Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/380

Rh legend ‘Fili Dei, miserere mei’ issuing from his mouth. The brass was removed during the civil wars. A figure of Littleton kneeling, in coif and scarlet robes, long adorned the east window of the chancel of the chapel of St. Leonard, Frankley, and there was also a portrait of him in one of the windows of Halesowen Church. No trace of either now remains. An engraving by Robert Vaughan, from a sketch of the figure in the Frankley window, was prefixed to the second (1629) edition of Coke's ‘Institutes,’ pt. i. The full-length portrait of Littleton by Cornelius Janssen in the Inner Temple Hall was probably studied from both windows with the help of the effigy on the tomb, and may therefore be regarded as fairly authentic.

Littleton's will, dated the day before his death, affords an interesting glimpse of the contents of his library. After disposing of his ‘gode litel massbook and gode vestment with the apparyl to an auter’ ‘to the use’ of Trinity Chapel, Frankley, and his ‘great antiphoner’ ‘to the use’ of St. Leonard's chapel, Frankley, he bequeathed the ‘Catholicon’ (i.e. the English-Latin dictionary known as ‘Catholicon Anglicum,’ printed by the Camden Society in 1882), the ‘Constitutions Provincial’ (i.e. Lyndewode's ‘Constitutiones Provinciales Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ,’ printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1490), the ‘De Gestis Romanorum’ (the well-known ‘Gesta Romanorum’) and some other treatises to Halesowen monastery, the ‘Fasiculus (sic) Morum’ (perhaps a copy of the Latin original of Jacques Le Grant's ‘Livres des Bonnes Mœurs,’ Paris, 1478, fol., of which ‘The Boke of Good Maners’ published by Caxton in 1487, fol., is a translation) to Enfield Church, and the ‘Medulla Grammatica’ (more correctly ‘Grammatice’), an English-Latin dictionary, to King's Norton Church (see Catholicon Anglicum, Camden Soc., Pref. x.) His ‘great English book’ he directed to be sold and the proceeds applied for the benefit of his soul, for which he made liberal provision of trentals and masses. The overseer of the will was John Alcock [q. v.], bishop of Worcester (see, Testamenta Vetusta, i. 363 et seq., and , Peerage, ed. Brydges, viii. 324 et seq.) The Trinity Chapel mentioned in the will was Littleton's domestic oratory, where by license of Bishop Carpenter, dated 20 Jan. 1443–4, he was accustomed to have low mass regularly celebrated. Littleton married before the date of the license, in which his wife is named Joan, relict of Sir Philip Chetwynd of Ingestre, Staffordshire, who brought him in jointure the manors of Ingestre and Tixall, and a moiety of the manor of Grendon, Staffordshire, with other estates in the same county, and in Warwickshire and Worcestershire. She was the daughter of Sir William Burley [q. v.] of Bromscroft Castle, Shropshire, speaker of the House of Commons, from whom she inherited extensive estates in Shropshire. Littleton had issue by her three sons and two daughters. She survived him, and died on 22 March 1504–5. In his own right Littleton held, besides Frankley and several other estates in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the manor of Arley in Staffordshire, twelve houses in Lichfield, and the advowson of the vicarage of Bromsgrove. His town house, which he rented from the abbot of Leicester at 16s. per annum, was situate on the north side of St. Sepulchre's Church. From his eldest son, William, who succeeded to Frankley and to his mother's estates, and was knighted by Henry VII for services rendered at the battle of Stoke, 16 June 1487, descends the noble family of Lyttelton. Richard, the second son, who took under Littleton's will a moiety of the manor of Baxterley, Warwickshire, and some other estates in tail, was a barrister and the ancestor of Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton Hall, Staffordshire. His posterity died out in the male line in 1812. The present Lord Hatherton is his representative in the female line. To Thomas, his third son, Littleton devised the manor of Spetchley with other estates in Worcestershire and Staffordshire, in tail; from him both Edward, lord Littleton of Munslow [q. v.], lord keeper to Charles I, and Sir Thomas Littleton, bart. [q. v.], speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of William III, traced their descent. Both Littleton's daughters died unmarried.

Littleton's fame rests upon a short treatise on ‘Tenures’ written primarily for the instruction of his son Richard, to whom it is addressed, but which early attained the rank of a work of authority. Though preceded by, and to some extent based upon, a meagre tract of uncertain date known as ‘Olde Tenures,’ Littleton's work was substantially original, and presented in an easy, and, notwithstanding it is written in law-French, agreeable style, and within moderate compass, a full and clear account of the several estates and tenures then known to English law with their peculiar incidents. Probably no legal treatise ever combined so much of the substance with so little of the show of learning, or so happily avoided pedantic formalism without forfeiting precision of statement. The date at which it came to be recognised as an authority cannot be exactly fixed; it is, however, cited by FitzHerbert in his ‘Novel Natura Brevium,’ published in