Sir Edward Littleton, 1st Baronet (c. 1599 – c. 1657) was a 17th-century English Baronet and politician from the extended Littleton/Lyttelton family, the first of a line of four Littleton baronets with Pillaton Hall as their seat.The Baronetage of England, Edward Kimber and Richard Johnson, (1771) Vol. 1 pp. 289. He initially joined the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. Having tried unsuccessfully to find a third way, he switched his support to the Royalist cause – a decision that led to his financial ruin, as large debts made it impossible to redeem his estates from sequestration after the victory of Parliament.
Background and education
Edward Littleton was born in 1599 or 1598: he was recorded as 18 years of age when he enrolled at Oxford University in 1617. He was the son of Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton Hall, near Penkridge, Staffordshire and Mary Fisher, daughter of Clement Fisher of Packington, Warwickshire.
Both of Littleton's parents came from the middling landed gentry. His mother, Mary, was from the neighbouring county of Warwickshire, where the Fishers held the manor of Packington in chiefSalzman. History of the County of Warwick, volume 4, Parishes: Great Packington: Manor, note anchor 21. and the advowson of the parish church.Salzman. History of the County of Warwick, volume 4, Parishes: Great Packington: Advowson, note anchor 39. Clement, her father, had succeeded to his lands in 1571 and died on 23 October 1619, leaving as heir his son Sir Robert.Salzman. History of the County of Warwick, volume 4, Parishes: Great Packington: Manor, note anchors 23-5. His widow, also Mary, then occupied the manor house with her other daughter Anne Dilke, and then soon died, making it difficult for Sir Robert to get the will executed. In 1621 he accused his deceased mother and widowed sister of wasting timber on the estateSalzman. History of the County of Warwick, volume 4, Parishes: Great Packington: Manor, note anchors 26. and received letters of administration only in May 1623.
The Littletons of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire were all alike descendants of Thomas de Littleton, an eminent 15th-century judge and jurist. Numerous surname variants were current in the 16th and 17th centuries: and the various branches of the family were not distinguished orthographically. The Staffordshire Littletons had often been turbulent, like their Worcestershire cousins. Edward Littleton's paternal grandfather had been a prominent supporter of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, marrying the earl's cousin, and had been arrested and temporarily disgraced as a suspected organiser of the Essex Rebellion. His father was suspected of Puritan sympathies and had supported a controversial minister at St Michael's Church in Penkridge, where the Littletons held the advowson.Midgley. History of the County of Stafford, vol. 5, Penkridge: Penkridge: Economic history, churches, schools and charities, note anchor 162. He too kept up the Devereux connection: Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex had a seat at nearby Chartley Castle and was a powerful ally, as well as a relative.
The young Edward was sent off to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 28 March 1617. His county was recorded as Warwickshire, which was his mother's native place. About three years earlier his father had run into financial difficulties in the wake of his term as Sheriff of the county and had moved his household to Worcester to economise. Young Edward was admitted to the Inner Temple little more than a year later, on 13 June 1618.The Inner Temple Admissions Database, record 12268. His kinsmen the Shropshire Littletons were moving into a period of influence at the Inner Temple.Inderwick, p. xcvi-xcvii. His younger brother Walter, without prospects of inheritance, pursued an academic career and became a cleric.
It appears that the Littleton family returned to Pillaton soon after Edward's admission to the Inner Temple, perhaps during 1618, and their financial situation began to recover as a result of a switch to demesne farming and animal husbandry.
Marriage and honours A knighthood was purchased once Edward Littleton reached maturity, and he received it on 22 August 1621 at Warwick.Shaw, p. 177.
In 1625 he married Hester Courten or Courteen, daughter of Sir William Courten, an immensely wealthy London textile merchant and financier, originally from Menen in Flanders. Courten had lent £25,000 to the Crown.Wedgwood, p. 61. Keen to place his children advantageously, he paid a dowry of £5000 to the Littletons, who were only middling gentry. Courten married his other daughter Anne to Essex Devereux, a kinsman of the Earl of Essex, thus strengthening the Devereux/Littleton connection. After the untimely death of Essex Devereux, Anne was married to Edward Littleton's cousin and trustee, Richard Knightley.
It is likely that it was the huge dowry from Courten that made possible the purchase of a baronetcy for the younger Edward Littleton, which was conferred by Charles I on 28 June 1627.Cokayne, Complete baronetage, Volume 2, p. 27.
