Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/690

 676 V. BENCH AND BAR was not common at that day, though doubtless the foolish people who prate about the iniquity of a lawyer's advocacy of a bad cause would find in such conduct much to approve. This Fairfax's great-great-grandson was made Lord Fair- fax in 1637, and in still later times the then Lord Fairfax, smarting under some court beauty's disdain, buried himself in the Virginia wilderness, and added to history by befriend- ing the young surveyor, George Washington. Washington was sent to survey his friend's vast domain beyond the Blue Ridge, and there gained the knowledge that gave him his first military employment. The fame of all the Lancastrian and Yorkist lawyers is eclipsed by that of Fortescue and Littleton. Both of them were legal authors and very successful practitioners. For- tescue, the Lancastrian judge, survived Littleton, the York- ist judge, and will therefore be noticed after him. Thomas Littleton came of a family that since the days of Henry II. had occupied an estate at South Littleton in Worcestershire. Although he was the eldest son he was bred to the bar at the Inner Temple. He became reader for his Inn, and the subject of his public reading, the Statute De Donis, shows the early tendency of his legal studies. He was in practice as early as 1445, for in that year a litigant named Hauteyn petitioned the Lord Chancellor to grant him Littleton as counsel in a case against the widow of Judge Paston, for the reason that none of the men of the court were willing to appear against the widow of a judge and her son, who was an advocate. This would seem to indicate that Littleton's practice lay in the chancery and not in the law courts. In 1452 Littleton received a handsome fee, the grant of a manor for life pro bono et notabUi consUio. In 1453 he became a serjeant, and in the next year was made king's Serjeant. In 1460 he was one of the king's Serjeants who successfully evaded an answer to the question asked by Par- liament as to whether the Lancastrian King Henry or the Yorkist Duke Richard had the better title to the throne. In fact, from 1455 to 1466 Littleton practiced his profes- sion, refusing to mingle in the political disputes. He even took the lawyer-like precaution in 1461, when Edward IV.