Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/104

Langdon  on 7 June 1422 at Canterbury by Archbishop Chicheley (, Reg. Sacr. Angl. p. 65). After his consecration he appears among the royal councillors (, Proc. Privy Council, iii. 6), and after 1430 his name constantly occurs among those present at the meetings. He was a trier of petitions for Gascony in the parliament of January 1431, and for England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland in that of May 1432 (Rot. Parl. iv. 368n, 388) In February 1432 he was engaged on an embassy to Charles VII of France (Fœdera, x. 500, 514). In July following he was appointed one of the English representatives at the council of Basle, whether he was intending to set out at the end of the year; he was at the same time entrusted with a further mission to Charles VII (ib, x. 524, 527, 530). Langdon was, however, in England in March 1433, and for some months of 1434 (, Proc. Privy Council, iv. 154, 177, 196, 221). On 18 Feb. 1434 he had license to absent himself from the council if sent on a mission by the pope or cardinals, and on 3 Nov. of that year was appointed to treat for the reformation of the church and peace with France (Fœdera, x. 571, 589). Langdon had, however, died at Basle on 30 Sept. It is commonly alleged that his body was brought home for burial at the Charterhouse, Loudon, but in reality he was interred in the choir of the Carthusian monastery at Basle (see epitaph printed in Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ix. 274). His will, dated 2 March 1433-4, was proved 27 June 1437.

Langdon is said to have been a man of great erudition, and to have written: 1, 'Anglorum Chronicon.' 2. 'Sermones.' Thomas Rudborne, in his preface to his 'Historia Minor,' says that he had made use of Langdon's writings (, Anglia Sacra, i. 287).

[Bale, vii. 68; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 466; Wharton's Anglia Sacra, i. 380; Rymar's Fœdera, orig. ed.; Godwin's De Præsulibus, p. 534, ed. Richardson; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl. ii. 666; authorities quoted.]

 LANGDON, RICHARD (1730–1803), organist and composer, son of Charles Langdon of Exeter, and grandson of Tobias Langdon (d. 1712), priest-vicar of Exeter, was born at Exeter in 1730. An uncle, Richard Langdon, with whom he is sometimes confused, was born in 1686. The younger Richard Langdon was appointed organist of Exeter Cathedral on 23 June 1753 (Cathedral Records). He graduated Mus.Bac. at Exeter College, Oxford, 13 July 1761, aged 31 (Oxford Register). On 25 Nov. 1777 he was elected organist of Ely, but seems not to have entered on his duties there, having been made organist of Bristol Cathedral, 3 Dec. 1777. His last appointment was as organist of Armagh Cathedral, 1782-94. He died at Exeter on 8 Sept. 1803 (Gent. Mag. 1803, pt. ii. p. 888, and memorial tablet). Langdon's works include, besides several anthems, 'Twelve Songs and Two Cantatas,' opus 4 (London, n.d.); and 'Twelve Glees for Three and Four Voices' (London, 1770). In 1774 he published 'Divine Harmony, being a Collection in score of Psalms and Anthems.' At the end of this work are twenty chants by various authors, all printed anonymously; the first, a double chant in F, has usually been assigned to Langdon himself, and has long been popular.

[Grove's Dict, of Music, where the date of his appointment to Exeter is wrongly set down as 1770; Parr's Church of England Psalmody; Jenkin's Hist, of Exeter; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; notes from Exeter, Ely, and Bristol Cathedral Records, as privately supplied.]

 LANGFORD, ABRAHAM (1711–1774), auctioneer and playwright, was born in the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, in 1711. When quite a young man he began to write for the stage, and was responsible, according to the 'Biographia Dramatica,' for an 'entertainment' called 'The Judgement of Paris,' which was produced in 1730. In 1736 appeared a ballad-opera by him entitled 'The Lover his own Rival, as performed at the New Theatre at Goodman's Fields.' Though it was received indifferently, it was reprinted at London in 1753, and at Dublin in 1769. In 1748 Langford succeeded 'the great Mr. Cock,' i.e. Christopher or 'Auctioneer' Cock (d. 1748; see 'Gentleman's Magazine,' s.a., p, 572), at the auction-rooms in the north-eastern corner of the Piazza, Covent Garden. These rooms formed part of the house where Sir Dudley North died in 1691, and are now occupied by the Tavistock Hotel. Before his death Langford seems to have occupied the foremost place among the auctioneers of the period. He died on 17 Sept. 1774, and was buried in St. Pancras churchyard, where a long and grandiloquent epitaph is inscribed on both sides of his tomb (, iii. 357).

A mezzotint portrait of the auctioneer, without painters or engraver's name, is noticed in Bromley's 'Engraved Portraits' (p. 407). He left a numerous family, one of whom, Abraham Langford, was a governor of Highgate Chapel and school in 1811 (, Suppl. p. 200). Langford's successor at the Covent Garden auction-rooms was another well-known auctioneer, George Robins.