LYTTELTON, Sir Thomas, 1st bt. (1595-1650), of Hagley and Frankley, Worcs.

The Lytteltons of Frankley were among the most distinguished of Worcestershire families. Sir Thomas Lyttelton’s most illustrious forebear was his namesake Sir Thomas Littleton (1422-81), judge and author of a learned treatise on tenures.32Oxford DNB. The first baronet’s great-grandfather, Sir John Lyttelton†, sat as knight of the shire in the Parliament of 1553; his grandfather, Gilbert Lyttelton†, and his father, John Lyttelton†, represented Worcestershire in five Elizabethan assemblies. George Lyttelton†, younger brother of Gilbert, sat for Droitwich in 1586. Sir Thomas’s’ great-grandfather, Sir John, built up the family estates, adding to Frankley manor the lands of Halesowen abbey, salt-pans in Droitwich, and the manor of Clent in Staffordshire. He later divested himself of most of the Shropshire lands he had acquired with Halesowen, but this still left him with powerful territorial interests in north Worcestershire.33HP Commons 1509-1558. His heir, Gilbert Lyttelton, was unusually disputatious, engaging in a long-running feud with Edward, Lord Dudley, over lands and colliery interests. Furthermore, Gilbert withheld maintenance from his wife and sons, allegedly for nine years.34HP Commons 1558-1603. His eldest son, John, sustained by his grandfather’s settlement, took on Gilbert on behalf of the family. John Lyttelton† was outlawed as a result, but had county opinion on his side enough to return him as MP in 1597, while still technically an outlaw. It was during these battles with family and neighbours that his eldest son, Thomas Lyttelton, was born in 1595.35Hagley par. reg. John Lyttelton succeeded in acquiring his inheritance four years later, but the family was nearly overwhelmed by his disastrous entanglement with the rising of the 2nd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux†). His own commentary on the affair was that he only sought to help his friends. He was arraigned of high treason, and only avoided execution by the last-minute intervention of a friend at court, possibly Sir Walter Ralegh†. He died in the queen’s bench prison.36HP Commons 1558-1603.

Thomas Lyttelton usually spelled his surname thus.37BRL, Hagley Hall mss, box 53, 351946, bond of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, 7 Nov. 1646. His childhood was overshadowed by the family’s misfortunes. It was his mother, Meriel, daughter of an Elizabethan lord chancellor, who worked to recover the family’s estates, forfeit by John Lyttelton’s attainder. Letters patent restoring the estates were granted to her in 1603: the accession of the new king was undoubtedly timely.38BRL, Hagley Hall mss, box 29, 351497; box 30, 351496. Hardly had the reversal of attainder been achieved, however, when two other members of the family, Stephen and Humphrey Lyttelton, were implicated in the Gunpowder Plot. Humphrey Lyttelton only escaped execution by providing names of more plotters at his trial in Worcester.39Rymer, Foedera, xvi. 638, 640; Nash, Collections, i. 491-2. The family’s recent history must have kept Thomas Lyttelton out of county government office: there is no record of his being on the county bench of magistrates before 1641, even though he was created a baronet in July 1618. The baronetcy cost him £1,095, which he pledged in order to support 30 foot-soldiers in the king’s army in Ireland.40BRL, Hagley Hall mss, box 29, 351500. The king’s project of raising money and Lyttelton’s of restoring his family’s fortunes dovetailed nicely.

Lyttelton’s commitment of funds for military purposes may have been partly occasioned by his own professional interests, since by 1624 he was serving in the Low Countries as an army captain.41Harl. 5814 f. 47. He was travelling abroad, writing home from Paris, as early as February 1616, and seems to have maintained this service overseas throughout the 1620s, even though he was in the same period regularly being returned to the Parliaments of the 1620s for Worcestershire.42Herefs. RO, W15/2. He represented a family with a distinguished presence in the county, and for this reason was called upon in 1622 to mediate between Sir Samuel Sandys† of Ombersley and his tenants.43CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 441. The family’s interest was still a powerful one, in electoral terms, but Lyttelton’s impact on the Parliaments of the 1620s was slight. In the 1624 Parliament his sitting as knight of the shire for an affected county ensured his place on a committee reviewing the status of the English shires under the Council of the Marches. In May 1628, sitting in this Parliament for Leominster, Lyttelton was named to the committee for a bill to consider the better maintenance of the clergy; he presented several to livings, and it is evident that towards the end of his life he was an active and responsible patron of ministers.44CJ i. 522b, 730a, 893a; PROB11/211, f. 314.

