Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale

Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale, PC (18 June 1783 – 18 April 1851), a member of the prominent Bickersteth family, was an English medical doctor, law reformer, and Master of the Rolls.

Early life and education Langdale was born on 18 June 1783 at Kirkby Lonsdale, the third son of Henry Bickersteth, a surgeon, and Elizabeth Batty. His younger brother was Rev. Edward Bickersteth, whose son Edward Henry became Bishop of Exeter and whose grandson Edward was Bishop of South Tokyo.

Bickersteth became a King's Counsel in 1827, and 1836 brought him membership of the Privy Council, appointment as Master of the Rolls and a peerage, which he accepted on condition that he could concentrate on law reform and remain politically independent. He was created Baron Langdale, of Langdale in the County of Westmoreland on 23 January 1836. His ruling in the case of Hyde v Wrench (1840) established the principle in contract law that a counter-offer extinguishes the offer it rejects.

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.

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.

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 .

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.