Sir Edward Littleton, 1st Baronet

Sir Edward Littleton (c. 1599 – c. 1657) was a 17th-century English Baronet and politician, the first of a line of four Littleton Baronets with Pillaton Hall as their seat.^[1]

He was the son of Sir Edward Littleton Kt. and Mary Fisher of Pillaton Hall, near Penkridge, Staffordshire. He was created a Baronet by Charles I on 28 June 1627. As this suggests, he was of Cavalier sympathies, and an important counterweight locally to Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, lord of the manor of Penkridge, who was an important leader of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause, who was killed during the siege of Lichfield Cathedral in 1643. However, Littleton proved impotent to maintain the royalist cause in the area, and parliamentary soldiers occupied Penkridge in 1645 after the briefest of skirmishes.^[2]

Littleton served as High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1636 and as Deputy Lieutenant of that county. He served as Sollicitor-General in the 1637 trial of John Hampden for refusal to pay ship money tax. He was Member of Parliament for Staffordshire from 1640 but was expelled from the House of Commons in 1644 on account of his loyalty to the Crown. His estates were subject to sequestration and forfeiture but he was allowed to compound for their return, at a cost of £1347.

He married Hester Courteen and was succeeded by his son Sir Edward Littleton, 2nd Baronet.

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