LANGFORD, Thomas, of Wells, Som.

Langford was one of two sons of a Wells goldsmith who had represented the city in the Parliament of 1419. Thomas’s brother William, who traded as a mercer, was admitted to the freedom of Wells by patrimony in their father’s lifetime in 1425, but may have died not long after 1433, when he last brought litigation before the master and community. Ibid. 247, 255, 262, 263, 265, 281. Thomas for his part followed his father into the goldsmiths’ trade, and was probably the Thomas ‘Goldesmyth’ who gained entry to the freedom in August 1421, having by that date married the daughter of another citizen. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 558. While neither Langford’s father nor his brother held civic office, Thomas himself filled the post of a warden of the shambles for three terms, and by the autumn of 1444 was of sufficient standing to serve as one of the community’s rent collectors (a designation that obscured these officials’ responsibility for the entire civic finances), and to be admitted to the ranks of the council of 24. Wells convocation act bk. 1378-1450, pp. 280, 292, 304, 314, 315. Langford’s first and third terms as warden of the shambles are recorded under his pseudonym of ‘Goldesmyth’. While still occupying the former office, Langford was returned to Parliament alongside the more experienced Thomas Horewode*. Langford’s own motivation in seeking election is unclear, but the two candidates were clearly attractive to their neighbours because of their agreement to accept a flat fee of 20s. for their wages ‘however long [Parliament] might last’. Ibid. 316.

In part, Langford’s enhanced status among the citizens of Wells may have resulted from his acquisition in July 1441 of the inheritance of his mother, a descendant of a cadet branch of the ancient house of Gouvitz. After the death of his wife, Joan Crukern, Joan Langford’s father, Richard Gouvitz alias Freemantle, had entered the Coventry Charterhouse, leaving his lands, including the manors of Tollard in Wiltshire and Long Critchell in Dorset, to his two daughters. The property of the elder coheir, Eleanor, who had married John Savage, had been taken into the King’s hands when she died in 1419, and granted to John Stafford (the future bishop of Bath and Wells) and Hildebrand Elwell*. By 1441 Eleanor’s son, Robert Savage, had gained possession, and settled Long Critchell on his cousin Thomas Langford and his heirs, probably in a re-partition of the inheritance. (It may well have been also in the context of the Gouvitz inheritance that Thomas was sued by the lawyer Robert Rempston*, John Savage’s executor, for a debt of four marks.) CFR, xiv. 297; CIPM, xxi. 274-5; CCR, 1435-41, p. 483; CPR, 1446-52, p. 194.

Following Langford’s return from the constitutionally momentous Parliament of 1445, he all but disappears from the records. While it is possible that the experience of Parliament had given him a taste for the life of a landed gentleman, there is no evidence to substantiate the idea that he withdrew from Wells to live on his manor. He was still alive in 1448, when he sued out two royal pardons to quash outlawries he had incurred in the course of debt litigation in the King’s courts, but is not heard of thereafter. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 98, 194.