The New Murrey and Blue blog

I came upon this intriguing article about Langley Castle https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/unexplained/the-famous-sobbing-ghost-of-langley-castle-which-inspired-jk-rowling/ when looking for information about Edmund of Langley, Duke of York.

Of course, there are a least two places named Langley. Edmund’s is in the south, at King’s Langley in Hertfordshire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Langley_Palace), whereas Langley Castle, said to be the only fortified medieval castle hotel in England, is near Haydon Bridge in Northumbria.

These mix-ups often expose interesting stories, and this is one.

I haven’t read J.K. Rowling, but I have seen the Harry Potter films, so I’m acquainted with her ghosts Moaning Myrtle and the Grey Lady. Well, acquainted in a manner of speaking, you understand.

It seems that the sobbing entity at Langley Castle is “….one of the North-East’s most famous ghosts, who is regularly seen sobbing uncontrollably as she glides through the corridors towards a high window. She looks back with a tear-stained face, and then jumps and disappears…”

She was once identified as Maud de Lucy, who was said to have watched from that very window for her husband, Sir Thomas de Lucy, to come home from battle. Alas, she was told he’d died and, grief-stricken, she flung herself from the window.

But I’m afraid the only Maud in the de Lucys at that time was Sir Thomas’s daughter, born 1350. “….It is true that her first husband, Sir Gilbert de Umfraville [Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus – Wikipedia], died in battle – at Neville’s Cross near Durham in 1381 – but she was not so distraught as to take her own life. In fact, she remarried and lived happily with her second husband until her natural death at St Bees in Cumbria in 1398….” Her second husband was Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland (Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland – Wikipedia), who died ten years after her at the Battle of Bramham Moor in 1408. So that scotches the only Maud.

Of course, Maud is short for Mathilda/Matilda, but there isn’t one of those in the picture either. So who was the Sobbing Ghost of Langley Castle?

Sir Thomas de Lucy’s first wife, Margaret de Multon, was the daughter of Sir Thomas de Multon, 1st Lord of Egremont, and she’d died in 1341. Not her then. So, might the weeping wraith be Thomas de Lucy’s second wife, Agnes de Beaumont? (Agnes (Beaumont) de Lucy (-aft.1359) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree).

Sir Thomas himself died in 1365 and hadn’t been killed in battle, so he must have come home alive to Agnes. Maybe she witnessed his happy return from that same window, but she certainly didn’t hurl herself from it. All I can find out is that she died after 1359, although whether that was before or after Sir Thomas’s 1365 demise I cannot say. But he’d definitely returned to her safe and well from battle.

Are you still with me after all the above? I’m just about hanging on to it by my fingernails. Suffice it that there doesn’t seem to be a suitable candidate to be the sobbing spirit. If there really is such an entity at Langley Castle, she seems likely to remain unknown. But she came to the attention of J.K. Rowling, who created two famous fictional ghosts from her, both of whom haunt Hogwart’s.

You can read more about the ghost of Langley Castle here Mystery over identity of Langley castle’s ghost | Hexham Courant (hexham-courant.co.uk), here Langley Castle Ghost | Ultimate guide of Castles, Kings, Knights & more | Castrum to Castle and here Ghostly Tales of Langley Castle (knightstemplar.co).

And to read about Sir Thomas try here https://www.geni.com/people/Thomas-de-Lucy/6000000006101128388