Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/375

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visitors, he proceeded M.A. in 1648, and in 1656 was chosen senior proctor of the university (Wood, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 70, 108, 192). He incorporated at Cambridge in 1657. About 1664 he left Oxford, on being called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. In 1666 he went to Barbadoes as secretary to William, lord Willoughby of Parham, and the king's attorney for that island. Three years later he married a wealthy lady there, and by 1673 owned six hundred acres (Cal. State Papers, America, 1669–74, p. 497). In November 1672 he was placed on a committee to consider and report on the acts of the country (ib. p. 433), and in 1674 was twice elected to a seat in the assembly for St. James's parish (ib. pp. 546, 626). He acted as judge in the island from 1670 till 1683, and returned to London, where he filled the office of agent for Barbadoes.

Littleton wrote: 1. ‘De Juventute oratio,’ 4to, London, 1664 (another edit. 1689), delivered when he was rhetoric reader of the university. 2. ‘The Groans of the Plantations; or a true Account of their … Sufferings by the heavy Impositions upon Sugar and other Hardships,’ &c., 4to, London, 1689. 3. ‘Observations upon the Warre of Hungary,’ 4to, London, 1689. 4. ‘The Management of the Present War against France consider'd,’ 4to, London, 1690. 5. ‘The true Causes of the Scarcity of Money, with the proper Remedies for it,’ 4to, London, 1690 (reprinted in 1692). 6. ‘A Project of a Descent upon France,’ 4to, London, 1691. 7. ‘A Proposal of some ways for raising of Money,’ 4to, London, 1691. 8. ‘A Proposal for Maintaining and Repairing the Highways,’ 4to, London, 1692. 9. ‘The Descent upon France further recommended,’ 4to, London, 1694. Several of his tracts were published anonymously.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 574–5; Reg. of Visitors of Univ. of Oxf. (Camd. Soc.)]

G. G.

LITTLETON, EDWARD, LL.D. (d. 1733), divine and poet, was educated upon the royal foundation at Eton under Dr. Snape. In 1716 he was elected to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1720, M.A. in 1724, and LL.D. comitiis regiis in 1728 (Graduati Cantabr. 1823, p. 295). While an undergraduate he composed a humorous poem entitled ‘A Letter from Cambridge to Master Henry Archer, a young gentleman at Eton School.’ This and his more celebrated poem ‘On a Spider’ are correctly printed in Dodsley's ‘Collection of Poems,’ edited by Isaac Reed (1782, vi. 316, 324). He also wrote a pastoral elegy on the death of Ralph Banks, a scholar of King's College, but only a few fragments have been preserved. In 1720 Littleton was appointed an assistant-master at Eton. In 1726 he was elected a fellow of the college, and presented to the vicarage of Mapledurham, Oxfordshire. On 30 Jan. 1730 he preached a sermon before the House of Commons at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and on 9 June 1730 was appointed one of the king's chaplains. He died on 16 Nov. 1733, and was buried in his church at Mapledurhan. He married Frances, daughter of Barnham Goode, under-master of Eton. Her second husband was Dr. John Burton (1696–1771) [q. v.], Littleton's successor in the living at Mapledurham.

Two volumes of his ‘Sermons upon several Practical Subjects,’ dedicated to the Queen Caroline, were published by subscription in 1735, 8vo, for the benefit of his widow and his three children. A third edition, with a memoir of the author by Dr. Thomas Morell [q. v.], appeared in 1749, 12mo.

[Memoir by Dr. Thomas Morell; Harwood's Alumni Eton. pp. 86, 296; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. vii. 424, xx. 328, xxii. 386; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. iv. 602, 730, v. 711; Darling's Cycl. Bibliographica.]

T. C.

LITTLETON, EDWARD JOHN, first Baron Hatherton (1791–1863), born on 18 March 1791, was the only son of Moreton Walhouse of Hatherton in the parish of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, by his wife, Anne Craycroft, daughter of A. Portal. He entered Rugby School at midsummer 1806, and matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, on 27 Jan. 1809, and was created D.C.L. on 18 June 1817. He was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 17 Nov. 1810, but took his name off the books of that society on 6 Nov. 1812. In compliance with the will of his grand-uncle, Sir Edward Littleton, bart. (a lineal descendant of Sir Thomas Littleton, K.B., author of the ‘Treatise of Tenures’), he assumed the surname of Littleton in lieu of Walhouse on 23 July 1812 (London Gazette, 1812, pt. ii. p. 1365), and on attaining the age of twenty-four succeeded to the family estates in Worcestershire and Staffordshire. At a by-election in June 1812, occasioned by his grand-uncle's death in the previous month, he was returned to the House of Commons for Staffordshire, and continued to represent that constituency until the dissolution in December 1832. Littleton appears to have spoken for the first time in the house on 19 Feb. 1816 during the debate upon the address, when he supported the government and their conduct of the war (Parl. Debates, 1st ser. xxxii. 712–13). On 2 June 1817 he seconded the nomination