LANGFORD, Edward (1417-74), of Bradfield, Berks.

Edward was the grandson of Sir William Langford† (c.1366-1411), whose ancestral estates included manorial holdings in Devon and on the Isle of Wight, but had at their core eight manors in Berkshire which came to the Langfords in the fourteenth century as descendants of the prominent family of de la Beche. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 558-60; C137/86/32. To this sizeable inheritance his father, Robert, had added a moiety of the holdings of his own maternal grandmother, Amy Beverley, CFR, xiv. 181-2; CCR, 1413-19, pp. 337-8. which included the manors of ‘Mendlesden’ in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and Blackwell Hall in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, C138/36/3; VCH Herts. iii. 11; VCH Bucks. iii. 211. as well as a substantial number of valuable properties in London. Not all of this patrimony passed to Robert before his death, for Sir William’s widow, Lucy (who married Ralph Fitton, a kinsman of Richard* and Laurence Fitton†), kept for life the family seat at Bradfield and dower lands elsewhere, worth at least £25 p.a. Feudal Aids, vi. 401; CCR, 1413-19, pp. 361, 366, 370. Just after the birth of Edward, his son and heir, in the spring of 1417, Robert put his affairs in order in preparation for joining Henry V’s army for the invasion of Normandy. He had made over various of his premises in the city of London to a kinsman, the Berkshire lawyer Thomas Drew*, and with his approval Drew authorized leases of the same lasting for as long as 62 years. Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 60-61. At the same time Robert let Blackwell Hall and other of his holdings in Buckinghamshire to a London grocer, John Buckenylle, for a term of 30 years at a rent of eight marks p.a., settling this rent and the reversion of the property on Drew and other trustees; and he conveyed the manor of Langford in Devon to William Grilleston for his lifetime. Robert was knighted before he died on 23 June 1419. C138/36/3; 43/79. Initially, by royal grant of 24 Nov., his widow Elizabeth secured the wardship and marriage of their young son Edward, agreeing to pay £80 for the marriage, CPR, 1416-22, p. 253. but after the death of Lucy Fitton on 12 Apr. following, Bradfield was promptly committed to two highly influential members of the local gentry, Thomas Chaucer* and John Golafre*, C138/52/101; CFR, xiv. 338. and when Grilleston died the Exchequer farmed out the Devonshire estate in 1422 to a prominent west-country lawyer, William Frye†. CFR, xiv. 425, 427. The boy’s inheritance was to be further complicated by his mother’s marriage to John Boyville*, a Leicestershire esquire. A fine levied in 1424, but not recorded until eight years later, shows that she enjoyed a sizeable jointure and dower from the Langford estate, which, consisting of Blackwell Hall, 17 messuages in the suburbs of London and some 1,500 acres of land in Berkshire, were then settled on her and her issue by her first husband. CP25(1)/292/67/126. But Blackwell Hall was still in the hands of the lessee Buckenylle, who, probably acting on Boyville’s instructions, paid a rent of £5 from it to the earl of Warwick and other nominees in 1432, together with a quitrent of eight marks from the Langford manor in Hertfordshire. CCR, 1429-35, p. 185. In fact, it looks as if Edward never gained possession of Blackwell Hall, which was later recorded in the hands of his mother’s kinsman Sir Thomas Cheyne. VCH Bucks. iii. 211; C1/73/72.

Although his mother and stepfather were informed about the proposed date of the inquiry for Langford’s proof of age, they failed to show up when it was conducted at Reading on 5 July 1438. C139/89/66. Langford was formally granted seisin of his inheritance shortly afterwards, CCR, 1435-41, pp. 155-6. yet he encountered difficulties in establishing his title to a number of the family holdings. In February 1442 he was bound to William Haute* and others in £40 to abide by the award of arbitrators regarding his right to property in Thames Street, London, Harl. Ch. 79 A 5. and a month later he relinquished his overlordship of the manor of Yattendon, Berkshire, to the prominent royal courtier, John Norris*. CCR, 1441-7, p. 59; VCH Berks. iv. 125, 127. The terms of the final concord of 1424 left him vulnerable to potentially damaging claims of his stepfather Boyville, which may explain why, on 10 July 1442, Boyville entered into a substantial bond of 1,000 marks to him, undertaking that he would not enter into any collusive litigation designed to defeat Langford’s hereditary estate in the property. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 76-77. Furthermore, the next day, Langford’s mother and stepfather relinquished to him all their interests in four London parishes. London hr 170/62. It is uncertain when the death of his mother enabled him to take possession of the rest of her dower lands.

