LANGSTON, James Haughton (?1797-1863), of Sarsden House, Chipping Norton, Oxon and 143 Piccadilly, Mdx

Aided by his status as a philanthropic local landlord and his vast purse, Langston managed to clock up 30 years as a representative for the venal borough of Oxford, making him one of the city’s longest serving members. A radically-inclined Whig, who dined with the Fox Club at Brooks’s, he barely uttered a word in the House, but was a familiar figure at constituency events and an active county magistrate.1For his membership of the Fox dining club see Freeman’s Journal, 3 May 1843.

Langston had inherited a fortune in childhood from his father, a second generation London banker turned Oxfordshire squire, who had sat as a Whig MP for a succession of pocket boroughs between 1784 and 1807 as a paying nominee.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 375-6; W. Rubinstein, Who were the rich? (2009), i. 57. After an unhappy spell sitting on the Blenheim interest for Woodstock, where Langston acquired a reputation as a ‘lazy parliamentarian’, he had transferred to Oxford in 1826 at the behest of its notoriously corrupt freemen, who were keen to provoke a contest. He had abandoned his anti-Catholicism by 1829, when he supported the Wellington ministry’s concession of emancipation, and steadily backed the Grey ministry’s reform bill in the lobbies from 1831-32.3HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 583; vi. 39-42.

Offering again for Oxford at the 1832 general election, Langston declared himself an ‘ardent friend of civil and religious liberty’, an ‘opposer of slavery in every shape’, and an enemy of ‘all useless places and pensions’. He easily topped the poll, refuting allegations that he owed his seat to bribery and ‘undue influence’, though it was later reported that his ‘friends’ had proffered 10s. for a shared vote and a sovereign for a plumper.4Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 1, 8, 15 Dec. 1832; 13 Apr. 1833.

In the House, Langston continued to give silent support to the Whigs on most major issues, initially preferring to remain aloof from radical motions that would secure him ‘popular ground’ but risk a ‘rejection’ of ministers, as he later informed an Oxford meeting.5Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 13 July 1833. He voted against Grote’s motion for adopting the secret ballot, 27 Apr. 1833, brought up a constituency petition for repeal of the house and window tax, 15 May 1833, and began to divide regularly for lowering the corn duties from 17 May 1833. He voted steadily for the admission of Dissenters to universities, but appeared incorrectly in both the majority and hostile minority of 28 July 1834, the latter of which was widely circulated by the press.6Hansard, 28 July 1834, vol. 25, cc. 653-5; Morning Chronicle, 31 July 1834; Essex Standard, 2 Aug. 1834. On 6 May 1834, in a speech delivered during a morning session for petitions that went unreported by Hansard, he called for the separation of church and state.7Liverpool Mercury, 9 May 1834. Provoked into opposition by elements of the ministry’s new poor law, on which he presented a critical petition, 23 May 1834, he was in the minorities against the allocation of multiple proxy votes to property owners, 10 June, and the prohibition of all poor relief to the aged and sick outside of the workhouse, 11 June 1834.8Morning Chronicle, 24 May 1834; Morning Post, 11, 12 June 1834. His subsequent experience of chairing the Chipping Norton Union, as he told a civic meeting many years later, made him even more convinced of the need for guardians to be given greater discretion over outdoor relief.9Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 10 Oct. 1846.

Langston spent the summer of 1834 on a tour of the German states, where he was pleased to encounter admiration for England’s system of municipal corporations, as he informed Oxford’s mayor and freemen.10Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 4 Oct. 1834. His wayward Oxford colleague Hughes Hughes predicted that he would be defeated at the unexpected dissolution later that year, but most observers were ‘taken by surprise’ when Langston announced that he would retire, 21 Nov. 1834, especially as he had seemed confident of success. ‘Ill-health’ was widely blamed, but in a personal explanation to the chairman of his former committee, Langston cited ‘the long attendance now required in parliament’, which was ‘incompatible with my occupations in the country’, and ‘the feeling that I can be more useful and happy in private rather than in public life’.11Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 29 Nov. 1834; Examiner, 7 Dec. 1834. He was subsequently classified by the Tory press as one of the ‘Radical MPs’ who had ‘withdrawn’ owing to the Conservative ‘reaction’.12Morning Post, 3 Jan. 1835.

Out of the House, Langston continued to pursue the farming improvements and livestock breeding for which he became ‘pre-eminent in Oxfordshire’, alongside his charitable endeavours. Buildings in the area erected at his expense included Chipping Norton town hall, a new church and school at Milton, as well as schools at Lyneham and Chadlington.13Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 Oct. 1863. His chairmanship of the Chipping Norton workhouse union formed in 1835, however, brought him ‘unenviable notoriety for carrying its most arbitrary and stringent details into effect’. As a result, when Oxford’s Liberals found themselves without a candidate at the 1841 general election, Langston was only applied to as a ‘last resort’ and ‘in the absence of anyone else’.14Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 19 June 1841. By now a convert to the secret ballot, apparently owing to his experience of Oxford contests, he came forward as a supporter of free trade ‘in the most extensive sense’, insisting that the corn laws ‘were not only detrimental to agriculture and commerce, but a curse on the agriculturalists themselves’. Bucking the national trend, he topped the poll, prompting predictable complaints that he had again been assisted by ‘golden opinions’.15Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 26 June, 3 July 1841.

