Thomas de Littleton

Sir Thomas de Littleton
Sir Thomas Littleton
Spouse(s)	Joan Burley
Issue Sir William Littleton Richard Littleton Thomas Littleton Ellen Littleton Alice Littleton
Father	Thomas Westcote or Heuster alias Littleton
Mother	Elizabeth Littleton
Born	c.1407
Died	23 August 1481 (aged 73–74)
Buried	Worcester Cathedral

Sir Thomas de Littleton or de Lyttleton (c.1407 – 23 August 1481) was an English judge and legal writer from the Lyttelton family.

Thomas de Littleton was the eldest son of Elizabeth Littleton, sole daughter and heiress of Thomas de Littleton, Lord of Frankley, and Thomas Westcote or Heuster, esquire, chief prothonotary of the Court of Common Pleas. The date of Littleton's birth is uncertain; a MS. pedigree gives 1422, but it was probably earlier than this. If, as is generally accepted, he was born at Frankley Manor, it could not have been before 1407, in which year Littleton's grandfather recovered the manor from a distant branch of the family.

Elizabeth Littleton and Thomas Westcote had four sons. Thomas, the eldest son and heir, took his mother's surname, likely as a condition of her marriage settlement as heir to the manor of Frankley. Two of his brothers, Nicholas and Guy, retained the surname Westcote. Nicholas Westcote married Agnes Vernon, the daughter and heiress of Edmund Vernon, and was ancestor of the Westcotes of Staffordshire, while Guy Westcote married the daughter of one Greenevill of Gloucestershire, and was ancestor of the Westcotes of Devon and Somerset.

He attended the grammar school attached to the monastery at Worcester. Thus he is cherished as an alumnus by both descendant educational institutions, today's Royal Grammar School Worcester and The King's School, Worcester. He is said by Sir Edward Coke to have "attended one of the universities", but there is no corroboration of this statement.

He was probably a member of the Inner Temple, and lectured there on the statute of Westminster, i.e. Donis Conditionalibus. His name occurs in the Paston Letters (ed. J. Gairdner, p. 60) about 1445 as that of a well-known counsel and in 1481/2 he received a grant of the manor of Sheriff Hales, Shropshire, from Sir William Trussell as a reward for his services as counsel.