LANGTON, Robert, of Bramber, Suss.

Robert was mentioned in 1423, as the son of the Yorkshire knight Sir John Langton, in the will of a family friend, Robert Wycliffe, chancellor and receiver to the bishop of Durham, who left him a bed of red worsted, embroidered with Wycliffe’s arms. Test Ebor. i. (Surtess Soc. iv), 404-5. In the biography of Sir John Langton it is wrongly assumed that his son Robert died young: The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 560-2. Perhaps he was the cleric’s godson. Although singled out in this way, he was one of the three youngest of Sir John’s five sons, being junior to the Langton heir, John, and probably also to their brother Henry, who was to represent the Surrey borough of Reigate in the first Parliament of 1449. Although occasionally recorded in connexion with these two siblings, he does not seem to have remained particularly close to them. John did not refer to him in his will in 1466. Nor, perhaps more significantly, was he remembered in that of their mother, Euphemia (d.1463), who left bequests to four of her other sons and to several grandchildren. Test Ebor. ii. (Surtees Soc. xxx), 258-60, 277-9. Although at one stage Robert claimed to have been robbed of deeds concerning his inheritance in Yorkshire, KB27/772, rex rot. 3. where this inheritance lay has not been discovered.

In the early part of his career, Robert followed his brother Henry into the service of both the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk and the Crown, and this service took him away from Yorkshire to pursue his fortunes in the far south of England. This move was made concrete in 1441 by his appointment by the 3rd duke of Norfolk as constable of Bramber castle in Sussex, a post which earned him a fee of as much as 20 marks p.a. That the appointment was for term of his life indicates that he was then no newcomer to the duke’s affinity. Yet he was also retained by Henry VI, and it was as ‘King’s esquire’ that in November 1446 he was granted a lease of 60 acres of land called ‘the port of Hulkesmouth’ at Shoreham, just down-river from Bramber. The lease was to last for as long as 40 years. CFR, xviii. 66. Langton received fees and livery as an esquire of the royal chamber at least for the next six years. E101/409/16; 410/1, f. 30v; 410/3; 410/6, f. 40; 410/9. The circumstances which prompted the transfer of his moveable goods to well-wishers, which Langton put into effect on 1 June 1447, are now difficult to discover. Perhaps he was facing legal proceedings and wished to protect his property from confiscation. Those whom he entrusted with his possessions included besides his brother Henry two prominent figures from among the Sussex gentry (Richard Dallingridge* and Robert Rademylde*), and his fellow Mowbray retainers John Southwell* and John Beckwith*. CCR, 1447-54, p. 438. In the following month the King confirmed his appointment as constable of Bramber by letters patent of the duke of Norfolk, with the additional concession that should the wardship of the duke’s estates fall to the Crown by reason of a minority Langton might continue to occupy the constableship as before. CPR, 1446-52, p. 82. It was as ‘of Bramber, gentleman’ that in November 1451 he stood surety at the Exchequer for his brother John Langton, then granted keeping of the royal mills below York castle. CFR, xviii. 249.

In the spring of 1453 Langton was in trouble: the sheriff of Sussex was instructed to put him in exigent for a breach of the peace. He prudently obtained a royal pardon on 5 July for any trespasses or other offences. While the cause of his difficulties is uncertain, a year later he was fined two marks in respect of a trespass against one Henry Compton, in which Compton was awarded damages of £24 6s. 8d. in the King’s bench. KB27/768, rex rot. 18; 774, fines rot. 1d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 84. Langton’s place in the Household had earlier worked to his advantage. Proceedings in Southwark before the steward of the Household, Lord Sudeley, and its marshal, Langton’s lord the duke of Norfolk, begun in February 1453, heard the indictment of a London serjeant named Robert Broker for the theft at Westminster of Langton’s clothes and other possessions, including four books of chronicles and a chest containing muniments relating to his inheritance in Yorkshire and elsewhere, in all said to be worth £200. Yet when Broker gave himself up at the marshalsea of King’s bench in Easter term 1454 he secured an acquittal. KB27/772, rex rot. 3. In the interim the crisis of the King’s mental collapse and reduction in the size of the Household probably led to Langton’s exclusion from it.

The background to Langton’s election to Parliament in 1455 for the distant borough of Tavistock in Devon remains a mystery. He had no known connexion either with the borough or its lord, Tavistock abbey, or even with the county. Perhaps the political circumstances of the summoning of the Parliament lay behind it. Following the victory of the Yorkists at the battle of St. Albans the duke of Norfolk, as Richard of York’s ally, sought to engineer the return of members of his affinity to the Commons. His success at the elections for Norfolk and Suffolk is clear enough, but since returns for Sussex and Surrey have not survived, it is impossible to ascertain whether, as on other occasions, Mowbray retainers took some of the borough seats in those counties. If Langton had originally hoped to be elected at Bramber, on Mowbray territory and within his own sphere of influence, we do not know which other candidate defeated him there. After sitting in the Commons, Langton continued to make Sussex the focus of his interests, remaining constable of Bramber castle for at least 20 years more. Arundel Castle mss, Bramber acct. A262. Furthermore, intending to profit from the sale of the reversion of his post as constable, in the 1460s he promised it to (Sir) John Howard* for £20. Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, i. 184. Although there is no evidence that Langton built up a landed estate to pass on to his heirs, he did farm land in the neighbourhood of the castle, and in July 1457 in collaboration with Richard Farnfold† he took on a 30-year lease from the prior of Sele of the rectory of Old Shoreham, for which they were prepared to pay £16 p.a. He and Farnfold received fees from the prior, too. However, the priory was falling into increasingly severe financial difficulties, and in November 1462 the 4th duke of Norfolk sent an injunction to them and to others who received fees, annuities or goods yearly by grant of the prior, to forgo taking any further benefits from the priory until it had recovered its prosperity, at the risk of losing the duke’s good lordship. Langton appears to have ignored the command. In about 1466 the new prior, Richard Aleyne, made a formal complaint against him for robbing the monastery, threatening his life and driving him away. Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Shoreham deeds, 3, 53; Sele deeds, h. H, 54b.