During the 1630s Lyttelton was settled in Frankley, playing a greater role in county society as a magistrate. He invested in the Guiana Company, and received passes to travel abroad in May 1632 and May 1636, suggesting a continuing interest in foreign or trading affairs.45Bodl. Tanner 71, f. 161v; BRL, Hagley Hall mss, box 29, 351502, 351504. Many children were born to him, but two sons were drowned in an accident at Oxford in 1635: Lyttelton commissioned the sculptor Nicholas Stone to erect for £50 a monument to them at Magdalen College.46Hagley par. reg.; Hagley Hall mss, box 29, 351503; Strafforde Papers ed. Knowler, i. 427. He was returned again as knight of the shire to the Parliament of April 1640, with Sir John Pakington, who was nearly 25 years his junior. Here he can be confused with Thomas Lyttelton alias Poyntz, the Member for Much Wenlock, his distant cousin, who did not succeed to his baronetcy until September 1647. Lyttelton alias Poyntz was married to Anne, the daughter of Sir Edward Littleton† of Henley (created Baron Lyttelton of Mounslow in February 1641), chief justice of common pleas and solicitor-general in 1640. Sir Edward’s late wife, Anne Littleton’s mother, was Sir Thomas Lyttelton’s sister. By marriage, therefore, Sir Thomas Lyttelton was more closely related to the Member for Much Wenlock than by birth, and his brother-in-law was an influential high office-holder.47CB ii. 204; CP viii. 316; Vis.Worcs. 1634 (Harl. Soc. xc), 62-4.

These powerful connections of his may have emboldened Lyttelton to make a significant speech in the first Parliament of 1640. On 24 April, it was reported to the Commons that a conference of Lords and Commons had identified three heads of grievances: innovation in religion, security of property and freedom of parliaments.48Aston’s Diary, 49-50; Procs. Short Parl. 174 -5, 223-4; CJ ii. 11ab, 12a. On 29 April, Sir Walter Erle reported on preparations for a further conference with the Lords, and discussion opened on clarifying and expanding the substance of the three heads.49Aston’s Diary, 87. Debate ranged over a list of grievances, including bowing to the altar and the restraining of conformable ministers from preaching in their own benefices, an innovation which struck at the preaching ministry. After these two points had been voted on, Lyttelton intervened to add another item: he feared the growth of popery, and mentioned ‘a monastery erected in the metropolis of this kingdom’. He spoke in alarmist terms of popish infiltration of the universities and of the ‘dishonour to God and misery to this kingdom if this whore of Babel (sic) shall begin to prank up her self’. The comptroller of the royal household, Sir Thomas Jermyn*, counselled caution, but Lyttelton’s point was taken up by John Pym, who affirmed that ‘mass was said in the university’. The House voted to give itself room to add further heads as necessary. Lyttelton’s intervention was unhelpful to the government, whose supporters considered it a ruse to get the House to divide. Some thought it an overture to an attack on the queen: either way, Lyttelton seems at this time to have believed in a growing popish conspiracy.50Aston’s Diary, 96, Procs. Short Parl. 182, 204, 240; CJ ii. 16ab.

