His attainments would have justified his election to a fellowship, but as his private property was thought to be a disqualification he took curacies at Penshurst, Kent, and afterwards at Godalming, Surrey.
A single sermon led, however, to a disagreement with John Henry, later Cardinal Newman, the then vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, to which Littlemore had been an adjunct, and their official connection, though they had been acquaintances from early youth, at once ceased.
In this house he remained for the rest of his life, keenly interested in church matters, and struggling against the spread of what he deemed Romanism.
For some time he was curate of Headington; he held the miserably endowed vicarage of Baldon Toot, and he occasionally officiated in the church of St. Peter in the East, Oxford, for Hamilton, afterwards bishop of Salisbury.
His religious views were those of Hooker, and he gloried in the traditions of the old high church party, but his hatred of Romanism, deepened by his Huguenot descent, made him a fierce opponent of ritualism.