In 1462 Langton had been among those commissioned to arrest and bring before the King’s Council certain persons who had been ‘wandering about’ Surrey and Sussex with masked and painted faces, and had broken into parks, warrens and closes and wounded and killed the keepers. CPR, 1461-7, p. 207. But apart from this, he was not appointed to any ad hoc royal commissions during Edward IV’s reign. Nor, seemingly, was he again returned to Parliament, although he did attest the Sussex elections held at Chichester on 30 Apr. 1467. C219/17/1. Langton received another pardon, as ‘of Bramber, esquire’ on 20 Nov. 1468, C67/46, m. 17. and although he may have suffered some loss of influence by having to share his office as constable with William Brandon† in the 1470s, Moye, 439. he remained a figure of some consequence in the locality. When Bishop Waynflete of Winchester appropriated the estates of Sele priory for his re-foundation of Magdalen College, Oxford, Langton undertook in 1475 that in consideration of a reward given to him by the bishop and an annual fee of 20s. for life from Magdalen he would provide his ‘feythfull herte and trewe servyse’ to the college and assist it in recovering and keeping the rents due to the priory. He formally relinquished to the college any annuity or lease granted him by former priors, and surrendered all his right in the tithes of Old Shoreham, ‘Kyngesbournes’ and lands in Anyngton. However, in a partial account of the sums received by Langton from various possessions of the priory which he farmed, reference was made to his extortions and overbearing conduct towards the parson of Bramber. Magdalen Coll., Sele deeds, 35, 43, 109.

It looks as if Langton ceased to be constable of Bramber on the death of the fourth duke of Norfolk, for the receivers’ accounts for the former Mowbray estates for 1476-7 (by which date they had come into the possession of Norfolk’s son-in-law the young Duke Richard of York), while referring to him as farmer of certain lands within the lordship of Bramber did not list him among those still receiving fees by grant of the Mowbrays. However, Henry Langton, a kinsman of his (probably his nephew), one of the yeomen of the King’s pantry, was made porter of the castle by royal grant in January 1477. DL29/454/7312, 7313. Robert had not entirely ceased contact with his relations in the north of England, for about this time he acted as an intermediary in making arrangements for the marriage of his nephew and ward, Richard Waterton. In negotiations with Thomas Bellingham*, another northerner who had made his career in Sussex, he was promised 40 marks for his help in fixing a match with Bellingham’s niece, but Bellingham went back on his promise so that Langton had to bring a suit against him in Chancery at Easter 1481. After some delay, a new chancellor ordered on 8 Nov. 1484 that Bellingham should pay him the £20 still owing. C1/62/237. Young Richard was the son of Langton’s sis. Margaret.

Despite his interests in Sussex, Langton himself had married a woman with property in London, in this respect, as in others, following the example of his brother Henry. This marriage had taken place by the autumn of 1462, when his wife, Dorothy Wakefield, was referred to by her married name. She was then in possession of a tenement in Lombard Street. CCR, 1461-8, p. 148. Dorothy was the cousin of Joan Wakefield, who married the prominent Hampshire lawyer Richard Jay†: each woman stood to inherit the other’s estate should she die childless. In Joan’s case this estate was substantial, including several buildings in Lombard Street and Birchin Lane, among them a large property known as Le Belle. In 1469 the Jays granted Dorothy and her husband Langton an annual rent of six marks for Dorothy’s lifetime, at the same time promising Langton four marks a year if he survived his wife. Dorothy’s own inheritance appears to have been less valuable, and some of it, in Candlewick Street, she and her husband lost in a lawsuit in 1474. Corp. London RO, hr 199/11, 12; 205/6. Furthermore, following Joan’s death she gave up to Jay’s feoffees all her rights to her cousin’s property, at the same time relinquishing to Jay a rent of 26s. from a house in Fenchurch Street. Ibid. hr 218/13, 14. By that date, March 1488, her husband Langton was also dead. In his last years Langton needs to be distinguished from a namesake, the brother of Thomas Langton, the councillor and diplomat to Edw. IV, who was made successively bp. of St. David’s and Salisbury by Ric. III and was bp. of Winchester from 1493 until his death in 1501: Oxf. DNB. That Robert acted for his brother at the Exchequer in 1480, and was associated with him in a royal grant of Dec. 1483: Issues ed. Devon, 499; CPR, 1477-85, p. 412. It was no doubt he who had been granted with the abp. of York, the bp. of Lincoln and Lord Hastings the collation to the next vacant canonry and prebend in St. Stephen’s Westminster, in Feb. 1483, and was appointed collector of customs in London on 24 July following: CPR, 1477-85, p. 342. He made a loan of 100 marks to the King at Mich. 1484 (E405/73, rots. 1, 1d), and in the same year he also lent 100 marks to his bro. Bp. Langton ‘in his great need’. He died before the bp. repaid the money, and his widow Agnes was still seeking to recover part of the debt at the time of her brother-in-law’s death: C1/252/26. He left no children.