LANGDON, Francis (c.1606-58), of Tregalwe, St Erme, Cornw.

The Langdons had been landowners in Cornwall since the middle ages, seated at Keverell in the parish of St Martin by Looe in the south east of the county.12Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 275. Francis was the sixth son of Walter Langdon, and little is known of his upbringing. He may have fought in the parliamentarian army during the first civil war, and he later stated that he had ‘with all faithfulness served during all the troubles’.13CCC 2244. He was certainly a captain in Colonel Robert Bennett’s regiment by the end of 1647, when he was paid for fixing his company’s weapons.14Bodl. Walker c.10, f. 136v. In the meantime his eldest brother, Walter, had sided with the royalists, and was one of the defenders of Pendennis Castle when it surrendered in August 1646.15CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 467. Walter Langdon naturally suffered the sequestration of his estates during the later 1640s, but Francis was also affected by this, as he was owed an annuity of £20 from the family lands, and in January 1648 he secured an interim payment of £60 from the county committee.16CCC 2244; Bodl. Walker c.10, f. 125v. In March 1649 Francis Langdon petitioned the council of state, and his case was referred to a group of local MPs, including his former commander, Robert Bennett.17CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 33. This petition probably concerned the payment of arrears for Langdon’s service earlier in the decade, and it may have been this, and requests from other officers, that prompted the settlement of money owed to the regiment later in the same year, with Langdon receiving just over £50.18Bodl. Walker c.10, ff. 110-1. Langdon’s association with Bennett may also have encouraged the local military commander of the south west, Sir Hardress Waller*, to include him on the list of recommended justices of the peace for Cornwall in July 1649.19CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 229. Langdon was added to the commission of the peace in May 1650, and by this time he was also serving as an assessment commissioner and as a foot captain in the local militia.20A. and O.; C231/6, p. 186; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 521. In the late summer of 1651 Langdon was active in seizing arms from suspected royalists to prevent an uprising in favour of Charles Stuart.21Cornw. RO, BU/23, unfol.

Langdon’s favour with the parliamentarian authorities in Cornwall no doubt facilitated his efforts to improve his financial situation. In April 1650 he petitioned the Committee for Compounding for a lease of seven years of his brother’s estate to cover his annuity payments. He described himself as the ‘next heir’ to the estate after his brother and nephew, and currently responsible for maintaining his sister-in-law and her children. The matter was put before the county committee, which had not responded by November 1652, when Walter Langdon reappeared, begging to compound under the Pendennis articles. His right to do so was admitted by October 1653, although Francis’s claim to a £20 annuity was also acknowledged.22CCC 2244. Francis Langdon’s other financial dealings are unclear, although he seems to have been investing money in property in the early 1650s. Before October 1652, for example, he purchased the fee-farm rent of the parish of St Enoder, and at around the same time he was styling himself ‘of Tregalwe’, in St Erme parish.23PROB11/281/564.

Langdon’s public career was probably helped by his religious affiliations as well as his political connections. In January 1652 he was re-baptised by Abraham Cleare, and soon became associated with the Fifth Monarchists.24The Complaining Testimony of Some…of Sions Children (1656), Sig A2. His selection for Cornwall for the Nominated Assembly in the summer of 1653 was probably on the advice of John Carew*, and he sat with another Fifth Monarchist, William Braddon*.25Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 210. He may also have been sponsored by Oliver Cromwell*, as on 6 July, when the list of members was scrutinised by the Nominated Assembly, it was found that Langdon had mistakenly been put down as ‘Walter Langdon’, but that the lord general ‘had amended [it] with his own hand’.26CJ vii. 282a. Langdon was not an active MP in 1653, and was named to only one committee, that to consider the condition of the poor and to regulate the commissions of the peace, appointed on 20 July.27CJ vii. 287a. Langdon’s political and religious radicalism meant that he was treated with hostility by the protectoral authorities, and it was no coincidence that he was left out of local commissions after November 1653.28An Act for an Assessment. In the spring of 1654 he was host to the anti-government mystic, Anna Trapnel, during her stay in Cornwall. With John Bawden* he defended Trapnel against prosecution, and put up £150 to secure her release, earning her gratitude as men ‘of such learning from the spirit of wisdom and of a sound mind’, and as her ‘dear friends’.29A. Trapnel, Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea (1654), 13, 19, 25, 27; A. Trapnel, A Legacy for Saints (1654), 50, 54 (E.806.1). Langdon continued to be a prominent figure in the Baptist community in later years, attending the funeral of John Pendarves in Abingdon in July 1656 and subscribing the letters printed thereafter.30The Complaining Testimony, Sig A2. Such activities did little to reassure the government that Langdon was to be trusted, and in 1657 he was included in a list of Fifth Monarchists feared to be plotting against the regime.31TSP vi. 187.

Langdon died in 1658, and his will, dated October 1652, made his wife executor, but mentions no children, so he probably died childless. His main concern in 1652 was to clear his debts, especially the money he owed to his niece, Elizabeth Lee, and her husband, Richard. He also gave £3 each to the parishes of Stock and St Erme, to be distributed among the poor.32PROB11/281/564. His widow married Robert Doyley, a Baptist preacher from Dorset, in 1659.33BDBR ii. 170-1.