LANGLEY, John I

The first known reference to Langley is a royal pardon granted to him and his wife on 5 Aug. 1415.5 C67/37, m. 24. By then he had settled at Bristol, although he originated from Wiltshire where he continued to retain interests in Corsham, Castle Combe and Kington St. Michael. These included copyhold lands held of the manor of Corsham, in turn part of the dower estates of Henry IV’s widow, Joan of Navarre.6 Tropenell Cart. i. 29, 32, 41, 46-47; E199/48/7, 8; E364/70, m. C. Given Langley’s links with Wiltshire, it is likely that he rather than a namesake was the John Langley who sat for Chippenham in the Parliament of 1422. In the period 1422-50 few if any of Chippenham’s MPs were resident burgesses but most of them held lands in Wiltshire and Langley’s holdings in that county lay in the immediate vicinity of the borough.7 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 690-2, where however it is assumed the Chippenham MP of 1422 was Langley’s namesake, John Langley II*, a lawyer from Glos.

There is no direct evidence for Langley’s property in Bristol although the will that a fellow burgess, William Pays, made in May 1420 refers to a tenement he held in Redcliffe Street.8 Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 107. At Bristol he pursued a career as a merchant of some prominence. In February 1424 he obtained a licence from the King’s council to ship wool he had bought in the staple at Carmarthen to Bristol and then on to Calais. He had paid all the local dues when making his purchase in Wales, and the licence excused him from having to pay any customs for the Bristol-Calais leg of the journey, while stipulating that this exemption did not apply to any wool of English origin that he might export with the Welsh wool.9 CPR, 1422-9, p. 181. It is possible that he was a shipowner, since by the following spring he had a French prisoner, presumably taken during a clash at sea, on his hands. On 9 May 1425 the Crown issued a safe conduct to John Dansere and John de Hesse of Calais, so that they might come to England with a ransom for the prisoner, one Peter de Nantollet.10 DKR, xlviii. 236; Overseas Trade (Bristol Rec. Soc. vii), 58. Langley also had business dealings in London. In November 1425 he entered into a bond in statute staple for £200 to John Pidmill, a merchant from the City, to ensure that he would pay Pidmill that sum a month later. He must have missed the deadline since the Londoner subsequently took legal action against him on the strength of the bond.11 C241/219/24.

On several occasions Langley entered securities on behalf of other Bristol merchants. In May 1425 he stood surety for the quarrelsome Mark William†, to guarantee the latter’s obedience to the municipal authorities,12 CCR, 1422-9, p. 204. and in the following December he bound himself at the Exchequer on behalf of Robert Maukeswell, also of Bristol, whom the Crown had amerced for attempting to ship cloth from London without paying customs. As one of Maukeswell’s sureties, he himself was amerced £10 13s. 4d. and he subsequently suffered for failing to satisfy the Crown of this sum.13 E159/202, recogniciones Mich., recorda Mich. rots. 18d, 20d. Langley also stood surety for Thomas Canynges* in March 1429, when Canynges appeared before the mayor and bailiffs of Bristol, in his capacity as the guardian of an orphan from the town.14 Bristol RO, Bristol recs., ct. of orphans, recognizance bk., BCC/J/Or/2/1, f. 77.

The close rolls record yet another security to which Langley put his name, this time on his own account. On 12 Nov. 1425 the chief butler of England, Thomas Chaucer, and his close associates Thomas Walsingham† and Thomas Haseley† took from him a recognizance bearing a penalty of 1,000 marks to be levied in Wiltshire.15 CCR, 1422-9, p. 259. The condition of the recognizance is not recorded but it probably related to his role as Chaucer’s deputy butler at Bristol, a position he had held since early 1423.

By that date Langley had already completed his career as a municipal office holder within Bristol, where in Henry V’s reign he served a term as one of the bailiffs and attended meetings of the common council,16 Little Red Bk. Bristol ed. Bickley, i. 138-40, 149-53. although three years later he was to sit for the town in the Leicester Parliament of 1426. When the Parliament was called, the Chancery sent a writ of summons to Bristol that was incorrectly worded since it failed to acknowledge that the town was a county in its own right. Langley and his fellow MP, Henry Gildeney*, were therefore entrusted with a petition protesting at this omission which they presented to the Commons after arriving at Leicester. The petition was successful, for on 1 June, the last day of the Parliament, the Crown issued letters patent exemplifying Bristol’s county status.17 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 184; RP, iv. 315 (cf. PROME, x. 317); Bristol Chs. (Bristol Rec. Soc. xi), 118-21.

Very little is known about Langley following the dissolution of the Parliament of 1426. By December that year John Pidmill had begun legal action against him over the statute staple for £200,18 C241/219/24. but there is nothing to connect him with the John Langley who received letters of protection in the previous autumn, prior to accompanying John, duke of Bedford, to France.19 DKR, xlviii. 244. In April 1434 Langley witnessed a deed relating to lands at Hanham, Oldland and other Gloucestershire parishes to the east of Bristol, but on whose behalf is far from clear.20 E159/211, commissiones Mich.

Three years later, some if not all of Langley’s holdings in Wiltshire were seized by the Crown, with which he had failed to compound over a decade earlier in his capacity as a surety for Robert Maukeswell. The accounts of Sir Edmund Hungerford* and Sir William Beauchamp*, the successive sheriffs of Wiltshire in 1435-6 and 1436-7, record that the properties were seized on 29 May 1437 and that by that date the MP, referred to as ‘late of Bristol’, was dead.21 E199/48/7, 8; E364/70, m. C; 71, m. B; E159/202, recogniciones Mich.; recorda Mich. rots. 18d, 20d. Although in Nov. 1441 the Crown licensed an unidentified John Langley to export oats and barley to Holland and Zeeland: DKR, xlvi. 340.

Langley died childless and his heir was his great-nephew, Thomas Mille. Mille was the grandson of Edith, the eldest of the MP’s three sisters; the relationship is recorded in the cartulary of the Tropenell family. The cartulary also reveals the name of Langley’s father, whose surname of Wyndell the MP had discarded in favour of the place name alias of Langley.22 Tropenell Cart. i. 41, 46. Probably John Wyndell’s residence of ‘North Langley’ should be identified with Langley, in Kington St. Michael. The Tropenells’ interest in the pedigree of the relatively unimportant Langleys arose because Thomas Tropenell* acquired lands at Neston in Corsham from Thomas Mille who, having inherited them from the MP, released them to Tropenell in 1453.23 Tropenell Cart. i. 41, 46. The cartulary also records Langley’s acquisition, early in Henry VI’s reign, of certain holdings in Corsham that he transferred to the clerk, Nicholas Gerveys, and others in 1427 and which likewise afterwards came into Thomas Tropenell’s hands. Intriguingly, it notes that Langley ‘departed over the see, and never come ayene’ after relinquishing these lands, although his witnessing of the deed of 1434 might suggest that he did not leave the realm immediately.24 Ibid. 29-30, 32. The phrase does however suggest that he may have ended his days while on a trading venture abroad.