LANGLEY, John II

The Langleys were descended from Sir Geoffrey Langley (d.1274), who won much prominence and no little notoriety in the service of Henry III. The son of an obscure knight, Sir Geoffrey succeeded to an estate at Siddington near Cirencester and to other lands in Warwickshire, but he was able greatly to augment his inheritance, so coming to enjoy a landed income of at least £200 p.a. Some of his acquisitions came to him in marriage although he gained far more through his connexion to the Crown. He received lands by the King’s direct grant and by using the cash rewards he had won in the royal service to obtain the estates of landowners who had fallen into debt to Jewish money-lenders. Sir Geoffrey was always far more prominent than any of his forebears or successors although the division of his estates after his death did much to halt the rise of the Langleys.

The subject of this biography was a member of a junior line of the family descended from Sir Geoffrey’s second son and namesake. This younger Geoffrey had inherited estates in Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Somerset and he subsequently acquired the manor of Atherstone from his senior relatives. In due course, he lost the Somerset lands, although it was following the death of his son and heir, Sir Edmund Langley, in 1316 that a serious erosion of the junior branch’s estates began. The manor of Chesterton in Gloucestershire passed to one of Sir Edmund’s daughters and the Oxfordshire lands to his second wife’s family. Turkdean, another Gloucestershire manor, was lost through fraud and the Warwickshire manor of Shortley and other properties in Coventry fell into the hands of Alexander Bicknor, the uncle by marriage of Sir Edmund’s eldest son and heir. The latter, another Geoffrey Langley, did not long survive his father and was succeeded by his younger brother John, the MP’s grandfather. Atherstone was the only property which this John Langley, who ran into financial problems, was able to inherit without difficulty, and it was left to his son and namesake to begin the real task of reversing the family’s losses. John, the father of the MP, regained the manor of Siddington and, through his marriage to Joan Goldsmith, the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Bridgnorth, acquired another at Oldbury in Shropshire. He had also almost completed the process of recovering the manors of Chesterton and Shortley when he died on 21 May 1417.

Given the lengthy lawsuits he was obliged to fight, it is perhaps not surprising that John, the MP’s father, married his daughter Margery to the serjeant-at-law, William Pole, and had his son trained as a lawyer. Apparently already a man of mature years in 1417,6 He himself claimed to be over the age of 70 in Nov. 1451: CPL, x. 107-8. There is no surviving inq. post mortem for his father from which to calculate his age. the younger John put his legal skills to good use. He played a prominent part in the struggle for Chesterton and Shortley while his father was still alive, and it was to him that the rival claimant, John Barndsley, formally surrendered both manors a few weeks after John senior’s death. The surrender did not, however, mark an absolute victory, because just three months later Langley agreed that Barndsley should farm Chesterton for life, at a symbolic annual rent of a rose. In the event, he must have outlived his tenant since he was again in possession of the manor at the end of his life. Langley continued the process of recovery begun by his father. In 1423 he sued the occupiers of Turkdean, Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and his wife Joan, and began proceedings to regain the Brightwell lands. He succeeded on both counts, having once again exploited his professional qualifications by conducting his own suit against the Greys. As he had done with Barndsley, he reached a compromise with the Greys over Turkdean, for in late 1432 he made a joint lease of the manor to Joan Grey and William Warner of Cirencester for the term of Joan’s life.7 Langley Cart. 4, 14; PCC 18 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 36-37).