Langford harboured ambitions to extend his landed interests further. Early in 1443 he initiated proceedings in the court of common pleas against William Baron*, one of the tellers at the Exchequer, to gain possession of certain former de la Beche properties in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire, basing his claim on an entail made more than a century earlier. Baron held the disputed properties for life by virtue of royal letters patent, and on 18 July Exchequer officials were ordered to make a search for records which the King’s attorney might produce in Chancery to establish the Crown’s right to them. CP40/728, rot. 131; E404/59/299, 301. It would seem that Langford proved unable to substantiate his case, and the fact that he soon began to part with parcels of his patrimony may indicate that he was in straitened financial circumstances for several years to come, although the cause of his problems has not been ascertained. In May 1444 he entered recognizances in £200 to John Davy, guaranteeing that the latter would not be evicted by legal process from the Unicorne upon the Hoop on Houndsditch, that the property would not be surrendered to execute any bond, statute merchant or recognizance in any law court, and that Langford would save Davy harmless of all annuities and yearly rents issuing out of the premises. A year later he and his wife relinquished to Davy all their right and title. CCR, 1441-7, p. 214; London hr 173/34. Langford sold other London properties in 1446, and also applied to the Crown for licence to grant part of his inheritance, in the parishes of St. Alban Wood Street and St. Peter the Poor in Broad Street, to Dartford priory. An inquiry held in September that year established that there would be no damage to royal interests if such a licence were to be issued, but none is recorded. The property concerned was said to be worth £3 p.a., and at that stage Langford’s other holdings in the City (three tenements and 17 shops in the parish of All Hallows by London Wall), were valued at £4 p.a. more. Certain of these he sold in November 1451. London hr 174/28; 180/20; C143/450/29. Langford was also disposing of part of his Devon estate. In June 1448 he entered recognizances for 1,000 marks to William Littlewick, agreeing that in a suit prosecuted by Littlewick concerning the manors of Kigbeare and Melbury and annual rents of £5 in Bradworthy, he would appoint attorneys recommended by Littlewick’s counsel, and that after recovering the property at law, he would complete the documentation necessary to transfer title to his opponent. CCR, 1447-54, p. 59. Such dealings considerably reduced Langford’s income from land, but even so the estimate of just £35 p.a. given for his Berkshire, Hertfordshire and Hampshire holdings in his inquisition post mortem is improbably low. C140/50/38.

