Sir Edward Littleton, 2nd Baronet

Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton Hall, 2nd Baronet (c. 1632–1709), was a Staffordshire landowner and MP from the extended Littleton/Lyttelton family, who represented Staffordshire in the Cavalier Parliament.

Littleton was descended from Thomas de Littleton, a noted 15th-century jurist. His family had had their seat at Pillaton Hall, near Penkridge, since 1529. They had built up substantial landholdings in the area from the mid-16th century, including large areas of Cannock Chase and the deanery manor of the dissolved collegiate church. His father was Sir Edward Littleton, 1st Baronet. His mother was Hester Courten, daughter of Sir William Courten, an immensely wealthy London textile merchant and financier, originally from Menen in Flanders. His birth date is generally given as circa 1632, although the birth of an Edward Littleton, son of Edward Littleton, is recorded by the Penkridge parish register for 22 January 1633, with the baptism on 5 February.

Littleton was educated at Shrewsbury School, which he entered in 1644. By this time his father had taken up the royalist side in the English Civil War. He was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary at Worcester in 1642 and his estates were sequestrated As he had large debts, Sir Edward was unable to come to an arrangements with the Committee for Compounding with Delinquents. The estates were purchased and saved for the Littletons by the family trustees: Richard Salway and Richard Knightley, a Northamptonshire cousin who was a moderate Parliamentarian and Presbyterian, and Fisher Littleton, a cousin who lived at Teddesley Lodge. The estates were back in family hands by 1654 but the first baronet probably died in 1657: certainly the second baronet had succeeded him in the title by August of that year, and it seems he had held the lands before that.

...
Wikipedia