Typically for a lawyer, Langley was also active in the land market. In the summer of 1434 he purchased the manor of Over Siddington from his neighbour, John Stonehouse. Initially it was agreed that Stonehouse should lease Over Siddington to him but very soon afterwards the lease became a sale, with Langley undertaking that he and his heirs would pay Stonehouse and his heirs a rent of eight marks p.a.8 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 343-4; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 449-50. Whether the vendor parted willingly with the manor, which he had only just obtained by means of an exchange with Richard, duke of York, is open to question. About a year later Stonehouse complained to the chancellor that another Gloucestershire lawyer, Robert Stanshawe*, had tricked him into selling a small estate near Stroud, held by his family since at least the late thirteenth century.9 VCH Glos. x. 274; xi. 12; Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, pp. xxix-xxx. Ill-gotten gain or not, Over Siddington caused Langley some trouble in the following decade. In May 1446 he began a suit against John Huband* and several of the latter’s servants in the court of common pleas. According to Langley, Huband and his men had entered his lands there the previous January and attacked and wounded his servant David Rogger. When the case came to pleadings in the spring of 1447, the defendants claimed that the lands in question belonged to Huband and his wife, Elizabeth, in her right. At a trial held locally several months later, however, the jury found that they had wrongfully disseised Langley, who won £95 in damages, expenses and costs. Langley did not however achieve a complete victory since the jury dismissed his assertion that the defendants had attacked Rogger, meaning that he was required subsequently to answer for his false allegation. No doubt, it was in connexion with the same quarrel that a jury indicted Huband and his co-defendants of certain trespasses in Gloucestershire. In mid 1450, the sheriff of the county was ordered to ensure that they came to Westminster to answer the indictment in King’s bench, although they had still not done so by the end of the same year. It appears likely that the Langley-Huband dispute had arisen from a claim – possibly highly speculative – which the Hubands had made for Over Siddington, at one time the property of Elizabeth’s ancestors.10 CP40/745, rots. 416, 416d; KB27/757, rex rot. 16d. Some two years after buying that manor, Langley acquired an interest in another at Lemhill on the Gloucestershire-Oxfordshire border, and in 1438 he bought various lands and tenements in Gloucester from the London goldsmith Richard Sage.11 CCR, 1435-41, p. 135; CP25(1)/79/89/66. He appears likewise to have acquired a small estate in Fairford from the daughters and coheirs of Thomas Cokerell in the early 1440s.12 VCH Glos. vii. 76; CP25(1)/79/90/89; 90/93. On at least one occasion Langley acquired a farm of lands from the Crown, for in July 1436 he received the keeping of holdings in Milborne Port, Milborne Wick and Kingsbury Regis, Somerset, to retain for as long as they should remain in the King’s hands.13 CFR, xvi. 294-5.

As one might expect, Langley was among the gentry of Gloucestershire called upon to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the kingdom in 1434.14 CPR, 1429-36, p. 373. By the end of the 1430s the authorities believed he was of sufficient substance to support the status of knighthood, an honour for which he was first distrained in 1439. He reacted to the distraint by going to the Exchequer in person to plead that he was not liable to pay the fine imposed on him, although on what basis is not known.15 E159/215, recorda Trin. rot. 19. At the end of his life Langley was a far more considerable landowner than his father, possessing seven manors in three counties (Siddington Langley, Over Siddington, Chesterton, Turkdean, Shortley, Oldbury and Atherstone) as well as other lands in Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Allowing for undervaluation, the inquisitions post mortem taken after the deaths of himself and his immediate descendants suggest that he enjoyed a landed income of about £100 p.a. at the end of his life.16 C139/176/31; C140/50/40; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 448, 450, 672; ii. 591-2; iii. 676.

The long battles to recover the family estates were either largely or completely over by the time Langley was first elected as a knight of the shire for Gloucestershire. At last firmly established as a landowner of some substance, he was also more active than hitherto in local government in the latter part of his career. From mid 1432 until his death he served mainly continuously as a j.p., save for a break between November 1439 and July 1441. He sat in his penultimate Parliament while escheator of Gloucestershire and in his last he was a proxy for the abbot of Cirencester, an ecclesiastic whom he also served as steward.

Whether Langley owed his election as a knight of the shire to no fewer than five Parliaments, two of them consecutive, solely to his newly enhanced status as a landowner is unclear, not least because he came to enjoy the patronage of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and, probably, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. He had become associated with Warwick by 1434 when the earl retained him with a fee of 40s. for his counsel.17 CIPM, xxvi. 460. Following Warwick’s death at the end of April 1439, Langley was involved in negotiations with the Crown over the sums it owed to the deceased for his service as captain of Calais and lieutenant of France and Normandy. Associated with him in this business were two fellow lawyers, the King’s attorney-general John Vampage* and John Throckmorton I*, and Thomas Hugford*, all of whom were also Beauchamp retainers. Langley was on good terms with Vampage in particular, for they acted for each other as feoffees. On 25 May 1439, by an indenture to which the four men were party as representatives of the widowed countess of Warwick, the King agreed that Beauchamp’s executors should have £2,175 in satisfaction of the debts due to him for the captaincy of Calais in return for a repudiation of sums owed in respect of his time as lieutenant.18 E403/734, m. 7; CP25(1)/79/89/66; CPR, 1452-61, p. 288; CFR, xvi. 362. As for the earl of Shrewsbury, Langley was certainly associated with that lord by mid 1443 when Talbot appointed him, Giles Brydges* and Geoffrey Holford feoffees of Cheswardine castle and other estates in Shropshire. It is also possible that he acted as a counsellor for Shrewsbury, a role which Brydges at least is known to have performed.19 CCR, 1441-7, p. 150; A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 236.

