Edward Littleton (died 1629)

The elder Sir Edward Littleton was an important and politically active member of the Staffordshire landed gentry.

Sir Edward was the earl's agent in his home county of Staffordshire and played a part – tangential, he claimed – in the Essex Rebellion of 1601.

He was admitted on 23 November 1595, free of charge, on the orders of the parliament of that year, at the instance of Thomas Coventree, Autumn Reader for 1594.

These connections with some of the key figures in the Elizabethan state can only have helped when the elder Littleton was embroiled in the Essex rebellion, as Coke was one of those who conducted his interrogation.

[7] Littleton married Mary Fisher, the daughter of a Warwickshire landowner: the marriage settlement is dated 15 January 1599.

[1] Two years later, faced by a large fine because of his association with Essex, the elder Littleton protested to Cecil that: This was special pleading, designed to get easy terms, but his son's allowance was certainly a substantial sum for him to find.

They were one of the gentry families that profited greatly from the English Reformation and their most important estates were former ecclesiastical property – especially that of the Collegiate church of St Michael and All Angels at Penkridge.

Again the estates had to support a vigorous and well-connected widow, as Margaret Devereux long outlived her husband, surviving until 23 January 1627.

It seems also that Littleton himself was a generous host and kept a “bountiful and liberal house.”[1] He was also honoured, but perhaps unfortunate, to be pricked High Sheriff of Staffordshire soon after succeeding to his estates, in 1613.

His finances did recover, although there were complaints about the depredations of his large flocks of sheep, so it is likely that part of his recovery plan was more efficient exploitation of his own demesne lands.

[1] The Littletons held advowson, the right to present clergy to St Michaels, a source of considerable power and profit.

As proprietor of the deanery manor of Penkridge, Littleton was chief officer of the royal peculiar, the ecclesiastical institution – independent of the diocese of Lichfield – that survived when the College of St Michael was abolished in 1547 until 1858.

Bowyer seems to have been a compromise candidate[10] – unconnected to any major faction in the county and elected a total of five times between 1621 and 1640 – although he too was probably a moderate Puritan,[11] like Littleton.

Although a partisan of Essex, a politician with a national profile, Littleton was thus confined almost entirely to matters of a regional importance, in which he probably had considerable knowledge and expertise.

It was some measure of Courten's desire to see his children accepted in English society that he parted with a huge dowry, some £5,000, to the Littletons, still gentry of merely regional importance.

He was stripped of his offices and in July 1627 Littleton was appointed Custos Rotulorum of Staffordshire, the county's senior administrative post, in place of the earl.

an impressive two-tiered structure, it features effigies of Littleton and Mary Fisher on the upper tier, with his parents below.

The Fishers, like the Littleton's, had risen in the world by acquiring ecclesiastical lands (mainly those of Kenilworth priory) and allying themselves to the most important local magnate (in their case, Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick), so the couple were well-matched socially and politically.