It looks likely that Langford’s marriage to Sancha Blount, a member of a prominent Derbyshire family, had been arranged by his stepfather, for Boyville was one of her kinsmen, yet there is little sign that he benefited materially from the match. Nevertheless, he was gradually drawn into the affairs of his wife’s brothers. KB27/782, rot. 46; CP40/772, rot. 328. His early career, like their’s, was as an esquire in the Household of Henry VI, where he received livery at least in the years from 1443 to 1452 and probably for much longer, E101/409/11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. but while in the later 1450s his brothers-in-law drew ever closer to the duke of York, he himself remained constant in his commitment to the house of Lancaster. In this commitment he was doubtless encouraged by John Norris, the influential esquire for the King’s body, with whom he remained on friendly terms right up until the end of the reign. In 1445 Norris named him in association with the powerful William, marquess of Suffolk, and Sir Edmund Hungerford*, the King’s carver, as a feoffee for his purchase of two manors in Cookham, and two years later, again with Hungerford, Langford assisted Norris to acquire the manor of Frilsham. CP25(1)/13/85/4, 6; CCR, 1441-7, p. 496. Norris may well have played a part in persuading his friend to accept appointment as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in the autumn of 1446, at a time when other members of the local gentry refused to do so because of the heavy costs involved. It is of interest to note that at the Berkshire elections to the Parliament summoned to Bury St. Edmunds the following February he, as sheriff, returned Norris and another of their fellow members of the Household, Sir John Chalers*. In the autumn, in contravention of the statutes relating to the re-appointment of sheriffs, he was kept in office for a consecutive annual term. Once more, this was apparently because no one else was willing to take on this thankless task. Langford must have long regretted doing so. When his time in office finally came to an end he got into trouble at the Exchequer over his failure to make a full account for the issues of the bailiwick, and on 11 Nov. 1448 he was committed to the Fleet prison until he provided sureties for his appearance before the barons. Repeated writs failed to make him go back to the Exchequer, and it was not until June 1451 that he secured permission to render his account by attorney. E159/227, brevia Trin. rot. 1; C219/15/4.

It must be assumed that Langford’s financial difficulties, leading to the sale of parts of his patrimony, were compounded by losses incurred while carrying out his duties as sheriff. Nevertheless, his involvement in the administration of Berkshire had continued after the end of his shrievalty, and he was elected to his first Parliament in the autumn of 1449 as Norris’s fellow knight of the shire. The Parliament met at a time of crisis as the English garrisons in Normandy capitulated to the French, and it’s second session saw the impeachment of the King’s chief minister, Suffolk. After the dissolution in the following June, as order collapsed in the south-east, the unpopular Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury was murdered. Langford was one of those hastily commissioned to take custody of all of the bishop’s moveable goods and deliver them to the treasurer; and in October he was charged with the task of delivering the gaols at Oxford, Reading and Wallingford. That same month he was elected again, once more with Norris, to the Parliament summoned to meet on 6 Nov. While it was in progress, in the course of the next Hilary and Easter terms, he stood bail in the King’s bench for Sir Robert Harcourt*, one of the Members for Oxfordshire, who had been indicted and outlawed on charges of homicide arising from his feud with the Staffords. Their mutual brother-in-law, Walter Blount, then representing Derbyshire, also came forward in Harcourt’s support. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 197-8. Although there is no clear evidence that Langford had belonged to the affinity of the exiled and murdered duke of Suffolk, in the following Michaelmas term he joined Richard Harcourt* (Sir Robert’s brother) in providing bail for Edward Grimston, the retainer of the duke and his duchess Alice, thereby helping him to secure acquittal on an indictment that he had plotted with the late duke to place his son John on the throne. KB27/762, rex rot. 15.

Langford was placed on the benches of both Oxfordshire and Berkshire in March 1452, even though he was still in trouble at the Exchequer over his shrieval accounts. On 13 June the barons enjoined upon him that he should appear before them at Westminster the following week, and then from day to day until he had fully accounted for everything he owed, on pain of a fine of £100. However, although he did fail to appear as required, and so incurred the penalty, on 6 Nov. the King pardoned him this and all other fines, amercements and issues due from him to the Exchequer. Another pardon, granted to him as a ‘King’s esquire’ on 6 Apr. 1453, proved to be even more comprehensive, for it covered any felonies, trespasses, negligencies, extortions and concealments he might have committed before the previous 31 Dec., as well as any consequent outlawries, and all reliefs, scutages and debts owed to the Crown. Although, technically, there was now no need for him to account for his shrievalty of 1446-8, he nevertheless eschewed the pardon, and on 13 June received formal exoneration of payment of the £100 fine by the King’s ‘special grace’. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 21, 65; E159/229, brevia Easter rots. 1d, 2, Trin. rot. 9d.

