 40132, 40135. Although he did not succeed his father as lord lieutenant of the West Riding, Langdale remained active in northern affairs. In February 1662 he was part of a delegation of northern peers who visited Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, in order to emphasize their opposition to plans to reinstate the court of York for the northern counties, ‘as believing it not for the service of the king or good of the country’. Chatsworth, Cork mss, misc box 2, Burlington Diary, 15 Feb. 1662. He was an active member of the commission of sewers in the East Riding throughout the 1660s, which led him into disputes with such powerful figures as Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, and John Cosin, bishop of Durham. TNA, C181/7, pp. 44, 198, 256, 351, 406; Add. 40133, ff. 30-118; HMC Var. ii. 364; Durham UL, Cosin letter bk. 3, ff. 26, 28. In the summer of 1667 he joined with the then lord lieutenant of the West Riding, Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, in examining the decayed pier at Bridlington and in 1672 he and Burlington endorsed the petition of the port’s inhabitants for its repair and rebuilding. Chatsworth, Cork mss, misc box 2, Burlington Diary, 7 and 8 Aug. 1667; CSP Dom. 1672-3, p. 339. Fittingly, in the parliamentary session of 1664-5 he was named to four committees (13 and 17 Dec. 1664, 21 Jan. and 3 Feb. 1665) which considered bills to make various waterways throughout England more navigable.

Langdale’s public life was marked above all by his Catholicism. When he was not in the House, which was often, he registered his proxy with fellow Catholics. He first sat in the House on 6 Dec. 1661 but only remained for a further 38 days, before receiving leave of the House on 15 Feb. 1662 to be absent ‘for some time’. The absence lasted over two years. He registered his proxy with the Catholic Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, on 12 Mar. 1663 for the session of 1663, which led Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, to consider Langdale a supporter of the attempt by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon. It was almost certainly Arundell of Wardour who presented to the House on 3 June 1663 Langdale’s complaint that he was being prosecuted for recusancy in the court of the archbishop of York, a matter which appears to have been lost in the committee for privileges to which it was referred. Langdale returned to the House on 5 May 1664 for only eight sittings at the end of the spring 1664 session, but he came to 69 per cent of the sitting days in the following session of 1664-5. He was most likely so assiduous in order to ensure that another breach of his privilege was quashed, for on 2 and 5 Dec. the House examined his complaint that a writ of exigent, which could lead to an outlawry, had been entered against him by his Yorkshire neighbour John Millington. It was not until the last week of January 1665 that both Millington and his attorney were discharged after being reprimanded by the House. Millington’s legal action was probably related to Langdale’s indebted estate, but the peer may have also been seen as vulnerable because of his continued recusancy.

After missing all of the sittings of the Parliament held in Oxford in October 1665, Langdale registered his proxy with John Belasyse, Baron Belasyse, the Catholic lord lieutenant of the East Riding, on 24 Nov. 1666. Belasyse held the proxy for the remainder of the 1666-7 session. It was Belasyse who on 1 Feb. 1667 brought to the House’s attention information of further proceedings against Langdale for recusancy, leading the House to order that all peers and their families were to be exempt from such actions in the ecclesiastical courts during time of Parliament.

Langdale did not appear again in the House until 17 Feb. 1670 and did not cover his intervening absence with another proxy. He was accordingly missing at a call of the House on 28 Oct. 1669, resulting on 9 Nov. in an order that he be fined £40. The impoverished peer later successfully petitioned to have the fine remitted. CSP Dom. 1670, p. 99. Perhaps the fine encouraged him to attend, for he was present on the third day of the session of 1670-71 and proceeded to sit in just under half of its meetings, when he was also named to 18 select committees, the largest number of such nominations he received in any session. He left the House on 6 Mar. 1671, when he was again given leave by the House to be absent for some time, and the following day he registered his proxy with another Catholic peer, Henry Howard, Baron Howard of Castle Rising (later 6th duke of Norfolk), for the remainder of the session. He remained away from the House for the next several years, without registering a proxy, until he took up his seat again on 19 Apr. 1675, about a week into the session of spring 1675, during which he attended 81 per cent of the sitting days, the highest attendance rate of his entire parliamentary career. Despite this near-constant attendance, Langdale appears to have made no impact or impression on the proceedings concerning the Test Bill proposed by Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), for his name does not appear in any of Danby’s working papers on the bill nor in any of the material produced by the country opposition against it. He was absent, without a proxy, for the following session of autumn 1675, but on 10 Mar. 1677 registered his proxy once again with Arundell of Wardour for the remainder of the 1677-8 session. At around this time in spring 1677 Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury marked Langdale as a papist and considered him ‘triply vile’ in his analysis of the political affiliations of the peerage. From December 1678 Langdale was prevented from sitting in the House by the Test Act.

