Written By Ellis Hawthorne | Senior Investigative Correspondent, for The Influencer Magazine

It didn’t come by auction. It wasn’t inherited through a noble family. And it certainly wasn’t purchased from a novelty website with souvenir plots.

The title—Lord of Shalfleet Wood—re-entered the official record in 2025, its legal transfer finalized in writing, stamped with solicitor signatures, and bound by English land law. The man who now holds it? A former U.S. military servicemember from Minnesota named Atticus Reid.

There’s a full story behind it, of course. But it doesn’t begin with castles or lineage charts. It begins with a rescue.

The Moment That Wasn’t Intended to Be Remembered

In 2019, near Point Loma, California, a child was pulled from a riptide by an off duty servicemember. Witnesses say the man was calm. He stabilized the boy’s mother, who had dislocated her shoulder in the chaos. Then, before anyone could ask his name, he was gone.

No press. No commendation. No identity.

One witness, however, remembered. He remembered the face, the height, the voice. He remembered the strange silence of someone who had saved a life and didn’t wait for applause. That man was Jonathan Langford-Roth, a financier from the UK visiting the States with his family. And over the next few years, he found that memory harder to forget.

Eventually, he did what people with resources and reasons sometimes do: he hired people to look.

What followed was a private search, followed by a public revelation.

The Line

Langford-Roth located Reid in 2023, living in St. Paul, Minnesota, working independently in the civilian private sector of cybersecurity, involved in very few public-facing platforms, and unaware of any historical claim.

But in parallel, something else had turned up. Through archival inquiries and genealogical cross-referencing—independent of any attempt by Reid himself—a dormant manorial title had been traced through an early colonial line descending from a woman named Emily Cavendish, believed to have been sent to the New World as a ward under Crown authority in the late 1600s.

Cavendish’s records are scarce but not absent. Her departure from Hampshire is noted in a shipping register under Crown warrant. Her eventual marriage and land acquisition in colonial Virginia are documented in early property records. Her line was eventually absorbed into the Reid family.

The English title she left behind, however, did not die with her. It simply went dormant—a legal state that, under English property law, holds indefinitely until either extinguished or rightfully reactivated.

Langford-Roth funded the rest.

No Fluff, No Fiction: Succession Law

Manorial Counsel Limited, a firm in Northamptonshire that specializes in dormant title recovery, undertook the research, performed legal diligence, and executed the transaction. According to records reviewed directly by The Ritz Herald, including the [signed contract] and [conveyance deed], the title now belongs—legally and lawfully—to Atticus Reid.

It is not ceremonial. It is not symbolic. It is what English law defines as an incorporeal hereditament: a real piece of legal property with historic jurisdictional ties, recorded succession, and inheritable standing. It is backed by solicitor-issued certification, archival trace, and documented absence of competing claims.

It carries the full rights of Quiet Enjoyment under common law—not as a poetic phrase, but as a legal assurance that Reid’s possession of the title is free from future dispute.

“This isn’t like naming a star,” says Dr. Rowan Eldredge, a legal historian with King's College. “This is property law. A manorial title—properly conveyed—is closer to owning a freehold than anything decorative. It’s why very few firms are even allowed to process them. And why almost none of them hold up under scrutiny. This one does.”

The transaction was posted to The Gazette—the U.K.’s official legal record. The new ownership is now a matter of public law.

Reid’s Response

Reid did not celebrate. He filed the letter away. Then, weeks later, after a call from Langford-Roth and a second from the solicitors handling the conveyance, he replied.

“I don’t think I’ve earned anything,” he told Wynters, in a feature profile published earlier this year. “But I do love history. And turning down a gift like this would be ungrateful.”

Wynters’ article—clear-eyed, well-sourced, and unusually disciplined for this kind of story—laid out the facts without sensationalism. It has been slowly making the rounds among various legal circles, especially among those familiar with how rare a clean title like this really is.

Her reporting was the first to trace the title’s history from its last recorded use in 1568 through its dormancy, eventual research, and rediscovery. She included statements from Manorial Counsel, reviewed the solicitor filings, and made contact with sources across three countries.

In a field where most “lordships” are paid certificates with no standing, this was a standout: a true manorial title, attached to a name by law.

Portrait of Atticus Reid, Lord of Shalfleet Wood. Taken in Minneapolis, early 2025—shortly after the title’s legal completion. He asked no questions about framing or backdrop. Sat as he was. Steady. Measured. No entourage. No affectation. He arrived early, well-dressed with care, and sat beneath the frame without comment.

A Short Conversation (Follow-Up)

After Wynters’ piece began circulating, I reached out to Reid myself—expecting, frankly, to be declined. He didn’t decline. He asked if the article would cost anything to print. When told it wouldn’t, he agreed to speak for twenty minutes. We spoke for forty-five.

He didn’t bring up the rescue. I did.

“I didn’t think anyone noticed, honestly,” he said. “It was just one of those things where—if it had been anyone else standing there, I think they would’ve done the same.”

When I asked how he felt about being named to a title with roots in the Norman period, he hesitated.

“It’s strange,” he admitted. “But it’s not a costume or a story being sold to me. It’s a record. I understand that. It means something to other people. I just… don’t feel any different.”

Reid kept returning to one phrase: that “people were very kind.” He meant Langford-Roth. He meant the solicitors. He meant, reluctantly, Wynters and myself.

“I didn’t expect to be in anyone’s files,” he said. “And I’m certainly not trying to walk around as anything other than myself. But I know what it took to bring this together. People gave time. Gave money. A great deal of money at that. And if I can accept it respectfully and not let it go to waste, then maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

The Weight of the Tangible

What makes this story worthwhile and redeemably sensational isn’t the title, it’s what it reveals about how nearly forgotten yet vital pieces of history can survive.

This wasn’t a PR stunt. There’s no book deal. No social media announcement. No YouTube reveal.

Just a legal document, printed and signed, with a seal at the bottom, affirming that Atticus Reid now holds an English title lost to record for almost five hundred years.

The title’s validity is not a matter of speculation or sentiment—it is a legally recognized incorporeal hereditament, executed through formal deed, affirmed by contractual agreement, witnessed and sealed in accordance with English property law, and now entered into the public record as a matter of enduring legal fact. Its enforceability, transferability, and hereditary succession are not implied; they are codified and protected under governing statutes and common law precedent. And above all, it was earned—not in the sense of aristocratic birth or financial maneuvering, but through the simplest possible truth: someone remembered. Someone followed through. No reward was sought for an act of selfless heroism—and yet, in time, something enduring was bestowed in kind.

👉 Read Genevieve Wynters' full investigation

Ellis Hawthorne is an investigative journalist with over two decades of experience. He reports across legal affairs, cultural history, and long-form human profiles. His work—both credited and ghostwritten—has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other leading publications. He is known for his narrative discipline and archival fluency. He is quick-witted and holds a stubborn refusal to overwrite the truth. This is his first feature for The Influencer Magazine UK.