Langton’s family had been prominent residents of the city of York for much of the fourteenth century before John Langton, grandfather of our MP, began to develop their interests outside the city. The family fortunes, derived principally from landed estates, were boosted in the late 1420s when Sir John Langton, Henry’s father, acquired lands in several counties on the deaths of his cousin, Margaret Neville, and her husband, the duke of Exeter, which left him a coheir to the estates of Sir Robert Neville† of Hornby, situated in Lincolnshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. The principal heir to the family estates at Farnley near Leeds was to be Sir John’s eldest son, John, who died in 1467, eight years after his father.
Henry Langton, one of Sir John’s four younger sons, seems to have enjoyed the most successful career of any of his siblings, through service to Henry VI and John Mowbray, third duke of Norfolk. Joining the royal household by December 1436, he then, as a yeoman of the Crown, received a grant of 6d. a day from the issues of his home county ofYorkshire. This was replaced in September the following year, after the King attained his majority, by a grant of the same amount for term of Langton’s life.
This success was accompanied by grants of offices such as the portership of Wressell castle in his native Yorkshire and an annuity of 4d. a day for keeping the King’s park at Haverah in the same county, although he held the first of these posts only briefly.
By this time Langton had evidently come to the notice of the duke of Norfolk, who on 6 Mar. 1442, in his capacity as Earl Marshal, appointed him to the offices of clerk-marshal and serjeant-marshal of the marshalsea of the Household, to hold jointly with William Thorneholme in survivorship. He quickly made an agreement with Thorneholme that the latter would perform all their duties, and receive the handsome fee of £20 p.a. accorded them from the duke’s lordship of Bosham in Sussex, yet by July 1447 Thorneholme was dead and these offices were confirmed by the Crown to Langton alone. Accordingly, in later years he was styled ‘marshal of the marshalsea of the King’s household’.
When Langton’s Parliament met the Crown was facing a severe crisis in its finances, which grew ever deeper in the autumn, as the English garrisons in Normandy fell under attack from the French. In the next Parliament, which was in being from November 1449 until June 1450, matters degenerated further, and the King’s chief minister the duke of Suffolk was sent into exile and murdered. Although the Parliament passed an Act of Resumption, many members of the Household secured exemption from its provisions. Langton was allowed to keep his fee of £20 p.a. (as marshal), and the parliament roll recorded that the Act was not to be prejudicial to him as an usher of the chamber and regarding any grants he had received by letters patent.
The grants of offices made to Langton during his career in royal service reflected his ties with Yorkshire, and in the crisis year of 1450 he was appointed escheator there. His local connexions had been reinforced by his marriage to Isabel, the widow of a fellow Yorkshireman, John Bosvyle. This had taken place by the autumn of 1443 when a dispute between her and William Bosvyle, possibly a brother of her late husband, was submitted to the arbitration of several prominent northeners, including Langton’s elder brother, John. The dispute concerned lands which had belonged to Isabel’s former husband and the arbitration award made provision for her to take possession of these lands and, before Michaelmas, to enfeoff William Scargill and others who, by the following February, would re-settle half the property upon Isabel and her heirs and the other half upon Bosvyle and his. Isabel’s hopes of regaining her late husband’s lands received a double set-back, however, when Bosvyle refused to implement the award and the feoffees similarly refused to convey to her various landed holdings which Bosvyle had agreed to make over to them as security for abiding by it. Consequently Isabel and Langton submitted a petition to Chancery and the matter was then placed in the hands of the prior of Nostell, Sir John Scrope, Sir Robert Ughtred* and others who met on 13 Mar. and reaffirmed the award made by the arbiters.
Langton was described as formerly an esquire of New Hall and Snaith, in the West Riding, in a pardon he purchased on 18 Dec. 1455, which also called him ‘late of London and Southwark’. This was in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the battle of St. Albans, and although he seems to have kept his post as marshal in the Household,
It is clear from the will of Langton’s mother Euphemia, made on 26 Aug. 1463, that she held Henry in warm regard. He was left the residue of her goods and also benefited from a number of specific bequests of valuable items such as several richly decorated vessels, a silk quilt, and (probably as a reminder of his grandfather’s exploits in the rebellion of Archbishop Scrope against Henry IV), ‘unam Missale vocatum Bisshop [S]crope boke’. Euphemia left a psalter to Langton’s son, also named Henry, who, despite his father’s Lancastrian loyalties, went on to become a yeoman in Edward IV’s household.
While his career had been focused on the royal court at Westminster, Langton’s involvement in the affairs of the capital and its environs had also been indicated by his presence among the recipients of several ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels made by Londoners,