Richard Langhorne

Blessed Richard Langhorne (c. 1624 – 14 July 1679) was an English barrister and Catholic martyr, who was executed on a false charge of treason as part of the fabricated Popish Plot. He fell under suspicion simply because he was a Roman Catholic, and because he had acted as legal adviser to the Jesuits at a time of acute anti-Catholic hysteria.

He was the third son of William Langhorne, a barrister, and his wife Lettice Needham of Little Wymondley in Hertfordshire. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in May 1647 and called to the bar in November 1654. He was a Roman Catholic, and provided legal and financial advice for the Jesuits. During the wave of anti-Catholic hysteria which followed the Great Fire of London, he was briefly arrested but quickly released.

His wife, Dorothy Legatt, was a Protestant from Havering in Essex. His sons Charles and Francis were both priests. When, in October 1677, Titus Oates was expelled from the English College at St Omer "for serious moral lapses", Charles Langhorne entrusted Oates with a letter to his father. Oates returned to St Omer with a letter from Richard thanking the Jesuits for all they had done for his sons.

When Oates and Israel Tonge unleashed their entirely fictitious Popish Plot in September 1678, three Jesuits and a Benedictine were arrested. Following a detailed search of their papers (which failed to uncover any evidence of treason), Langhorne's role as legal adviser to the Jesuits was discovered almost at once: he was arrested a week after the four priests, although there was no evidence in the priests' papers that he had committed any crime. He was imprisoned at Newgate and charged with treason. Oates claimed, and was corroborated by the notorious informer William Bedloe, that Langhorne's earlier correspondence dealt with treason.

...
Wikipedia