Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/67

 Amongst many other monuments, we considered the following as particularly worth remark:—That of Judge Lyttelton, who died 1481; the learned father of the law, as he is frequently termed by the earlier English historians. He was appointed one of the Judges of the Common-Pleas by Edward IV. in 1464, and afterwards created Knight of the Bath. Whilst on the bench, he published his " Tenures;" a work pronounced by his commentator Sir Edward Coke, to be the ornament of the common law, and the most perfect, volume ever written in any human science. His will, which is printed in Collins's Peerage, will afford you a curious specimen of the preciseness of this great man's character; being replete with circumstantial and minute bequests of trifles and trumpery, that would be now thrown into the chest of the surviving valet.—The tomb of Sir Thomas Lyttelfon, bart. the representative of Worcestershire in five successive parliaments, during the reigns of James and Charles I. To the last monarch his attachment was so great and well-tried, that on the breaking out of the civil wars he had the chief military command in Worcestershire entrusted to him; but falling by the chance of war into the hands of the Parliament forces at Bewdley, he was confined in the tower of London for some years, his estates sequestrated,