The History of the Church and Manor of Wigan/James de Langton (1432)

by George Thomas Orlando Bridgeman

In the same year, 1432, James de Langton, brother of Sir Ralph, occurs as parson of Wigan.^[1] He is doubtless the same with the James de Langton, mentioned in the award of Dame Alice Gerard. James de Langton, clerk, occurs in 16 Hen. VI. (1437-8) as one of the executors of the will of Edmund ffrere, Abbot of Vale Royal.^[2] And James de Langton, probably the same, was admitted to the prebend of Stotfold, in the cathedral church of Lidifield, on 5th July, 1442.^[3]

The litigation with the Standishes was still pending several years later, and had now assumed a different form; for James de Langton, parson of Wigan, makes his petition to the Lord Chancellor with reference to the matter formerly in dispute between the Langtons, on the one part, and Lawrence de Standish and Alexander, his son and heir apparent, on the other, concerning the right of patronage to the church of Wigan, which had been submitted to the arbitration of Alice, late wife of John Gerard of Bryn, by Sir Ralph Langton, knight, and Lawrence de Standish, Esq. "By her award it was deemed that Sir Ralph Langton should grant an annual rent of 40s. out of his lands and tenements to Lawrence, but, because all the lands and tenements of the said Sir Ralph were entailed, a fine and recovery was necessary to secure by law the said rent of 40s. And the said Alice prayed the petitioners, James, brother to Sir Ralph and a feoffee, and the said Lawrence, in order to prevent any bad consequences in the event of her award not being carried into execution, to be bound in a statute merchant^[4] of £1,000 to abide by such award as she should give; and, upon the trust and assurance that they had in the said Alice, they delivered to her their obligations of statute merchant, under condition to abide her award in reformation of the payment of the said rent of 40s., without any defeasance of this condition put into writing. After which Alice and Lawrence died before the award was given or reformation of the payment made, and upon her death the said Alexander, who had married Constance, daughter of the said Alice, seized on the obligation of statute merchant, and took out letters of administration in the name of Oliver de Standish, an infant, his son, and in the name of John Dale, a poor labourer, to administer the goods of the said Lawrence, his father. And notwithstanding that the said Alice had given no award, nor made any reformation in the payment of the annual rent in her lifetime, the said Alexander makes the said Oliver, his son, and John Dale, to sue against the complainant for the said statute merchant, against all right and conscience, at Lancaster, where he has such favour, suretyship, and succour to support him in his wrong. And he has lately got three persons favourable to him sworn at the sessions at Lancaster, there late holden, so that it is like to be perpetual destruction to your said suppliant, without help and favour of your gracious lordship to consider these premises, and thereupon send several writs of sub poena to the said Alexander, Oliver, and John Dale to appear before your lordship in the King's court of chancery, at a certain day by your lordship to be limited, and there furthermore to do and receive as right hath and good conscience at the reverence of God and in way of charity."^[5]

There is no date to the copy of the petition from which this is taken, but it was probably made in or about the year 1442, in which year James de Langton, parson of Wigan, opposes himself to Alexander Standish, gent, in a plea that he should give up to him a certain deed of statute merchant, which he unjustly details. James de Langton did not appear to prosecute and he is summoned to be in court on the Wednesday next before the feast of St. Lawrence next coming.^[6]

In a later plea of the same year, James de Langton, now described as late of Wygan, in the county of Lancaster, clerk, is summoned to answer Oliver Standissh and John Dale, the administrators of the goods and chattels of Lawrence Standysh, 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.^[7]

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.^[8] The fact of his being an outlaw will account for his non-appearance to prosecute his plea against Alexander de Standish in that year, and for his being then described as late of Wigan, when summoned to answer the administrators of the will of Lawrence de Standish.

He appears, however, to have recovered his position in the following year, 21 Hen. VI. (1442-3), in which year Alexander Standish de Standish, gent., is attached to answer James de Langton, parson of the church of Wigan, in a plea that he should give up to him a certain writing of obligation of a certain statute merchant, which he unjustly detains from him. On this occasion James appears by his attorney, John de Oxcliff, and says that, whereas on 7th June, 7 Hen. VI. (1429), he delivered to a certain Alice, late wife of John Gerard of Bryn, the said writing of obligation, in which it is contained that Lawrence de Standish is bound to the said James de Langton in the sum of £1,000 sterling; after the said Alice died the said Alexander possessed himself of the said writing, &c.^[9] Hence it appears that there were counter suits going on between the said James de Langton and the Standishes — all of which were probably determined by the decision of the 24th of Hen. VI. before mentioned.

I do not find any further mention of James de Langton, and the next Rector that I meet with is

Oliver de Langton, who, as Rector of Wigan, in 1451, covenanted, for himself and his successors, to pay £20 yearly to the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield.^[10] I suppose him, therefore, to have been admitted in that year. The pedigree of the Langtons in Baines's Lancashire gives an Oliver de Langton as younger son of that Henry de Langton, Baron of Newton, who died in 7 Hen. V. If this were the present rector, he will have been the brother of his predecessor, James de Langton.

In his time the churchyard of Wigan appears to have been the scene of some battle or civil brawl, in which human blood was shed, for by his letters of 15th March, 1457-8, R[eginald Boulers], Bishop of Lichfield, issues a commission to Ralph Ducworth, S.T.P., Vicar of Prestecote, and Sir Edward ffarington, Rector of Halsall, to inquire into the facts of the case. He tells them that since he heard that the cemetery of the parish church of Wigan, in his diocese, had been notoriously polluted by violence and the unlawful shedding of human blood, he had interdicted it from ecclesiastical sepulture until full reconciliation should have been made, and desires them to hold a legal inquiry as to the person by whom it had been polluted, and who had been the cause or occasion of it, and return to him a faithful

1. Ibid., No 113.
2. Chancery Rolls, Lanc., 16 Hen. VI. No. 181.
3. Le Neve's Fasti.
4. A statute merchant was allowed by King Edward I. in favour of people engaged in trade; by which the charging of land was allowed for the payment of debts contracted in trade. The statute was afterwards extended to all debts indiscriminately.
5. Standish Evidences, as before (Local Gleanings, vol. ii. pp. 62, 63).
6. Plea Rolls, Lancast., 20 Hen. VI. No. 4.
7. Plea Rolls, Lane, 20 Hen. VI.
8. 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.)
9. Plea Rolls, Lanc., 21 Hen. VI.
10. Ex inf. Rev. F. P. Parker, from Lichfield Cathedral Muniment Room.