Langar Hall ~ A Microcosm of English History
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Langar Hall ~ A Microcosm of English History |
The Editor's Choice The economic adjustments of the 20th century have led to the loss
of many family homes, not always with the results the social engineers
hoped. Some of Britain's finest buildings fell into ruins when
their owners could neither continue to pay their maintenance costs
nor transfer a capital sum to the National Trust sufficient to
persuade the Trust to take possession. Other houses have survived
as schools and hospitals, some as foundations to be expanded into
hotels, and some as "country house hotels" ~ attempts to marry
the joys of a country house stay with the convenience of a modern
hotel. Some enterprises in this latter category have been extremely successful,
and, as at Langar Hall, especially so when the chatelaine is of
the family for whom it was once a private home.
Langar enters history via the Domesday Book, recorded there as being held by William Peverel,
and as having two mills and a church. William was Governor of
Nottingham Castle and Langar was a small part of the extensive
dominion called the Honour of Peverell, but little else is known
of him. He has always been a mystery to historians, and from Tudor
times his vast possessions (100 lordships in Nottinghamshire and
Northamptonshire, 14 in Derbyshire, and another 20 scattered through
six other counties) have been explained by his being a bastard
son of the Conqueror (for which there is no evidence at all),
but the huge size of the lands granted to him is in itself a clue.
The Conqueror rewarded well those Flemings who had formed one-fifth
of his victorious army, and their lands formed a fairly cohesive
bloc in the East Midlands, particularly in the counties of Nottinghamshire,
Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. (The "Flemish"
territories ~ which we might term "Greater Flanders" ~ may then
be considered to include a large piece of Northeastern France
as well as a substantial part of Belgium.) Beryl Platts has suggested
that Peverel is a simple corruption of Pavel, which is Paul or
Pol, and the arms borne by members of the Peverel family in England
do tend to support this. (In the Flemings' homeland of the Peverels
the County of St Pol was allied by marriage to the County of Boulogne
and the County of Guines, an important indicator.)
These were early days for heraldry and the laws we take for granted
now were then in their formative stages. The William who held
Langar in 1086, when Domesday was compiled, would have known that
the Boulogne colours of red and gold were being used on the flags
of some related families as quarterings, but we have no proof
that he used a permanent, unchanged device on his own flags, and
if he had it might have been in the colours of St Pol, blue and
gold. The County of Guines used blue and silver; the County of
Flanders used black and gold. William's son, also William, who
succeeded him in 1113/14, is believed to have borne the arms illustrated
above, first as quarterly 1 and 4 Gules, 2 and 3 vairy Or and Vert, and later with the silver rampant lion (strongly associated
at that time primarily with Flanders) overall. The red and gold
hint at the Boulogne connection, and the Vair of the second and
third quarters hint at Guines whose colours of blue and white
were also borne vairy. It is possible that the younger William
bore also the St Pol arms of Azure 3 garbs Or, for when his estates were promised by Henry II to the Earl of
Chester, the King, it has been said, passed with them the arms
of St Pol (unlawfully by the custom of later years, and inexplicably
unless William had a connection with them).
The Earl of Chester died, poisoned, it was rumoured, by William,
before he took possession of the Honour of Peverel, but the Azure 3 garbs Or (a garb is a wheatsheaf) of St Pol became the device of subsequent
Earls of Chester. (A single garb from St Pol was later the charge
on the shield of the Grosvenor family, as described below.)
William, as a Fleming, had naturally supported King Stephen in
his war against the Empress Maud (Matilda), and it was more probably
for this reason that Maud's son, King Henry II, moved against
him soon after he received the crown, rather than for him having
poisoned the Earl of Chester. William anticipated defeat by retiring
to a monastery, where he was left in peace. His heir was his daughter
Margaret, who married Robert de Ferrieres, 2nd Earl of Derby,
but Henry seized the Honour of Peverel and it remained in the
possession of the Crown for nearly half a century, despite the
Earl of Derby's lawful right to it.
Later this was borne with a bordure Argent charged with eight horseshoes Sable
In 1189 King Richard I gave to his youngest brother, the future
King John, all the lands that William Peverel had held, and ten
years later, when John ascended the throne, the Earl of Derby
renounced all his own rights as heir to those lands. Langar, with
the ownership of all John's other lands and titles, was merged
with the Crown.