Ship money After succeeding his father, Littleton began to play a full part in the political life of his county. He served as High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1636 – 37. His shrievalty coincided with the ship money crisis and he seems to have held an ambivalent position, allowing many to escape without paying.Wedgwood, p. 58-9. On 12 February 1637 he wrote from Pillaton to Edward Nicholas, clerk to the Privy Council complaining that he had found such refractoriness in most of the county, as well constables, assessors, and others, by reason of the £1,000 that is laid on the county more than the first time, that they say they will petition and not pay till they be answered. Should he bind them all up it would never be ended. He has been very rough with many, and now they begin a little to be reclaimed. Were he to suffer death for his neglect he were not able to do more. Cannot as yet get a quarter of the assessments to be signed, directing daily warrants out to the high constables for their answering their contempt at the Council table. As soon as he can force them he will return an account. Whole regiments come daily to his house saying, "Distrain !" for they have no money. Did Nicholas know the charge he is at, and the trouble, he would plead for the writer and the Lords compassionate him. He has received £650 and given order to his undersheriff, Mr. Richard, to pay in £1,000.Calendar of State Papers, 1636–7, p. 439.
A month later he wrote again in a similar vein, pointing out that some had overpaid while the constable of Seisdon Hundred had neither paid in any money nor submitted any accounts.Calendar of State Papers, 1636–7, p. 493. At some stage, presumably later in the year, Littleton was faced by a summons to the House of Lords over £300 arrears, against £2700 paid in, and petitioned for a stay until Easter 1638 to give him a chance to complete the collection.Calendar of State Papers, 1637–8, p. 90. Although Littleton had sought to portray himself as zealous in collecting money for the king but frustrated by inefficient constables, Sir John Skeffington, his successor as sheriff, gave a very different picture in a letter to Nicholas from his Staffordshire home at Fisherwick. Being at Skeffington in Leicestershire on receipt of the writs for ship-money, he has transplanted himself for the better performance of his duty, and having sought conference with the head constables and others, whether from jealousy that he would not give them the same connivance as his predecessors, whereby a great part of the collection is yet ungathered, or from what other reasons he cannot guess, he received from them directions which would have led him into error and there kept him if he had not redeemed himself.Calendar of State Papers, 1637, p. 532.
Wedgwood thought this indicated that "Sir Edward was even then on the popular side." Blaming a predecessor seems a natural enough tactic and the two men were equally keen to cast as much as possible of the blame on subordinates. The latter tactic was at least partly successful. As late as 31 May 1640 the Privy Council was still pursuing the constables who had been cited as dishonest or slipshod by Littleton.Calendar of State Papers, 1640, p. 250.
Drift to conflict
Littleton was Member of Parliament for Staffordshire from 1640, in both the Short Parliament and the Long Parliament. Initially a trusted Parliamentarian, he was entrusted with his share of commissions and committees. On 26 March 1641, he was appointed to a committee on a bill described as being "to prevent Dangers, that may happen by Popish Recusants."House of Commons Journal, volume 2, 26 March 1641 pm. Not surprisingly, in May he agreed to the terms of the Protestation that he would "promise, vow, and protest, to maintain and defend, as far as lawfully I may, with my Life, Power, and Estate, the true, reformed, Protestant Religion..."House of Commons Journal, volume 2, 3 May 1641 pm. In August the MPs for various counties were commissioned to put into effect an act for the disarming of recusants, yet to be drawn up: Littleton and his friend Sir Richard Leveson received the commission as Staffordshire MPs.House of Commons Journal, volume 2, 21 August 1641.
As the country drifted toward war, Littleton remained a resolute Parliamentarian. On 6 June 1642 he wrote to Leveson, an MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme,Wedgwood, p. 31. pointing out that Parliament expected all members to be in attendance by 16 June, with a penalty of £100 for non-compliance – to be used in funding the war in Ireland. He then reported on the king's preparations for civil war, including his commissions to raise troops against Parliament in every county.Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. Fifth Report, part 1, p. 141. Leveson failed to commit himself to Parliament and was summoned by the House of Commons in August. When the king's commission of array wrote urging him to mobilise on the royalist side he joined with other local gentry in signing a refusal "without supreme authority or greater motives of more demonstrable dangers to raise the armes of their county". Ultimately Leveson's neutralist policy failed in the face of the king's order to suppress all third Force troops, and he reluctantly took up the royalist cause.Coulton, p. 94. Littleton, on the other hand, did not vacillate but immediately rallied to Parliament. A week after he wrote to Leveson, he was back at Parliament, where he was ordered, along with two other MPs, to notify his father-in-law Courten that he must not sell or move his stocks of saltpetre, an essential component of gunpowder, which Parliament intended to buy from him.House of Commons Journal, volume 2, 13 June 1642. On 6 August the king, then at York, appointed Littleton Custos Rotulorum of Staffordshire, to replace Essex, who was Lord Lieutenant of the county and a leader of the opposition among the Lords. If this was intended to loosen the Devereux-Littleton connection,Wedgwood, p. 59. it failed.
Parliament activity