Edward Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton (was Walhouse)

Trustee for the Earl of Dudley, awarded with others the compensation for the Whitney and Rymesbury estates in Clarendon and New Yarmouth in Vere, all in Jamaica.   

Son of Moreton Walhouse of Hatherton, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, and his wife, Anne Cracroft, daughter of Abraham Portal, goldsmith and dramatist.

In compliance with the will of his great-uncle, Sir Edward Littleton, Bt., he assumed the surname of Littleton in lieu of Walhouse on 23 July 1812, and at 24 succeeded to the family estates in Worcestershire and Staffordshire and to £18,000 p.a.

Initially Canningite but by the 1820s increasingly Whiggish, and even more so after Canning's death (1827). Supported Parliamentary Reform.

At the 1830 general election Littleton affirmed (among other things) his hostility to slavery.

1833: appointed Chief Secretary in Ireland (May 1833-November 1834).

Created Baron Hatherton of Hatherton on 11 May 1835.

Supported the repeal of the corn laws in 1846; appointed lord lieutenant of Staffordshire on 8 June 1854.

T71/859 Clarendon nos. 284 & 320; T71/858 Vere no. 70.

G. F. R. Barker, ‘Littleton , Edward John, first Baron Hatherton (1791–1863)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; History of Parliament online, entry by Philip Salmon