grandfather had been a prominent supporter of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, marrying the earl's cousin, and had been arrested and temporarily disgraced as a suspected organiser of the Essex Rebellion. His father was suspected of Puritan sympathies and had supported a controversial minister at St Michael's Church in Penkridge, where the Littletons held the advowson. He too kept up the Devereux connection: Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex had a seat at nearby Chartley Castle and was a powerful ally, as well as a relative. The young Edward was sent off to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 28 March 1617. His county was recorded as Warwickshire, which was his mother's native place. This may reflect the family's financial plight. About three years earlier his father, a liberal and generous host, had run into financial difficulties in the wake of his term as Sheriff of the county and had moved his household to Worcester to economise. Young Edward was admitted to the Inner Temple, the Inn of Court attended by his recent ancestors, little more than a year later, on 13 June 1618. Nothing further is recorded of his legal studies, although his kinsmen the Shropshire Littletons were moving into a period of great influence at the Inner Temple. His education was probably intended simply to give him the rudiments required for the life of a member of the county landed gentry. This was in sharp contrast to the distinguished academic career of his younger brother, Walter, who had no expectation of inheriting large estates. It seems that the Littleton family returned to Pillaton soon after Edward's admission to the Inner Temple, perhaps during 1618, and their financial situation began to recover as a result of a switch to demesne farming and animal husbandry. Marriage and honours It seems that the now wealthy family were now able to purchase a knighthood once the young Edward reached maturity and he received it on 22 August 1621 at Warwick. In 1625 he married Hester Courten or Courteen, daughter of Sir William Courten, an immensely wealthy London textile merchant and financier, originally from Menen in Flanders. Courten had lent £25,000 to the Crown. Keen to place his children advantageously, he paid a dowry of £5000 to the Littletons, who were only middling gentry. Courten married his other daughter Anne to Essex Devereux, a kinsman of the Earl of Essex, thus