Lyttelton would have expected to be returned for Worcestershire again in the November 1640 Parliament, and indeed it was reported that he ‘had the canvass’.51Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend ed. Porter, Roberts, Roy, 48. That he was not returned owes more to the ambitions and electoral adroitness of John Wylde* than to any ideological differences at this stage between Lyttelton and the successful candidates, Wylde and Humphrey Salwey. Nevertheless, Sir John Pakington, who took a seat for Aylesbury instead, and Sir Henry Herbert*, felt sufficiently aggrieved about the conduct of this election to become embroiled in a quarrel with Wylde at Westminster.52‘Sir Henry Herbert’, supra. Herbert offered Wylde physical violence at the palace of Westminster, and their feud was connected strongly with the expulsion from the Commons of the Worcestershire royalists. Lyttelton never regained a seat in the Commons, but it is highly likely that he moved from criticism of government policy to support for the king in the same way, and at the same pace, as his allies in Worcestershire, the leading county gentry. He was named to the first commission of array in the county on 18 June 1642, and took the initiative in countering ‘the false doctrine’ of John Wylde and Humphrey Salwey, who had persuaded the quarter sessions grand jury to repudiate the king’s commission of array. With what he called ‘industry and caution’, Lyttelton led a successful campaign to have the assize grand jury repudiate the lower court’s pronouncement.53SAL, MS 140, f. 25. In August, he committed himself to providing six horses for the king (second in the county only to 2nd Baron Coventry, Thomas Coventry†), and received a commission on 3 September to command all trained bands, horse and foot, in Worcestershire. Two days later the king issued letters patent to him, 5th Baron Dudley (Edward Sutton) and Coventry to raise volunteers. Later still in the month, further letters patent authorised a commission of array to Dudley and Lyttelton for the city of Worcester, and Lyttelton was summoned to attend the king at Shrewsbury.54Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; BRL, Hagley Hall mss, box 29, 351505; box 31, 351506, 351507; Nash, Collections, i. 499.

Lyttelton was not active in the civilian organisation of the war effort, and in a military capacity was of less importance than Samuel Sandys*, who was given responsibility for forces sometimes deployed with the king’s field army.55‘Samuel Sandys’, infra. He was nevertheless made governor of Bewdley in 1642. Lyttelton’s sufferings in the war were as great as those of any of his colleagues in the county. He had to witness the firing by Prince Rupert of Frankley, which it was feared would be garrisoned for Parliament.56Nash, Collections, i. 493. Subsequently, around 3 May 1644, Lyttelton was surprised at Tickenhill, a house near Bewdley, by the parliamentarian colonel, ‘Tinker’ Fox. Fox, posing as a servant of Prince Rupert, captured 120 men at Bewdley, and carried off Lyttelton, with some other men and a number of valuable horses, to Coventry.57J. Vicars, Gods Arke Overtopping the World’s Waves (1646), 217 (E.312.3); VCH Worcs. i. 223; J.W. Willis Bund, Hist. Civil Wars in Worcs. (1905), 122-3; A. Hopper, ‘”Tinker” Fox and the Politics of Garrison Warfare in the West Midlands, 1643-50’, MH xxiv. 107. After Lyttelton was handed over by Fox to the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux), he was imprisoned in the Tower for two years, unable or unwilling to pay the fine set on him, as his estate lay in the king’s control.58Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 265; CCC 863. While there, he was able to organise the re-conveyance to him of lands around Stourbridge, subject to a trust ‘now utterly lost and irrecoverably abolished by reason of the trouble and confusion in many places of the kingdom happening by and during the present unnatural and destructive civil wars’.59BRL, Hagley Hall mss, box 43, 351758. In March 1647 his fine was set at £4,000, but he was allowed to surrender his impropriations as part of his settlement.60CCC 863.

After his release from the Tower, he played no further part in public life, and may have remained in London. It was there he died on 22 February 1650. He had specified in his will of December 1649 that he wished to be buried in Worcester Cathedral, last resting place of his distinguished lawyer forebear, and his body was taken back for burial. His estates had been ruined by the civil war, as he noted himself in his will. During the 1650s the family was rehabilitated thoroughly enough for his son, Sir Henry, to be named high sheriff in 1654, perhaps as a way of neutralizing what was feared might be a continuing electoral influence. This demonstration of trust was repaid by Sir Henry’s involvement with a plot on Charles Stuart’s behalf, for which Lyttelton was examined in the Tower, his father’s forced dwelling ten years previously.61List of Sheriffs (List and Index ix), 159; Bodl. Rawl. A.15 f. 562. Two of Sir Thomas Lyttelton’s sons, Henry and Charles, sat in Parliaments after 1660.62HP Commons 1660-1690.