Over the next 22 years Langston gave steady support to the ballot, the abolition of church rates, and the reduction of taxation in the lobbies, acquiring a reputation as a ‘consistent advocate of Liberal causes’.16Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 Oct. 1863. To what one commentator called his ‘deep and indelible disgrace’, however, he initially voted against an immediate abolition of the corn laws, 24 Feb. 1842, preferring instead the notion of a fixed duty, before rallying behind Villiers’ campaign for total repeal.17Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 5 Mar. 1842. He subsequently lent his support to the Anti-Corn law league, helping to host a rally for Cobden and Bright in Oxford, 13 Sept. 1843, and he duly backed Peel’s abolition of the corn laws in 1846.18Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 14 Sept. 1843. An opponent of most aspects of factory legislation, Langston was in the minority for Roebuck’s motion against any state interference, 3 May 1844, and helped to defeat the ten hours bill, 22 May 1846. He also antagonised the Dissenters of Oxford by steadily supporting the Maynooth grant and backing Peel’s proposal to make its endowment permanent, 18 Apr. 1845, though he was in the minority for the cost to be paid out of Irish church revenues, 24 Apr. 1845. Justifying his actions, he later told Oxford’s electors that although he ‘was opposed to all state endowments for religious purposes’, the grant had been politically necessary to ‘preserve the state of Ireland’.19Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 31 July 1847. He was in the majority that removed Peel from office over the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846, and later that year criticised his ministry for failing to address the ‘dreadful calamity’ of the Irish famine. At the same Oxford meeting, he reiterated his belief that poor law guardians should be given ‘greater discretionary powers’ and welcomed the establishment of a county lunatic asylum at Littlemore.20Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 10 Oct. 1846.

Langston was returned unopposed at the 1847 and 1852 general elections, when he reaffirmed his attachment to free trade principles but obfuscated on the game laws.21Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 15 May 1847; Daily News, 30 July 1847, 10 July 1852. He gave steady support to Russell’s ministry on most issues, including the removal of Jewish disabilities (1847-8), repeal of the navigation laws (1849), and the ecclesiastical titles bill (1851), but remained implacably opposed to factory regulation (1847). He also opposed Joseph Hume’s ‘little charter’ with its triennial parliaments and household suffrage, 6 July 1848, 28 Feb. 1850, though he readily backed more modest proposals to equalise the county and borough franchises. On 16 Dec. 1852 he helped to turn the Derby ministry out over their budget. By now an increasingly lax attender, he was absent from 172 of the 257 divisions (67%) in 1853 and 157 of the 198 (79%) in 1856.22Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J. P. Gassiot, Third Letter to J. A. Roebuck (1857), 15. He was, however, in his place to support the Palmerston ministry over its handling of the Crimean war, 25 May, 19 July 1855, and to divide against Cobden’s hostile censure motion, 3 Mar. 1857.

At the 1857 general election Langston offered again as a general supporter of Palmerston, explaining on the hustings that he was in favour of an extension of the franchise, but opposed to ‘universal suffrage’ until working class education had been ‘more generally extended’. Returned in first place, at the declaration he welcomed the abolition of the East India charter and the prospect of administrative reform in the civil service.23Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 13 Mar., 4 Apr. 1857. He loyally backed Palmerston over the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, and steadily opposed the Derby ministry thereafter, voting against their ‘abortive and vain’ reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.24Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 9 Apr. 1859. Expectations that he would retire at the ensuing general election came to nothing and he was returned unopposed after reaffirming his support for the ballot and franchise reform.25Morning Chronicle, 6 Apr.; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 9, 30 Apr. 1859. He spoke in similar terms at an Oxford festival for the ancient order of druids, to which he may have belonged, the following year.26Daily News, 3 Jan. 1860.

By late 1862 Langston was ill and missing many of his usual constituency engagements.27See, for example, Morning Post, 2 Jan. 1863. His last recorded vote was in the minority for the abolition of church rates, 29 Apr. 1863. Rumours of his retirement and counter-reports of his recovery continued to circulate until October, during the course of a ‘very long illness attended occasionally with great suffering’.28Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 25 Apr, 5 Sept. 1863; Birmingham Daily Post, 17 Oct. 1863. He died at Sarsden later that month. By his will, dated 3 Aug. 1850 and proved under a substantial £90,000, his London house in Piccadilly passed to his wife, along with a life annuity of £1,000. The residue and his extensive Oxfordshire property passed to his only surviving child Julia, who in 1849 had married her cousin Lord Moreton, Liberal MP for Stroud 1852-3, and subsequently 3rd earl of Ducie.29Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 Oct. 1863. Alongside his political and philanthropic activities, Langston was also a noted pioneer in the use of steam-tractors on his Sarsden and Churchill Mount estates.30Jackson’s Oxford Journal 14 Mar. 1863. There are full-length portraits of him in the town halls of Chipping Norton and Oxford, including one by Thomas Lawrence.31See http://www.oxford.gov.uk/Direct/25087AssemblyRoom.pdf