Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale
PC | |
---|---|
Master of the Rolls | |
In office 1836–1851 | |
Preceded by | Sir Charles Pepys |
Succeeded by | The Lord Romilly |
Personal details | |
Born | Kirkby Lonsdale, England | 18 June 1783
Died | 18 April 1851 Tunbridge Wells, England | (aged 67)
Spouse | Lady Jane Elizabeth Harley |
Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale,
Early life and education
Langdale was born on 18 June 1783 at
By the advice of his uncle, Dr. Robert Batty, in October 1801, he went to Edinburgh to pursue his medical studies, and in the following year was called home to take his father's practice in his temporary absence.
Disliking the idea of settling down in the country as a general practitioner, young Bickersteth determined to become a London physician. With a view to obtaining a medical degree, on 22 June 1802 his name was entered in the books of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and, on 27 October in the same year, he was elected a scholar on the Hewitt foundation. Owing to his intense application to work, his health broke down after his first term.[2]
Career
A change of scene being deemed necessary to insure his recovery, he obtained, through Dr. Batty, the post of medical attendant to
Having taken his degree, Bickersteth was immediately elected a fellow of his college, and thereupon made up his mind to enter the profession of the law. On 8 April 1808, he was admitted to the Inner Temple as a student, and, in the beginning of 1810, became a pupil of John Bell, and was called to the Bar on 22 November 1811.[3]
Bickersteth became a
He was determined that the government should provide an adequate Public Record Office and became known as the "father of record reform". As Master of the Rolls he was in effect Keeper of The Public Records. After the Public Records Act of 1838, he and his Deputy Keeper, Francis Palgrave, the full-time working head of the office, started to organise the transfer of state papers from the Tower of London, the chapter house of Westminster Abbey and elsewhere, to one single location.[2]
In 1850, ill health forced him to turn down the chance to become Lord Chancellor and he died the following year, on 18 April 1851, at Tunbridge Wells.[2]
Personal life
Langdale married Lady Jane Elizabeth Harley, daughter of his patron the 5th Earl of Oxford by licence on 17 August 1835, in St. James, Paddington, London. They had one daughter, Jane Frances (7 November 1836 – 3 May 1870), who in 1857 married a Hungarian nobleman, Count Sándor József János Teleki de Szék .[1]
In 1853, on the death of his wife's brother, the 6th Earl of Oxford, they inherited the family seat of Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire. On his wife's death in 1872, it passed to a distant relative, William Daker Harley.
References
- ^ a b c Burke, Ashworth Peter (1897). Burke's Family Records. London: Harrison. pp. 68–69. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
- ^ a b c d e Barker 1886.
- ^ "Bickersteth, Henry (BKRT802H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ "No. 19348". The London Gazette. 19 January 1836. p. 100.
- ^ Hyde v Wrench [1840] EWHC J90 (Ch) (8 December 1840), High Court (England and Wales)
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Barker, George Fisher Russell (1886). "Bickersteth, Henry". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Sources
- Hugh Mooney, 'Henry Bickersteth, Baron Langdale', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- HMSO1991) by John D. Cantwell, in The English Historical Review (Feb 1995, volume 110, number 435)
- Thomas Rawson Birks, Memoir of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, New York, 1851, p. 1