Littleton, or Lyttleton, Sir Thomas: jurist; born at Frankley, Worcestershire, England, in 1402. He was the eldest son of Thomas Westcote, but was baptized in the name of his mother’s family, she being sole heir of Thomas de Littleton, lord of the manor of Frankley. He was a member of the Inner Temple, and was in practice as a pleader in 1445, and in 1453 was called to the degree of sergeant-at-law. He held several public offices, among which were the shrievalty of Worcestershire and the recordership of Coventry. In 1455 he was made king’s sergeant and acted as justice of assize in the northern circuit, and before the death of Henry VI. he was appointed steward of the Marshalsea court and justice of the county palatine of Lancaster. He appears to have been involved in the political troubles of the times, and on the accession of Edward IV. obtained a general pardon under the great seal, and was soon in favor with the new king, by whom he was made a justice of the court of common pleas (Apr. 27, 1466), and created a Knight of the Bath (Apr. 18, 1475). He died at Frankley, Aug. 23, 1481, and was buried in the nave of the Worcester Cathedral under a marble alter-tomb erected by himself, upon which was an effigy of himself in brass, which, however, was removed during the civil wars. Littleton’s fame rests chiefly upon his treatise on tenures, which was a short work written in law (Norman) French.
Thomas Littleton, alias Westcote, the famous lawyer, to whose Treatise of Tenures the students of the Common Law are no less beholden than the Civilian to Justinian’s Institutes.
It is a desperate and dangerous matter for Civilians and Canonists (I speak what I know, and not without just cause) to write either of the Common Laws of England, which they profess not, or against them, which they know not. And for Littleton’s Tenures I affirm, and will maintain against all opposites whatever, that it is a work of absolute perfection in its kind, and as free from error as any book that I have known to be written of human learning.
The very adepts in the law are not ashamed frequently to read it. I knew a Lord-Keeper that read it every Christmas, as long as he lived.
The reputation of Littleton’s “Treatise on Tenures” is too well established to require any mention of the praises which the most respectable writers of our country have bestowed on it. No work on our laws has been more warmly or generally applauded by them.
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 1534 (see the chapter on Formedon). Coke’s elaborate commentary upon it testifies to the position which it held in his day. He himself evidently regarded it with a reverence bordering on superstition. “The most perfect and absolute work,” he calls it, “that ever was written in any human science,” and extravagance of eulogy provoked and excused by the absurd and ignorant censure of the civilian, Francis Hotman (see Coke, Inst. pt. I, Pref., and Rep. pt. x. Pref.) Littleton’s text with Coke’s comment long remained the principal authority on English real property law.
