Just over mile from Pocklington lies Ousethorpe Farm. It is where the closest Catholic martyr to the town lived until he was arrested for harbouring priests. For that crime he was hanged on 1 December 1586 at York. He was Venerated on 8 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI, being Beatified one week later. Below is the piece written in 1914 about him from Lives of the English Martyrs, edited by Edwin H Burton and J H Pollen:-
This martyr was the representative of a Yorkshire family of good standing, who had for some generations been settled at Rathorpe Hall, Dalton, in the West Riding. The martyr was the eldest son of Richard Langley of Rathorpe Hall and Joan Beaumont of Mirfield, and he had a younger brother Thomas who lived at Meltonby. Bishop Challoner states that he was born at Grimthorpe in Yorkshire. Both brothers married and had children. Richard married Agnes, daughter of Richard Hansby of Malton, by whom he had a son, Christopher, and four daughters, Isabel, Margaret, Catherine and Agnes.
No particulars of his early life have been recorded, but the few genealogical details preserved in the heraldic visitation show that he must have been born during the latter years of Henry VIII, for his son Christopher was born in 1565. So he had lived through all the changes of religion, and he was an elderly man when he won the martyr's crown. The valuable source which has been printed by Father Morris under the title A Yorkshire Recusant's Relation speaks of him as “ a gentleman well in years, who had lived in the country with very great love and worshipful credit, a man of approved honesty, wisdom and sobriety, and well qualified in all virtues ". Another MS. now preserved at Stonyhurst says of him, "Richard Langley, a man of great soul and remarkable piety, spent all his estate in succouring priests. He built a very well hidden house underground, which was a great place of refuge for priests during the persecution."
This would account for the Yorkshire Recusant's statement, which otherwise would be somewhat puzzling, that he had two houses, one distant a mile from the other. The secret was betrayed by a false Catholic ; and the Earl of Huntingdon, then Lord President of the North, a ruthless persecutor, often referred to simply as "the tyrant," sent a band of justices and ministers to search the houses on 27 October, 1586, the Eve of SS. Simon and Jude. These were accompanied by a large band of soldiers.
Mr. Langley was taken together with two priests, John Mush, the biographer of Margaret Clitherow, and Mr. Johnson. All three were carried before the Lord President at York, who railed at them "in his furious and heretical arrogance awhile" and then committed them to York Castle.
Of his trial we only have two short accounts in the two relations already cited. They both agree in substance, and we may here quote the longer of the two, that of the Yorkshire Recusant :—
"The heretics much abused this gentleman at the bar with railing and uncourteous speeches. At his first coming into the hall to be arraigned, he knelt down and asked Mr. Crowe, the priest, his blessing. He said that he would never repent that he had harboured priests, and that they were the messengers of God, but rather was sorry that he had not harboured more and oftener than he had done ; also that he thanked God that he might die for so good a cause. He would not make suit to the tyrant nor the Privy Council for his life in this cause, which sentence grieved the tyrant and his complices exceedingly, insomuch that they altered the jury, which was first impanelled of his honest neighbours, fearing these would deal favourably and justly, and instead of them appointed such as they knew would work their desire to murder him, as they did."
He was condemned to death with the two priests, but that very night, they being confined in another part of the prison, were enabled to make their escape with a third priest, Bernard Patenson. Probably their escape accelerated Ven. Richard Langley's martyrdom, for though the Lord President had promised his brother Thomas Langley that he should be reprieved till the Lent Assizes he now sent orders that he was to be executed without delay.
In Father Grene's account we read : “Mr. Langley was of such pleasant manners that he won the friend-ship of the gaoler, who in spite of his being a malicious heretic could scarcely refrain from tears when he was led out to execution. He was, moreover, of good family and fortune, yet he despised all these things and declared before the judges that if he had greater riches and a hundred lives, he would willingly spend them all in that cause. . During the whole time of his imprisonment he was so merry that many wondered at him, for he had always been shy at home, yet when brought out for execution he showed such alacrity of mind as to go to the scaffold even before the sheriff, as if he were a bridegroom going to his nuptials."
His martyrdom took place on 1 December, 1586, and as he had been convicted of harbouring priests, and not of high treason, he suffered by hanging, and so escaped the terrible pains of quartering.
His friends begged to be allowed to give his remains honourable burial, but this was not allowed, and "permission was even refused for his corpse to be wrapped in the linen shroud he had prepared, and after his body had been thrown into the pit, the bodies of ten thieves were cast in over him ".
A document in the Record Office, printed by Father Pollen, S.J. {C.R.S. v. 134), shows that his estates were confiscated by the Government. His daughter Isabel and his son-in-law William Foster, her husband, fled from their house after his arrest. When after a time they ventured to return, Isabel Foster's charity led her to visit the Catholic prisoners in York. She was arrested as she was coming out of the prison and was carried before Hutton, the Dean of York, who, on her refusal to attend the Protestant services, committed her to York Castle. She was at the time with child, and soon fell ill with ague through the close confinement and foulness of the, prison. The rest is told by the writer who is known to us as “The Prisoner in Ousebridge Kidcote". After recounting how patiently and joyfully she suffered, desiring God to forgive those who sought her trouble, he tells how she was consoled by the appearance of her martyred father : " Before her death, she was heard to call upon her father, desiring him either to stay with her, or to let her go with him : at which one of the standers-by said, 'I am here, what would you have me to do?” She said,”I speak not to you ; it is my own father ; do you not see him there by you?” The next day she died, to the great comfort of the beholders, December 3rd, 1587, and was buried among the rest under the Castle wall."
The martyr's only son Christopher settled at Millington and married Ursula, daughter of John Rudston of Hayton, by whom he had a son whom he called Richard after his father, and who was still living in 1612.