Whether or not one of Shrewsbury’s counsellors, Langley was definitely retained in that capacity by the Gloucestershire esquire Maurice de la River, who in June 1437 granted him an annuity of 20s. for life in return for his legal counsel.20 CCR, 1435-41, p. 130. No doubt he also came to exercise his legal skills in relation to Dymock, a manor in north-west Gloucestershire which had once belonged to Richard Ruyhale†. It was as a feoffee of Dymock that he was involved in a complicated series of transactions and lawsuits which began in the early 1430s and were not resolved until 1438. His connexion with Dymock brought him into contact with several prominent figures, among them Henry Bourgchier, count of Eu, Sir John Pauncefoot† and John Merbury*, the former chamberlain, receiver and justiciar of South Wales. Later, in April 1448 he took part in settling the manor on (Sir) Walter Devereux I* and his wife Elizabeth, Merbury’s eldest daughter.21 CPR, 1429-36, p. 141; 1429-36, pp. 281-2; 1436-41, p. 159; 1446-52, p. 131; CCR, 1422-9, p. 184; CFR, xvi. 148; E159/209, brevia Trin. rot. 8; 210, brevia Easter rot. 17, Trin. rot. 1d. On other occasions Langley was a feoffee for Sir John Blaket† and his wife Elizabeth, for the mercer William Eldesfeld* of Gloucester and, perhaps, for another prominent resident of that town, John Heyward.22 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 256, 259; Glos. Archs., cath. deeds, D1609/10/3; CP25(1)/79/89/51.

Apart from John Vampage, Langley’s own feoffees included Thomas Mille* (his fellow MP in the Parliament of 1435), the lawyer Thomas Bisley* of Gloucester, the clerk Thomas Lane, the duke of York’s servant William Prelate of Cirencester and Thomas Chedworth. The last named was a kinsman of John Chedworth, bishop of Lincoln, himself a native of Gloucestershire. Langley was evidently on good terms with the bishop as well, since he was to make the churchman a beneficiary of his will, but the exact nature of his relationship with the Chedworths is not known. Vampage, Mille, Bisley, Lane and Thomas Chedworth were all party to the arrangements which Langley made for the benefit of his servant Joan White in mid 1448. On 1 July that year he had the manor of Over Siddington settled on him and Joan for the term of her life, after which Vampage and the other feoffees were to sell it. His executors were to use the money raised from the sale for good works, for the benefit of the souls of himself, his parents and ancestors. He also directed that his niece and nearest relative, Isabel Pole, the daughter of his sister Margery, should have first option of purchase, while at the same time reserving the right to dispose of the manor himself, so long as Joan White’s interest was upheld.23 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 159-60; CP25(1)/79/89/66; CCR, 1454-61, p. 133; Oxf. DNB, ‘Chedworth, John’; PCC 18 Stokton. By this date Isabel was already married to Walter Langley of Knowlton, Kent, the head of a previously unrelated family of the same name. This match between a couple sharing the same surname was probably intentional rather than coincidental, since it ensured that the MP’s estates were preserved in the name of Langley.