Langford and Sir John Chalers were the two men summoned from Berkshire to attend a meeting of a great council on 21 May 1455, PPC, vi. 340. a meeting which was overtaken by the events at St. Albans a day later, when the duke of York’s forces did battle with the duke of Somerset’s. Probably they were present at the King’s side. Langford took out another pardon on 1 Oct. His appointment a year later, in November 1456, as sheriff of Devon, a county where he was not normally active, suggests that the government trusted him to excercise royal authority as its agent in an extremely troubled region. Once more, any inadequacies in his performance were excused in a pardon, this one dated March 1458, and on 13 May following, in consideration of his labours and expenses, he was exonerated payment of £50 due on his account. C67/41, m. 24; 42, m. 9; E159/235 brevia Mich. rot. 16. Langford’s loyalty to the Lancastrian regime is evident from the royal grants made to him just three weeks after the close of the Coventry Parliament of 1459, in which he had represented Berkshire for the third and last time. He was appointed for life to the stewardship of all the lands in Devon and Cornwall forfeited by judgement of the Parliament against the earl of Salisbury and his countess. Furthermore, for his good service in attending on the King’s person ‘in his last journey’ (which suggests that he had participated in the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge), and at his own ‘great costs’, on 4 Feb. following he was granted for life the offices of escheator and attorney of ‘Denbigh Landes’ in Wales, forfeited by the duke of York. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 534, 544. That spring of 1460, he received royal commissions designed to combat the threat posed by the Yorkist forces and to bring their supporters to justice, most notably, in the first week of June, commissions of gaol delivery and oyer and terminer in Berkshire and Oxfordshire. One such ardent supporter of the duke of York was Sir Robert Harcourt, now estranged from his one-time bailsman, who was afterwards to allege that on 11 June Langford and a number of other prominent royalists (including (Sir) Edmund Hampden*, Thomas Tresham* and Everard Digby*), forced their way into his manor-house at Stanton Harcourt, assaulted him and took him prisoner, holding him captive for the next seven weeks. During that critical period the army of the Yorkist earls, freshly arrived from Calais, defeated the royal forces at Northampton. It seems very likely that Langford and his fellows took part in the battle, fighting on the losing side. In the Michaelmas term the triumphant Harcourt brought a plea of trespass in the court of King’s bench against them. KB27/798, rot. 63; CP40/808, rot. 355.

Langford’s whereabouts are not recorded for 19 months after the battle. It may be that he was a fugitive or else subject to imprisonment by the victors, and in the autumn of 1460 spurious claimants to his lands in Berkshire opportunistically broke his closes and cut down his trees and crops. CP40/809, rots. 237, 364. It was not until nearly a year after the accession of Edward IV that, on 15 Feb. 1462, he was accorded a royal pardon. C67/45, m. 42. He had still to face Harcourt, riding high in the new King’s favour, and was finally brought to the court of common pleas to do so in the Easter term of 1463, when Sir Robert claimed damages of £700 against him. Langford pleaded his innocence, and a jury was summoned for the next term to decide the matter. The outcome is not recorded. CP40/808, rot. 355; 809, rot. 26. Langford’s eventual rehabilitation was perhaps facilitated by his brother-in-law Walter Blount, soon to be created Lord Mountjoy, and the latter may also have been instrumental in gaining places for two of the MP’s sons in the royal household. E101/411/13; 412/2. One of these sons, attempting to deliver a letter under the privy seal to Thomas Stonor II, promised Stonor’s wife to tell the King he had not been at home: Stonor Letters (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 62-63. He himself may have continued to be distrusted by the new regime, which appointed him to the unpopular commission to collect a special subsidy in the summer of 1463, and in the following year to the demanding and perhaps unwelcome offices of joint approver of alnage in four cloth-producing counties, and as a customs collector in Southampton, thus making him responsible for raising sizeable revenues for the Crown, CFR, xx. 129, 130, 140. and causing him to be hauled before the barons of the Exchequer on numerous occasions to answer the suits of its creditors. e.g. E13/152, rots. 11-13, 39, 56, 70; 153, rot. 1d. Langford purchased yet more pardons in 1468 and in February 1471 (during the Readeption), these being apparently intended to cover misdemeanors committed in his capacity as customer, appraiser and searcher. C67/46, m. 21; 44, m. 5. Yet it is clear that his Lancastrian sympathies were a thing of the past and he remained loyal to Edward IV during his exile in 1470-1, for he was appointed sheriff again in April 1471, very shortly after the King’s return, and reinstated on the Berkshire bench after an absence of 13 years. It is of interest to note that in the months that followed Langford made strenuous attempts to enforce bonds in substantial sums of money entered at the staple at Westminster in the 1460s. C241/254/53; 257/25, 26; C131/77/14; 78/2, 17; 243/21;

