LANOTON, STEPHEN, Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, and Arch bishop of Canterbury, was born in the earlier half of the 12th century, according to one account in Lincolnshire, according to another in Devonshire. After finishing his studies at the University of Paris, he taught with applause in that seminary, and gradually rose to the office of its chancellor. He held this rank, and had also obtained some preferment in the Church of his native country, when he visited Rome, about the year 1206, on the invitation of Pope Innocent III., who immediately honoured him with the purple by the title of Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, and soon after recommeuded him to be elected to the archbishopric of Canterbury, then considered as vacant by the rejection of the claims both of Reginald the sub prior of Christchurch, whom his brother monks had in the first instance appointed to succeed the last archbishop Hubert, and of John de Gray, bishop of Norwich, whom they had afterwards substi tuted in deference to the commands of King John. Langton was elected by a few of the monks who were then at Rome, and was con secrated by Innocent et Viterbo, on the 17th of June 1207. John's determined resistance to this nomination gave rise to the contest between him and the pontiff which had such important results.. [INNOCENT III.; JOHN, King of England.] The consequence, in so far as Langton was concerned, was, that he was kept out of his ace for about six years ; till at last, after the negotiation concluded by the legate Pandulf, John and the cardinal met at Winchester in July 1213, and the latter was fully acknowledged as archbishop. In the close union however that now followed between John and Innocent, Langton, finding his own interests and those of the clergy in general, in so far as they were opposed to those of the king, disregarded by the pope, joined the confederacy of the insurgent barons, among whom the eminence of his station and the ascendaucy of his talents soon acquired hire a high influence, and in whose counsels he took a prominent part. It was he who, at the meeting of the heads of the
revolt at London on the 25th of August 1213, suggested the demand for a renewal of the charter of Henry I. To the cause of the national liberties, which he had thus joined, he adhered without swerving throughout the rest of the contest ; a course by which he so greatly offended the pope, that on his refusal to excommunicate the opponents of the royal authority, after John's perfidious attempt to release him self from his engagements at Runnymede, he was in the latter part of the year 1215 suspended by Innocent from the exercise of his archie piscopal functions. After this the name of Cardinal Langton is little mentioned by the historians; but he continued to preside over the Church till his death, 9th of July 1223. He was a person of con siderable learning, and is the author of various theological tracts, some of which have been printed, and lists of all of which that are known are given by Cave and Tamer. It has been shown in a note to Warton's ' History of English Poetry' (edition of 1840, ii. p. 23), that there is no reason to suppose Langton to have been the author of a drama in the French language, which had been assigued to him by M. de la Rue (in the 'Archteologia; voL xiv.) on no better grounds than the manuscript having been found bound up with one of the cardinal's sermons.