The manor was held by John's son, Henry III, until granted to
Sir Gerard de Rodes (who bore the arms shown here on the left
without the baton Gules). Sir Gerard's son, John de Rodes (who, according to the Dering
Roll, bore his father's arms with the baton Rouge), granted Langar to Sir Robert de Tibetot circa 1285. Robert was a seasoned warrior, a Crusader, Governor of
Nottingham, Carmarthen and Cardigan. As Lieutenant for Wales he
defeated Rees ap Meredeth in battle and took him to York to be
executed. He died circa 1298
Richard I
Sir Pain de Tibetot, 1st Baron Tibetot, his son by Eve de Chaworth,
was Governor of Northampton Castle and fought several times in
Scotland, where he eventually fell, killed at Bannockburn in 1314.
He married Agnes, daughter of William de Ros of Hamlake, 2nd Baron
Ros.
de Tibetot
Sir John de Tibetot, 2nd Baron, was Governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
married Margaret, daughter of Bartholomew, 2nd Baron Badlesmere,
and died in 1367. (Lord Badlesmere, a powerful warrior and ambitious
politician, was on the losing side at Boroughbridge in the battle
against Edward II and was hanged.)
Sir Robert de Tibetot, 3rd Baron, married Margaret, daughter of
William, 2nd Baron Deincourt, and died in 1372 leaving Margaret,
eldest of three co-heiress daughters, who took Langar in her marriage
to Sir Roger, 2nd Baron Scrope of Bolton. Her husband's father was the celebrated Sir Richard le Scrope,
1st Baron, whose right to the arms shown here on the left was
contested by Sir Robert Grosvenor (who lost and henceforth bore
Azure a garb Or, as mentioned earlier).
At this time the Scropes were among the most powerful families
in the realm (this being not entirely unconnected with the reasons
Grosvenor lost his case, although he probably should have lost
it anyway). Roger's father, the 1st Baron, had fought in every
major battle of his adult life, and had held several important
offices. When his son and his nephew both lost their heads to
Henry IV (William, Earl of Wiltshire, even more powerful than
he, and Richard, Archbishop of York), he kept his, recognised
by the King as "a loyal knight". Roger stayed clear of trouble
and on his elder brother's death became heir to his father.
The next nine generations continued the family tradition as both
warriors and politicians, their history being the history of England
(and, in respect of their battles, of France and Scotland too).
But the last Lord Scrope, Emanuel (created Earl of Sunderland),
who died in 1630 and is buried, as are his parents, in the church
("the cathedral of the Vale" next to the house), had no children
by his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of John Manners, 4th Earl
of Rutland. He did, however, find time to father four bastards
onto Martha James, a servant, the daughter of a tailor. The youngest
of these, Annabella, inherited Langar and was granted in 1663
the precedence and privileges of the legitimate daughter of an
earl
Annabella married John Grubham Howe, Member of Parliament for
Gloucestershire, and had a son, Sir Scrope Howe, who in 1701 was
created Viscount Howe, having married first in 1672 Anne, daughter
of John Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland, and 2nd, in 1698, Juliana,
daughter of 3rd Baron Alington of Killard. The 1st Viscount's
grandson, Richard, the Admiral Howe of immortal fame, was in 1788
created Earl Howe and Baron Howe of Langar. His daughter, Sophia
Charlotte, Baroness Howe of Langar in her own right, married Penn
Assheton Curzon. Unfortunately she and her husband stripped Langar
Hall of its treasures and broke up the estate. The house was demolished
and a smaller one, incorporating part of one of the wings, built
on its site in 1835.
In 1860 the daughter of the composer Henry Farmer, Anne, left
her husband, Thomas Bayley, a rich coal owner who was Member of
Parliament for Chesterfield, and bought the new Langar Hall. She
and Thomas were eventually reconciled and are buried together
in the church. Muriel, their elder daughter, bought out her siblings'
interest in the estate and married Percy Huskinson, son of William
Lambe Huskinson of Epperstone Manor, and it is their granddaughter
Imogen who chose to open Langar Hall to a history-loving public.
In relating these brief details of the thousand years of one manor
I have sought to illustrate how so much of our island history
can be mirrored in a single place. At Langar, in the beautiful
Vale of Belvoir (pronounced Beevor), lurk ghostly memories of
Duke William's conquest of England, the Stephen-Matilda warfare
(when, we are told, "God and his angels slept"), Simon de Montfort's
struggle against Henry III, the strife of Edward II's reign, the
wars against France and Scotland, the bloody conflict of the Roses
which coincided with the arrival of the Scropes at Langar, then
the centuries when England's history was inseparable from the
history of the Scropes, and finally the great Admiral, hero of
"the glorious first of June", with England still fighting the
French.
e-mail: langarhall-hotel@ndirect.co.uk telephone ~ 01949-860559 or fax ~01949-861045
Jul-Sep 1999
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