ADRIAN GRAY reports on a forgotten man who played a pivotal role.
Bennet Langton (1736-1801) of Langton Hall near Spilsby in Lincolnshire, was a descendant of the ancient Langton family and was reputedly connected to Bishop Stephen Langton; his mother was a Turnor of Stoke Rochford. Langton had been a close friend of the famous Dr Johnson and his associate Boswell, and the relationship with Boswell continued after the former’s death.
As a young man, Langton read Johnson’s ‘Rambler’ and enjoyed it so much that he decided to go to London to try to meet the author. Although Langton was rather surprised by the great writer’s rough and ready appearance, they immediately became friends. Johnson and Langton wrote to each other regularly and these letters show clearly how warm their relationship was.
At Oxford Langton got to know Topham Beauclerk. Beauclerk was something of a libertine, but despite their different outlooks they also became friends due to Langton’s great learning and ‘inexhaustible fund of entertaining conversation.’[1] In 1764 Dr Johnson came to stay with Langton at Langton, where Bennet’s elderly father (who died in 1769) still presided – and who got the idea that Johnson was a Roman Catholic. Johnson enjoyed the library at Langton and made some social visits, whilst he and Bennet enjoyed walks to Partney, but he came away convinced that country living was not for him. They continued to exchange letters – in one Johnson wrote that ‘I am engaging in a very great work, the revision of my Dictionary; from which I know, at present, how to get loose.’ A sentence that might have inspired the ‘Blackadder’ episode!
In 1772 Johnson wrote to congratulate Langton on a new baby and in 1775 sent him his ‘recipe’ for rheumatism – containing sulphur and mustard. After he died in 1784, Johnson left Langton as trustee for £750 in his will, to be used for support of people close to him including his servant. Johnson also left him his ‘Polyglot Bible’ and some other books, which Langton then sold and gave the money to relative of Johnson’s who had been left out of the will.
Langton was at 6ft6 one of the tallest men in Britain and compared to ‘a stork standing on one leg.’ He was entirely uninterested in running his estate economically and was, perhaps because of this, very popular. He was though a High Churchman, yet his greatest contribution to history is through his link to an evangelical, William Wilberforce, who was fourteen inches shorter than Langton.
Langton had become interested in the anti-slave trade work of Thomas Clarkson, which needed a parliamentary spokesman, so in 1787 he organised a dinner party and invited the Yorkshire MP and evangelical, William Wilberforce, along with Boswell and Sir Joshua Reynolds. According to Clarkson, it was actually Langton who asked the question of Wilberforce because of his own shyness – and thereby set in train the momentous work of the anti-slave trade movement.
Langton’s academic abilities also led to little, although he was elected to an honorary professorship, whilst Oxford gave him an honorary doctorate in civil law in 1790, although he did become an unlikely Major in the local militia. His main contribution was perhaps his collection of anecdotes of Johnson. His wife was the widowed Lady Rothes, who he married in 1770. His son Peregrine took the name of Massingberd and along with it Gunby Hall.
[1] THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON – All 6 Volumes in One Edition