otherwise called Lawrence de Standish, who died intestate, as it is said, in a plea that he should pay them £1,000, which he unjustly withholds from them. The aforesaid administrators appeared in person, and said that the aforesaid James had acknowledged his obligation on the Tuesday next after the feast of St. Matthew, 9 Hen. VI. (1430). The aforesaid James also appeared in person, and denied that the said obligation was the deed of him the said James as the administrators supposed, and both parties appealed to a jury of their countrymen. The suit was adjourned from time to time, and was not determined till the 24th of Hen. VI., when a verdict was found for the defendant, James de Langton.[1]
In the meantime James de Langton, who appears to have been a man of dissolute life, was obliged to fly from Wigan, probably for debt, and in the year 20 Hen. VI. the sheriff of Lancaster is ordered to take James de Langton, parson of the church of Wigan, late of Wigan, in the county of Lancaster, clerk, as an outlaw.[2] The fact of his being an outlaw will account for his
- ↑ Plea Rolls, Lane, 20 Hen. VI.
- ↑ Ibid., By another order of the same year the Sheriff is charged to take Christopher de Langton, late of Goldburne, in the county of Lancaster, gentleman, son of James de Langton, parson of the church of Wigan, late of Wigan, in the same county, clerk; Edward de Langton, late of Adburgham, gentleman, son of the aforesaid James; Edmund de Langton, late of H . . . , in the same county, gentleman, son of the aforesaid James; Oliver de Langton, late of Wigan, gentleman; William de Langton, late of Wigan, gentleman; and many others, chiefly from Wigan and the neighbourhood, including Margaret Holerobyn of Wigan, concubine of the aforesaid James de Langton. The above mentioned Edward de Langton, son of James, was accused of concealing two Wigan men who had committed murder. The morals of the English people generally, both clergy and laity, were deplorably low at that period, and the numerous ecclesiastical abuses which occurred were rapidly preparing the way for the reformation. But it would be unfair to judge the clergy of those times by the standard of our own. The system of concubinage among the clergy was one of the evil results of a forced celibacy, which had never been willingly received in England. Messrs. Owen and Blakeway, the learned authors of the History of Shrewsbury (vol. ii. p. 21), assume that in Saxon times marriage was universally permitted to the parochial clergy and secular canons; they give instances of benefices descending from father to son for many generations, and among them the well-known case of Whalley, in this county, where there were eleven deans in succession inheriting, either lineally from father to son, or collaterally. The church of Rome, indeed, had attempted to put a stop to the marriage of the clergy from an early period, but, as Lord Selborne says, in speaking of the Church of England (Defence of the Church of England, p. 36): "It had only been by slow degrees that the requirement of celibacy was imposed upon those of the clergy who were not bound by monastic vows. It was attempted in the time of Dunstan: but Pope Gregory VII. was the first (A.D. 1074) to forbid the people to attend the ministrations of married priests: their sons also were placed under canonical disabilities. In England marriage had been so general among the clergy that Pope Pascal II., writing to archbishop Anselm in a.d. 1100, took notice of that fact, and that 'the greater and better part of the English clergy were clergymen's sons'; for which reason he considered, that (as to them) the observance of the Roman rule must be dispensed with. In a synod held at Westminster under Anselm, two years after the date of this letter (A.D. 1102), canons were first passed forbidding the English married clergy to live with their wives." But long after this, even so late as 1372, it was still common for the clergy to have their domestic homes and families; nor do the bishops seem to have set themselves seriously against it, for in the parliament of that year (46 Edw. III. ) the commons pray that the prelates and ordinaries should not be allowed to take sums of money from the clergy for permitting them to keep their concubines openly; and if any of the beneficed clergy and curates should openly keep their concubines for a certain time, for which they are liable to be deprived, and are thereby deprived of their benefices by the ecclesiastical law, and the bishops and ordinaries do not put the law in execution within half a year of the said time, that then such benefices should become void by the law of the land, so that the patrons might again present to them. And if the ordinary who makes the default be himself the patron, that such benefice should lapse to the King to present, and in that case the bishop or ordinary should be bound to accept the person so presented (Rymer, sub anno.)
