life of this great judge we know little. We find that he was entered as a member of the Inner Temple. This does not imply that he was originally intended to practice as a law.yer, for we know on the authority of Fortescue and others that at that time " it was the universal practice for the young nobility and gentry to be instructed in the originals and elements of the laws." (Bl. Comm., vol. i, p. 25.) It seems probable, there fore, that having been sent to the Inner Temple in accordance with the educational custom of the period, he became enamored of the work that he found to his hand, and stayed to practice where he came to learn. This view is considerably supported by the fact that he, in early days, gave a learned reading at his Inn on the statute DC Doiiis Conditionalibus, the manuscript of which is still extant. In 1445, we find that he was in practice as a pleader, and that at the same time, possibly owing to family in fluence, he was occupying positions requir ing legal knowledge in his own county, such as the Escheatorship of Worcester. In 1447 he was made acting sheriff of the county under the hereditary sheriff, the Earl of Warwick. He seçms also to have been previously the steward of the court of Marshalsea of the king's household. In 1450 he was created recorder of Coventry, and in 1453 he proceeded to the important degree of serjeant-at-law, and on the I3th of May, 1455, he became king's serjeant, and was appointed a justice of assize on the northern circuit. Before the death of Henry VI he obtained the office of steward of the Marshalsea Court. As a man who was, to some considerable extent, in touch with the court, it was impossible that he should have escaped from the social and political troubles of that terrible period. He seems, however, to have conducted his affairs with much astuteness, for we find that he was twice pardoned, and that on the accession of Edward IV, that monarch re ceived him into great favor. In 1463-4 he
attended the king's progress through Gloucestershire; on the 27th of April, 1466, he was made justice of the Common Pleas, and rode the Northamptonshire cir cuit. On the 18th of April, 1475, he was made a Knight of the Bath — "the same king, in the fifteenth year of his reign, with the prince and other nobles and gentlemen of ancient blood, honoured him with the Knighthood of the Bath." This was an honor bestowed, probably, as much in rec ognition of his gentle birth as of his labori ous achievements in the field of law. He married Joan, widow of Sir Philip Chetwynd of Ingestre, in Staffordshire, and daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Burley, " of Broomscroft Castle in the County of Salop," the speaker of the House of Commons. This lady outlived her second husband, and died on the 22d of March, 1504—5, leaving by this marriage three sons (" Sir William, Richard the law yer, and Thomas") and two daughters. The present noble families of Lyttleton and Hatherton are in direct descent from his marriage. Sir Thomas Littleton died at his own birthplace (at that Frankley which he had inherited from his mother), on the 23d of August, 1481, full of age and honor, having fulfilled his mother's ambition by the revival of her name and family, and the handing of it on to a remote and honorable posterity. "The body of our author," says Coke, "is honorably interred in the cathedral church of Worcester, under a fair tomb of marble, with his statue or portraiture upon it." This tomb is on the south side of the cathedral, but, unfortunately, the brass, with its portrait of the judge, has disappeared. At his parish of Frankley an image of the great lawyer, wearing the coif and the scar let robes of his office, formerly existed, but has long since vanished, as has also the win dow portrait of him in the parish church of Halesowcn. The portrait by Cornelius Janssen, in the Inner Temple, is of an au