James II not surprisingly saw Langdale as a supporter of his religious policies and in March 1686 dispensed him from taking the oaths enjoined by the Test Acts. CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 67. From 1687 Langdale was given a succession of military and municipal commissions. On 22 Jan. 1687 he was commissioned colonel of the regiment of horse recently removed from the command of Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, though by 15 Feb. he had resigned this commission. Ibid. 347, 366; Add. 34510, f. 12; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 43, ff. 103, 113-116. More successful were the local responsibilities in the northeast he was given from 4 Nov. 1687, after the death of Thomas Windsor, earl of Plymouth. He was commissioned governor of the citadel of Hull and captain of a company of grenadiers based in that garrison. CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 95. In the following months he was made commissioner for all the northern counties to enquire into moneys still owing from recusants and dissenters (December 1687), deputy lieutenant for the East Riding (March 1688) and perhaps even de facto lord lieutenant of the East Riding from August 1688 (although he never formally received a commission). Ibid. 172; CTB, viii. 1696; Ormrod, Lord Lieutenants and Sheriffs of Yorks. 10. It was also Langdale who was entrusted with administering the three questions in the East Riding in December 1687. Duckett, Penal Laws, 67-68, 90; HMC Le Fleming, 208; Thynne pprs. 42, f. 326.

In Hull Langdale tried to influence the corporation’s choice in the planned parliamentary election of 1688, backing the government candidate Sir John Bradshaw, in place of the corporation’s preferred representatives Sir Willoughby Hickman^‡ and John Ramsden^‡, and threatening the corporation with dire consequences if it failed to comply. When the corporation refused to obey, James ordered 1,199 soldiers, under the command of Langdale, to be quartered in the town. Lansd. 890, ff. 187-91. The town’s charter was surrendered to the Crown in June 1688, and the new one of September inserted Langdale as recorder of the town with his fellow Catholic, Henry Jermyn, Baron Dover, as high steward. CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 274. During October 1688 Langdale was active in the many preparations for the defence of Hull against an expected northern invasion by William of Orange. Add. 41823, f. 125v; CSP Dom. 1687-9, pp. 339, 346; HMC 7th Rep. 412, 414-5. After news of William’s unexpected landing in the southwest, Langdale suspected that the protestant officers and the troops of the Hull garrison would rise in his support and made plans to capture them. Instead on the night of 3 Dec. 1688, the protestants of the town and garrison captured Langdale and the Catholic officers as they travelled from the citadel to the town for their attack. Reresby Mems. 536; Browning, Danby, i. 402-3, 409; ii. 147-9; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 480.

Langdale was quickly released and by the time of a call of the House on 25 Jan. 1689, three days into the Convention, he was ‘out of the country’. In July 1690 a proclamation was issued demanding his arrest for treason, but in January 1698 he was granted licence to return to England after the cessation of hostilities with France and a writ was issued summoning him to the House (which, as a Catholic, he was unable to attend). CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 65; 1698, p. 47; Hull Hist. Cent. DDHA/18/40. Undoubtedly, this period of exile would have further damaged his already weakened estate, much of which he had been forced to sell or mortgage in the mid 1670s. Add. 40135. In October 1689, whilst overseas, he responded to the government’s inquiry about the value of his personal estate with the statement, ‘I am so unfortunate as not to have any personal estate, nor at the present any real estate, for I am informed it is seized on by those to whom I am indebted’. Chatsworth, Halifax Collection, B.96. In 1700, back in England, he assigned all his remaining property and income from rectories to trustees in order to secure payment of his debts. Hull Hist. Cent. DDHA/16/17. Langdale died, ‘at a great age’, on 25 Feb. 1703. Add. 70075, newsletter, 25 Feb. 1703. He was succeeded by his only son, Marmaduke Langdale, as 3rd Baron Langdale, who was also nominated as sole executor of his small estate.