LANGTON, Henry

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.10 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 560-2; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 258-60, 404-5.

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.11 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 18, 136; E159/214, brevia Hil. rot. 18d. Langton was to be a regular recipient of robes and wages in the Household until the 1450s, initially as a yeoman of the chamber, but from about 1447 as an esquire of the hall and chamber.12 E101/408/25; 409/2, f. 45d; 6, f. 22; 9, f. 37d; 11, f. 39; 12, f. 82v; 16, f. 35v; 410/1, f. 30v; 3, f. 32v; 6, f. 39v; 9, f. 42v.

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.13 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 95, 127. More rewards were forthcoming in April 1441 when Langton and John Croke, also a servant of the Crown, were granted the keeping of a brewhouse, two shops and a solar in Fleet Street, London, for which they rendered just 12d. a year to the Exchequer. The grant was subject to the Act of Resumption at the close of the Parliament of 1449-50, but the properties were re-granted to them in June 1450, for 12 years at a more realistic yearly farm of £4 13s. 4d.14 CPR, 1436-41, p. 508; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 269; CFR, xviii. 175, 267. Likewise, in January 1442 Langton and Edward Strickland were granted the keeping of two parts of the lands of John Dounton of Herefordshire, whose four daughters were still under age, along with the girls’ marriages.15 CPR, 1441-6, p. 30. The duties concomitant with such grants were evidently carried out to the Crown’s satisfaction, for in December 1446 Langton was granted an annual pipe of Gascon wine from the port of Kingston-upon-Hull.16 CPR, 1446-52, p. 59.

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’.17 CCR, 1441-7, p. 64; CPR, 1446-52, p. 62; CP40/768, rot. 33d. In the course of the serious dispute between the duke and Sir Robert Wingfield* in late 1447, Langton joined John Trevelyan*, Sir John Griffiths and Sir Edmund Mulsho* in standing bail for Sir Robert at the marshalsea prison. In February the next year, when Wingfield secured a general pardon from the Crown, pardons were also granted to Langton and the rest.18 CPR, 1446-52, p. 130. Nevertheless, the duke does not seem to have held this against him, and apart from the income which came with his offices perhaps the greatest advantage of Langton’s links with Mowbray was his election to the Parliament of February 1449 for the latter’s borough of Reigate.

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.19 E163/8/14; PROME, xii. 126. Even so, he was deprived of his 6d. a day as a yeoman of the Crown, and it was not until 16 Mar. 1452, after the King’s councillors had regained political control, that he was re-granted his wage for life, with effect backdated to 1449. Even then, he found it difficult to obtain the arrears from the sheriffs of Yorkshire.20 CPR, 1446-52, p. 542; E159/230, brevia Hil. rot. 4, Easter rot. 7; 232, brevia Mich. rot. 9d. Despite the King’s mental collapse in the summer of 1453, Langton remaining in the reduced Household, and by November 1454 he had been appointed as usher to the infant prince of Wales.21 PPC, vi. 233.

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.22 C1/13/61-63. It is not known when, or if, the arbitration award was eventually carried out, but in February 1445 the feoffees, headed by Lord Cromwell, arrayed an assize of novel disseisin against the Langtons, with regard to property in the West Riding at Cawthorne, Wombwell, Gunthwaite and elsewhere.23 C66/461, m. 16d. The Langtons may have secured a favourable judgement in part, as in July 1452 they obtained a licence to grant revenues from lands in Cawthorne to fund the salary of a chantry-chaplain in the local church of St. Michael. The chantry thus founded was to benefit the soul of John Bosvyle and the spiritual welfare of the Langtons themselves, as well as Langton’s lord, Henry VI. Isabel’s feoffees were headed by Thomas, Lord Clifford, whose patronage may well have proved advantageous.24 CPR, 1446-52, p. 574; Yorks. Chantry Surveys (Surtees Soc. xi), i. 191.

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,25 C67/41, m. 17. Yet in a lawsuit of the same period he was also called ‘late of the Household’: CP40/779, rot. 268. his position was under threat. While he managed to secure an exemption from the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament then in being (with regard to his daily wage as a yeoman of the Crown),26 SC8/121/6009; PROME, xii. 419. his career in the marshalsea of the royal household was over by the time he secured another pardon in March 1458.27 C67/42, m. 26. This was most likely because he had lost the good will of the duke of Norfolk, rather than because by then the royal court had moved to the Midlands, for he continued to play an active part in supporting Henry VI’s regime. In January 1460, described as a King’s esquire, he was granted the office of riding forester of Galtres in Yorkshire, expressly as a reward for his good service against the rebels the previous year. This suggests that he had fought with the Lancastrians either at Blore Heath or at Ludford Bridge. The office itself had been forfeited to the Crown following the Acts of Attainder passed by the Coventry Parliament, and the Yorkist triumphs of 1460-1 and the accession of Edward IV led inevitably to Langton’s dismissal.28 CPR, 1452-61, p. 544; 1461-7, p. 151. A subsequent pardon, obtained in October 1462, merely described him as a former escheator of Yorkshire,29 C67/45, m. 17. and the new regime had no use for him.

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.30 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 251; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 560-1; Test. Ebor. ii. 258-60; E404/75/3/57; 77/1/41; CPR, 1476-85, p. 225. At around the same time she made detailed arrangements for prayers for her soul and those of her husband and children at the Friars Preachers in York, and as part of these arrangements it was specified that they should all be admitted as brothers and sisters of the priory.31 York Memorandum Bk. ii (Surtees Soc. cxxv), 223-30.

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,32 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 131, 475; 1454-61, pp. 27, 342. and by the late 1460s, through marriage to his second wife, Agnes, the daughter of John Clophill of London, he added to his property in the city. In a petition to Chancery the couple accused her father of attempting to disinherit Agnes of 17 messuages and nine gardens in the parish of St. Botolph without Aldersgate, which had been acquired by her great-grandfather.33 C1/31/123. Despite this, before long Langton retired to his native county, and he was residing at Sherburn when he died, shortly before 4 Aug. 1476.34 Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. vi. 101.