LANGTON, William (d. 1659), of Broughton Tower, Preston, Lancs.

Langton’s grandfather, Edward Langton of Leyland, has sometimes been identified as a younger son of Sir Thomas Langton†, who represented Lancashire in the 1554 Parliament.17JRL, Eng. ms 306, f. 50; Fishwick, Preston, 258; HP Commons, 1509-58. Langton’s father, Roger – who was variously described as a draper or mercer – was one of Preston’s leading inhabitants, serving as mayor of the town on no less than four occasions between 1605 and 1640.18Lancs. RO, DDIN 61/14; DDF/1055; QDD/24/m25; Fishwick, Preston, 78, 112; W. Dobson, J. Harland, Hist. of Preston Guild (Preston, 1862), 36, 37. Soon after his second term as mayor in 1616-17, he was involved in setting up a house of correction in Preston – specifically, by conveying land in the town to what appear to have been the project’s trustees, a group that included Sir Richard Hoghton† and Richard Shuttleworthe I*.19Lancs. RO, QDD/27/m1. In the 1630s, he was identified by Preston’s former vicar, James Martin, as a collaborator of Sir Gilbert Hoghton* and the town’s godly faction, although Martin did not think that Langton himself was a puritan.20Fishwick, Preston, 182.

Despite Roger Langton’s purchase of an out-of-town residence at Broughton Tower, near Preston, the family remained essentially urban gentry, which is perhaps reflected in the fact that William Langton, though heir to the estate, was put to a career in the law. Called to the bar at Gray’s Inn in 1637, he was elected recorder by Liverpool corporation in September 1642 and was very probably the ‘Mr Langton’ who refused the place of a judge in the court of admiralty in 1644.21Chandler, Liverpool, 290, 297; HMC 10th Rep. IV, 74. John Bradshawe*, in a letter to the town’s governor, Colonel John Moore*, claimed that Langton ‘pretends a willingness (to use his own phrase) to serve the king and kingdom, but withal pleads a disability for the office. His plea is very ambiguous ... My humble advice is not to prefer a confessed ignorance [sic] to the bench’.22Belvoir, QZ.24, f. 81. In March 1645, Liverpool corporation ordered Langton to accompany the mayor to London to solicit ‘for the repairing of the losses and suffering of the inhabitants ... by the cruelty of the prince’s [Prince Rupert’s] army’ and to request an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the town’s loss, for which the corporation blamed Colonel Moore.23Chandler, Liverpool, 338-9.

Langton was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for Preston to the Long Parliament in December 1645.24Supra, ‘Preston’. He doubtless owed his election to the strength of his interest as head of one of the borough’s leading families (his father having died the previous year). Having taken the Covenant on 25 March 1646, he then received only three committee appointments in the rest of his entire parliamentary career. The first two were in April and June 1646 and concerned settling the town government of Chester and an ordinance for authorising the holding of assizes in the county palatine of Lancaster.25CJ iv. 512a, 574b. The next was not until 1 July 1648 and related to the supply of Lancashire’s parliamentarian forces during the second civil war.26CJ v. 620b. In between, he was granted leave to go into the country on three occasions declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October 1647.27CJ iv. 590b; v. 330a, 459a, 609a. His career at local level is only slightly more revealing. He was an active member of the Lancashire sub-committee of accounts and, as such, may have sympathised with the work of the main committee in London and its role in the Presbyterians’ campaign to abolish the county committees and disband the New Model army.28Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; SP28/256/372; SP28/257, unfol.; J.M. Gratton, ‘The Parliamentarian and Royalist War Effort in Lancs. 1642-51’ (Manchester Univ. PhD thesis, 1998), 338. Moreover, in October 1646 he was appointed an elder in the seventh Lancashire Presbyterian classis – although of itself this confirms nothing more than his identification as a man of broadly puritan sympathies.29LJ viii. 511.

Like the majority of Lancashire’s Presbyterians, Langton remained loyal to Parliament during the second civil war.30Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 171. There is some confusion as to whether or not he was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648. He was certainly in London at the time and, according to one report, was ‘interdicted [sic] by the army from the House for the present’.31Life of Humphrey Chetham ed. F.R. Raines, C.W. Sutton (Chetham Soc. n.s. xlix), 159, 165, 166; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 22. But though included on at least one contemporary list of the secluded Members, he was omitted from that drawn up by William Prynne*, who was in a position to know about such things.32A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669 f.13.62); [W. Prynne], A Vindication of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1649), irreg. pag. (E.539.5). In mid-December, it was reported that Langton was leaving London for Lancashire – possibly in disgust at the army’s proceedings, but more likely simply to celebrate Christmas with his family.33Life of Chetham ed. Raines, Sutton, 168. At any rate, he did not sit in the Rump Parliament, and nor was he active after 1648 on the Lancashire bench – from which he was removed in 1650.34Lancs. RO, QSC/58-52; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 39.

Langton refused to take the Engagement abjuring monarchy and Lords, and hence in April 1650 he resigned his post as recorder of Liverpool.35Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 13, 24. However, he appears to have remained active in Preston’s public affairs during the 1650s and to have retained his post as clerk and steward of the town, to which he had been appointed in July 1649.36Lancs. RO, CPN/3/1/1, f. 57; Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J.H. Stanning (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xxiv), 65-6. When his replacement as recorder of Liverpool died in 1656, the corporation offered him his old position and he accepted.37Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 86.

Langton died in the autumn of 1659 and was buried at Preston on 25 October.38Fishwick, Preston, 258. He evidently left a will, but it has not survived.39Lancs. RO, DDX 57/1. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.