There is no evidence that Langley himself ever married and one can only wonder about the exact nature of the relationship between him and the female servant to whom he showed such striking favour, both in 1448 and on other occasions. It was certainly a matter of prurient speculation for some of his contemporaries, as papal letters granted to him on 27 Nov. 1451 make clear. The letters were in response to a petition he had submitted to the Roman Curia in protest at the attempts of the bishop of Worcester, John Carpenter, to have Joan, also unmarried, removed from his household, on the grounds that the couple were living in sin. In the petition he stated that he was beyond his 70th year, without a wife and, on account of his age and infirmities, unable to cope without the services of a female attendant. He acknowledged making ‘divers’ gifts from his goods to Joan, but only in consideration of the fact that the good care she had given him had saved him from death on numerous occasions, and in order to secure her services for life. Vehemently denying that she was his concubine, he pointed out that she herself was over the age of 50 and that both of them were now too old and infirm to commit the sin of fornication. As for the bishop’s hostility towards his domestic arrangements, Langley blamed it on certain unnamed ‘malevolent persons and enemies’ who had persuaded Carpenter that he was living in sin. The petition is hard to take at face value in at least one respect, for it is unlikely that he could have remained on the commission of the peace – and a member of the quorum at that – had his infirmities been as grave as he claimed. It nevertheless achieved its purpose, for the letters of 27 Nov. completely exempted him and Joan from the jurisdiction of the see of Worcester. It also quashed all processes, sentences and other actions which Carpenter and his officials had brought against them and permitted her to remain in his employment, provided that no sin was committed. As a safeguard, however, the letters also empowered the couple’s local rector – or the papal collector in their part of the country – to punish any future act of impropriety, whether by Langley or Joan together or by one of them alone.24 CPL, x. 107-8.

It is possible that Joan had entered Langley’s service many years earlier, since she was one of his co-feoffees when he acquired his interest in the manor at Lemhill in the mid 1430s. She was likewise associated with him two decades later, when he was engaged in a dispute with the Oxfordshire abbey of Eynsham over property in the vicinity of the same manor, and his will shows that he was to award her a life interest in the Lemhill estate before he died. Like his settlement of Over Siddington in 1448, Joan’s association with him in this regard is striking, as is an agreement he made with the nunnery of Romsey, Hampshire, in the later 1450s, and the prominence with which she features in the will. It was in the spring of 1457 that he and Joan made a release to the nuns of Romsey of certain lands and the advowson of a chapel in Hullasey, Gloucestershire. In return for this grant, the nuns agreed to pay them a rent of ten marks p.a. in survivorship and to pray for them in full chapter every Friday, both during their lifetimes and after their deaths.25 CCR, 1435-41, p. 135; 1454-61, pp. 133, 266-7; PCC 18 Stokton. However innocent their relationship, it would seem that she was his de facto wife in all other respects.

When he made his will, dated 4 Dec. 1458, Langley named Joan White and Thomas Chedworth as his executors, entrusting them with the choice of where to bury him. He directed that all his inherited lands, including those family holdings he had recovered through litigation, should pass to his niece Isabel Langley and confirmed Joan’s interest for life in the Over Siddington and Lemhill estates. For the good of his soul, he set aside £100 for the establishment of a chantry at Bridgnorth, his mother’s home town, left £140 to the Carthusians of Coventry and donated the lands he had bought from Richard Sage to a chantry at Siddington. In remembrance of his grandfather and namesake, he ordered a marble gravestone for him in Atherstone church, where the lack of such a stone hints at the straitened financial circumstances his grandfather had faced. Langley also made bequests to his ‘cousins’ – Isabel Langley’s sons William, Edmund and John – and to various religious institutions and clergy. Presumably none of his three great-nephews was intended for the law, because he ordered his executors to sell his sizeable collection of law books, including volumes he had loaned to other lawyers. He was likewise a borrower, since he also directed them to return a book of assizes to the executors of his brother-in-law, William Pole, and a certain year book to John Filoll* or to the executors of Filoll’s ‘father’, probably the latter’s stepfather, the late Sir William Cheyne, c.j.KB. This small library suggests he was a learned member of his profession even if he does not seem to feature as counsel in the year books.26 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 992-3. Langley also pardoned all his debtors, save William Monden, a former farmer of his, and left all his remaining goods and chattels to Joan White. He died on 23 Dec. 1458 and was probably buried at Siddington. The inquisition post mortem held for him in Gloucestershire on the following 31 Oct. confirmed that his niece Isabel, then aged 30 years and more, was his heir.27 PCC 18 Stokton; C139/176/3. On her own death in 1474, the old Langley inheritance passed to her eldest son William, by then already in possession of his patrimony in Kent. William was succeeded in 1483 by his son, another John Langley. The last of the Langleys of Knowlton in the male line, this John died in 1518.