Although Langford was never, so far as we know, returned to Parliament again, in April 1467 he headed the list of attestors to the Berkshire election held at Abingdon. C219/17/1. In the 1460s he had close dealings with Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk, and her son Duke John, the King’s brother-in-law, whom he named as feoffees of his estates, and to whom in 1466 he quitclaimed the Berkshire manor of Leckhampstead (once belonging to William Danvers*). Harl. Chs. 52 I 18, 19. Over the years Langford’s extended family connexions had often led to his involvement in the affairs of gentry outside his native Berkshire. For instance, in April 1448 John Chiselden* (his mother’s godson), entered into a bond in £100 payable to him at the staple of Westminster, and three months later enfeoffed him, his stepfather Boyville and others of the keeping and stewardship of Rutland forest. If this was a mortgage, it failed to provide Chiselden with the funds he needed, for his failure to redeem the bond resulted in June 1449 in a royal order for his arrest and the seizure of his land. Langford was also a feoffee with Boyville of Chiselden’s lands in Allexton, Leicestershire, which were sold to Henry Sotehill in 1451. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 179, 454; C131/67/1, 6; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 265-6, 441. The previous year he had entered recognizances to Sotehill in £50, perhaps in connexion with Sotehill’s marriage to his half-sister, Anne, CCR, 1447-54, p. 190. and he later made this Lincolnshire lawyer one of the many feoffees of his estates. He may have been broker for the marriage of another half-sister, Margaret Boyville, to the son and heir apparent of a neighbouring Berkshire landowner, Richard Restwold*, and witnessed the settlement made on the couple in 1455. E326/8348. Meanwhile, he had made satisfactory arrangements for the marriages of his own children. His eldest son, Thomas, was married to Margaret, daughter of John Roger I*, it being agreed in settlements made in March 1450 and June 1451 that Langford should hold Roger’s Wiltshire manors of Broad Blunsdon and Stratton St. Margaret for 11 years, after which they were to pass to the young couple (presumably when they came of age), and he also agreed that they should take possession of his own manor of Langford in Devon after the same period had elapsed. He was included among the feoffees of Roger’s manor of Freefolk in Hampshire. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 595; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1004; iii. 707 (in which the Wilts. fine is wrongly dated); CCR, 1454-61, p. 445. It is a measure of Langford’s astute dealings that all four of his daughters married heirs to substantial gentry families. One of them, Margaret, was wed to Nicholas, the son and heir apparent of Nicholas Carew*. In July 1453 he entered a bond in 500 marks to the latter, conditional on his not bringing a writ of ‘audita querela’ to stay execution of several statutes merchant. Their complex relations probably explain Langford’s temporary tenure of the Carew manor of Great Purley, which by a settlement made in 1454 was entailed with other estates on young Nicholas. Add. Ch. 22643; VCH Berks. iii. 419; CP25(1)/13/86/8. After Carew’s death in 1466, and in her father’s lifetime, Margaret married John Carent*. A second daughter, Anne, was married to John Brocas, the grandson and eventual heir of William Brocas* (d.1456) of Beaurepaire, Hampshire; M. Burrows, Fam. Brocas of Beaurepaire, 167-8, 470B. and her sister, Constance, married Walter Bampfield, son and heir of Sir William Bampfield of Poltimore, Devon. J.S. Vivian, Vis. Devon, 39. Finally, Sancha (d.1494), was matched with Edward Dingley, destined to be the heir of the Dingleys of Wolverton, Hampshire. As her jointure she was to receive the manors of Stanford in Berkshire and Middle Aston, Oxfordshire, which were worth at least £20 p.a. This particular marriage certainly took place before Michaelmas 1472, although the families had long had dealings with each other, and it may have been planned many years earlier. Back in 1447 Langford had entered recognizances to Robert Dingley†, Edward’s great-grandfather, and in 1451 had sued him and his son William for a breach of contract possibly connected with the match, CIPM Hen. VII, i. 877, 963; CCR, 1441-7, p. 486; VCH Hants, iv. 271; CP40/760, rot. 223; J. Biancalana, Fee Tail and Common Recovery, 403; C.C. Brookes, Hist. Steeple Aston and Middle Aston, 193-6. while Edward’s father, Robert Dingley*, was bound to Langford in 1,000 marks at the Westminster staple in 1458. C241/254/10.

