LANDFORD (LANGFORD), Roger, of London and Rochester, Kent.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

May 1413

Family and Education

m. bef. Sept. 1407, Juliana.

Offices Held

Tronager and pesager of wool, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 5 Jan. 1400-12 June 1401, Ipswich 13 Oct. 1403-12 Dec. 1404, Sandwich 20 Nov. 1403-28 Feb. 1416.

Alnager, Kent 12 Nov. 1403-22 May 1413.

Biography

Landford’s first royal office suggests a north-country origin for him, but each fresh appointment brought him southwards until, after 1404, his official activities came to be exclusively confined to Kent. An ironmonger by trade, he had acquired citizenship of London by September 1407, when he and his wife entered into a formal agreement to purchase from the widowed Margery Ludwick and John Sileby, clerk, a messuage called ‘Potynsyn’ in St. Clement’s parish, Rochester, for the sum of £136 13s.4d, payable in annual instalments of £10 each. It may be that the Landfords failed to keep up these payments, for in 1418 they were among the defendants in an assize of novel disseisin arraigned against them by the same two people, and as a consequence they lost possession of certain premises in Rochester—perhaps ‘Potynsyn’ itself. Meanwhile, in 1408, Landford had been associated with William Mymmes in the acquisition of two other properties in St. Clement’s parish as well as land in St. Margaret’s outside the city walls. There is a possibility that he had known Mymmes before his move south, for Mymmes was a Yorkshireman; in 1420 his brother and heir, John Taylor of Kilnwick, was to quitclaim all of his landed holdings in Rochester to Landford and others, including the brothers John* and William Darell, who also hailed from the north.1

Landford held office as weigher of wool at Sandwich for nearly 13 years, during which period he was twice elected to Parliament for Rochester. For almost ten of those years he was also farmer of the subsidy of alnage in Kent, but although he had obtained in 1407 an extension of his earlier lease, prolonging it for another seven years, the alnagership was granted to someone else during Henry V’s first Parliament (of which he himself was a Member). Nevertheless, he was evidently not in disgrace, for he retained his post at Sandwich; and also from 28 Oct. 1413 he shared custody at the Exchequer of the alien priory estates at Romney, for the duration of the war with France. He is not recorded after 1420.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. Harl. Chs. 49A 36, 53A 49, 55E 40; CCR, 1413-19, p. 506; 1419-22, p. 122.
  • 2. CFR, xiii. 10, 98; xiv. 38.