KING’S LANGLEY is a large and interesting village.  The river Gade flows between the main street and the station, L.&N.W.R.[k] Paper and straw plait are both made largely.  The village owes its name to the fact that Henry III. built a palace on a spot still marked by a few fragments of ruin a little W. from the church, and the royal manor became known as Langley Regis, whereas the Langley on the E. side of the river belonged to the Abbey of St. Albans, and was called Abbot’s Langley (q.v.).  Edmund de Langley, fifth son of Edward III., was born in this palace in 1344.  He became Duke of York, Earl of Cambridge and Lord Tivedale, and married Isabel, a younger daughter of Don Pedro of Castile.  In 1392 Richard II., with his first Queen, Anne of Bohemia, and many bishops, earls, lords and ladies, kept Christmas at King’s Langley Palace.

Near the palace was founded, by one Roger Helle, a priory of Dominican monks, which was enriched by Edward II. and several successive monarchs.  The body of Piers Gaveston was brought from Oxford and buried in the church of this priory in 1315—­he was beheaded on Blacklow Hill in 1312—­and what was then believed to be the body of Richard II. was brought to the same spot in 1400 for temporary sepulture.  The priory was dissolved, like most priories, in the days of Henry VIII.; but it was restored by Mary.  It was finally suppressed soon after the accession of Elizabeth.  The church, at the S.E. extremity of the village street, is a Perp. structure of flint and Totternhoe stone; the W. tower is embattled and has an angle turret.  It has been partially restored.  On the N. side of the chancel stood formerly the tomb of Edmund de Langley and Isabel of Castile (both mentioned above) which was brought from the priory church at the Dissolution; it is now in the chapel at the end of the N. aisle.  There is, I believe, no absolute proof that this is the tomb of Edmund and Isabel, but the evidence that it is so is very strong.  Chauncy, two centuries back, wrote:  “On the north side of the chancel there is a Monument raised about five foot, with the Arms of France and England, with three Labels upon it, also the Arms of Peter, King of Castile and Leons, by which Coats it seems to be the Tomb where Edmond de Langley, the Fifth Son of Edward III. and Isabel his Wife, one of the Daughters of Don Pedro, King of Castile, was [were] interr’d”.  During the removal of the tomb to its present position the bones of a male and two females were discovered; they are presumably those of Edmund and Isabel, and of Anne Mortimer, the wife of Edmund’s second son, Richard, Earl of Cambridge.  The tomb is covered by a slab 7 feet 3 inches long; the sides are embossed with Plantagenet shields within cusps.  Note the beautifully carved open screen between chapel and chancel, and the reredos, partly of marble, erected in 1877.  The oaken pulpit is Perp.  There are several other monuments:  (1) to Hon. Sir W. Glascocke of Aldamhowe, Kt., Admiralty Judge in Ireland under Charles II. (d. 1688); (2) brass to John Carter, “late of Gifres” (d. 1588); the inscription states that he had two wives, that the first bore him four sons and five daughters and the second five sons and four daughters; (3) brass to William Carter and Alice his wife, 1528.