The costly marriages of his daughters and the expenses of his service as sheriff made Langford’s financial circumstances precarious on occasion, and as we have seen prompted the sale of property. Not surprisingly, he often brought suits in the court of common pleas against his debtors. On occasion these actions coincided with his membership of the Commons, as in 1459 when he alleged that John Stokes of Brimpton had unlawfully detained a muniment chest. CP40/754, rot. 220; 756, rots. 68, 183; 757, rots. 82d, 195d; 775, rot. 76; 795, rot. 33; CPR, 1452-61, p. 642. In 1465 he provided mainprise at the Exchequer for John Colynggrugge†, the lawyer given keeping of the manor of Padworth. CFR, xx. 141. He was also on good terms with Thomas Stonor II*, on one occasion when writing to him on behalf of an old servant, signing himself ‘Your old ffellawe’. Their acquaintance was of long standing, for they had both sat in the Parliament of November 1449, and were co-feoffees of property in Berkshire in the 1470s. Stonor Letters, no. 119; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1173. In 1452 Langford had joined with (Sir) Edmund Hampden, John Norris and John Roger I in obtaining a royal licence to grant in mortmain to Abingdon abbey various landed holdings in Sugworth, Radley, Sunningwell and Kennington. Perhaps they were acting in fulfillment of a will. CPR, 1446-52, p. 549. Apart from this there is no evidence that Langford had formed a close attachment to any particular religious house.

When Langford made arrangements regarding the settlement of his estates after death, these involved the participation of very many members of his extended family and friends, and reveal that he deeply mistrusted his heir, his eldest son Thomas (c.1444-1494). Although his principal manor, Bradfield, was to pass directly to Thomas when he died, the rest of his holdings were to be kept by trustees throughout Thomas’s lifetime and only after his death be formally settled on his issue. In September 1464 Langford enfeoffed John, duke of Suffolk, and others of three manors and some 400 acres of land in Hampshire to perform his will, directing them to make estate to the duke’s mother, Duchess Alice, and as many as 30 more feoffees to hold to his use, and after his death to hold the manor of Chale to the use of a younger son, Walter, for life and the rest of his manors to the use of Thomas for life, with remainder to Langford’s grandsons in tail. Eight manors and some 760 acres of land in Berkshire were conveyed on 1 Feb. 1471, during the Readeption, to an equally large group of feoffees, this time headed by Langford’s brother-in-law Lord Mountjoy, with similar intent. In this case, the dowager duchess and her co-feoffees would ensure that Thomas received the profits of four of the manors for his lifetime, and his brother William would have the rest for five years, before all the estates were entailed on our MP’s grandsons. Furthermore, Langford ordained that if Thomas obstructed the performance of his will the revenues should all be employed for the support and advancement of his grandchildren. Langford died on 18 Aug. 1474. C140/50/38; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 934-6; CFR, xxi. no. 274.