Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Langley, Thomas (d.1581)

by Daniel Hipwell

LANGLEY, THOMAS (d. 1581), canon of Winchester, was educated, at Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1537–8. He was chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, and vicar of Headcorn, Kent, in 1548, and may be identical with the Thomas Langley, protestant reformer and exile, who was admitted into the English church and congregation at Geneva in 1556. Langley was rector of Boughton Malherbe, Kent, from 1557 to 6 Oct. 1559, when Queen Elizabeth presented him to a canonry at Winchester. He was installed on 15 Oct. following. On 7 Dec. 1559 he was presented by the crown to the rectory of Welford, Berkshire. After twelve years' study he was admitted B.D. at Oxford on 15 July 1560, without having previously taken his master's degree. In 1563 Langley was instituted to the vicarage of Wanborough, Wiltshire, on the presentation of the dean and chapter of Winchester, and held this license until his death, which took place before 31 Dec. 1581. In his will, dated 22 Dec. 1581, and proved 30 Jan. 1581–2 (Reg. in P. C. C., Tirwhite, fol. 1), he expresses a wish to be buried in the chancel of Wanborough Church.

He published:

1. 'An Abridgement of the notable Woorke of Polidore Vergile, conteignyng the deuisers … of Artes, Ministeries, Feactes, & Civill Ordinaunces, as of Rites and Ceremonies commoly vsed in the Churche,' London, by R. Grafton (black letter), 16 April 1546; other editions are dated 25 Jan. 1546[–7], 1551, [1570], and 1659, 8vo. Copies of all the editions are in the British Museum. This is an abridged English version of Vergil's 'De Inventoribus Rerum.' Langley worked on one of the late Latin editions, and abridged his original by about two-thirds.
2. 'Of the Christian Sabboth, a Godlye Treatise of Mayster Julius of Milayne, translated out of Italian into English by Thomas Langley,' London (William Reddell), black letter, 1552, 12mo. A copy is in the Lambeth Library.
3. Latin verses in praise of the author and his work prefixed to William Cuningham's 'Cosmographical Glasse,' 1559.

[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 447; Oxf. Univ. Reg. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), i. 242; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1st ser. iii. 879; Strype's Cranmer, 1694, p. 179; Rymer's Fœdera, xv. 543, 563; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Anglicanæ, ed. Hardy, iii. 33; Maitland's Index of Early English Books in the Lambeth Library, 1845, p. 62; Professor John Ferguson's Bibliographical Notes on the English Translation of Polydore Vergil's work, De Inventoribus Rerum, 1888, pp. 17 et seq.; Sir Thomas Phillipps's Institutiones Clericorum in Comitatu Wiltoniæ, 1825, pt. i. pp. 221, 231; Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MS. 443, f. 11; Burn's Hist. Par. Reg. 1862, p. 278.]

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