See George A. Hardin, History of Herkimer County (Syracuse, 1893).
LITTLEHAMPTON, a seaport and watering-place in the Chichester parliamentary division of Sussex, England, at the mouth of the Arun, 62 m. S. by W. from London by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 7363. There is a beach of firm sand. The harbour is easily accessible in all weathers, and has a small general trade.
LITTLE ROCK, the capital of Arkansas, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Pulaski county, situated near the centre of the state and on the S. bank of the Arkansas river, at the E. edge of the Ozark foothills. Pop. (1890) 25,874; (1900) 38,307, of whom 14,694 were of negro blood, and 2099 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 45,941. Little Rock is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the St Louis South Western, and the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railways and by river boats. It occupies a comparatively level site of 11 sq. m. at an altitude of 250 to 400 ft. above sea-level and 50 ft. or more above the river, which is crossed here by three railway bridges and by a county bridge. The city derived its name (originally “le Petit Roche” and “The Little Rock”) from a rocky peninsula in the Arkansas, distinguished from the “Big Rock” (the site of the army post, Fort Logan H. Roots), 1 m. W. of the city, across the river. The Big Rock is said to have been first discovered and named “Le Rocher Français” in 1722 by Sieur Bernard de la Harpe, who was in search of an emerald mountain; the Little Rock is now used as an abutment for a railway bridge. The state capitol, the state insane asylum, the state deaf mute institute, the state school for the blind, a state reform school, the penitentiary, the state library and the medical and law departments of the state university are at Little Rock; and the city is also the seat of the United States court for the eastern district of Arkansas, of a United States land office, of Little Rock College, of the St Mary’s Academy, of a Roman Catholic orphanage and a Roman Catholic convent, and of two schools for negroes—the Philander Smith College (Methodist Episcopal, 1877), co-educational, and the Arkansas Baptist College. The city is the seat of Protestant Episcopal and Roman Catholic bishops. Little Rock has a Carnegie library (1908), an old ladies’ home, a Florence Crittenton rescue home, a children’s home, St Vincent’s infirmary, a city hospital, a Catholic hospital, a physicians’ and surgeons’ hospital and the Arkansas hospital for nervous diseases. A municipal park system includes City, Forest, Wonderland and West End parks. Immigration from the northern states has been encouraged, and northern men control much of the business of the city. In 1905 the value of factory products was $4,689,787, being 38.8% greater than the value in 1900. Cotton and lumber industries are the leading interests; the value of cotton-seed oil and cake manufactured in 1905 was $967,043, of planing mill products $835,049, and of lumber and timber products $342,134. Printing and publishing and the manufacture of foundry and machine shop products and of furniture are other important industries. Valuable deposits of bauxite are found in Pulaski county, and the mines are the most important in the United States.
Originally the site of the city was occupied by the Quapaw Indians. The earliest permanent settlement by the whites was about 1813-1814; the county was organized in 1818 while still a part of Missouri Territory; Little Rock was surveyed in 1821, was incorporated as a town and became the capital of Arkansas in 1821, and was chartered as a city in 1836. In 1850 its population was only 2167, and in 1860 3727; but in 1870 it was 12,380. Little Rock was enthusiastically anti-Union at the outbreak of the Civil War. In February 1861, the United States Arsenal was seized by the state authorities. In September 1863 the Federal generals William Steele (1819-1885) and John W. Davidson (1824-1881), operating against General Sterling Price, captured the city, and it remained throughout the rest of the war under Federal control. Constitutional conventions met at Little Rock in 1836, 1864, 1868 and 1874, and also the Secession Convention of 1861. The Arkansas Gazette, established at Arkansas Post in 1819 and soon afterwards removed to the new capital, was the first newspaper published in Arkansas and one of the first published west of the Mississippi.
LITTLETON (or Lyttelton), EDWARD, Baron (1589-1645), son of Sir Edward Littleton (d. 1621) chief-justice of North Wales, was born at Munslow in Shropshire; he was educated at Oxford and became a lawyer, succeeding his father as chief-justice of North Wales. In 1625 he became a member of parliament and acted in 1628 as chairman of the committee of grievances upon whose report the Petition of Right was based. As a member of the party opposed to the arbitrary measures of Charles I. Littleton had shown more moderation than some of his colleagues, and in 1634, three years after he had been chosen recorder of London, the king attached him to his own side by appointing him solicitor-general. In the famous case about ship-money Sir Edward argued against Hampden. In 1640 he was made chief-justice of the common pleas and in 1641 lord keeper of the great seal, being created a peer as Baron Lyttelton. About this time, the lord keeper began to display a certain amount of indifference to the royal cause. In January 1642 he refused to put the great seal to the proclamation for the arrest of the five members and he also incurred the displeasure of Charles by voting for the militia ordinance. However, he assured his friend Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, that he had only taken this step to allay the suspicions of the parliamentary party who contemplated depriving him of the seal, and he undertook to send this to the king. He fulfilled his promise, and in May 1642 he himself joined Charles at York, but it was some time before he regained the favour of the king and the custody of the seal. Littleton died at Oxford on the 27th of August 1645; he left no sons and his barony became extinct. His only daughter, Anne, married her cousin Sir Thomas Littleton, Bart. (d. 1681), and their son Sir Thomas Littleton (c. 1647-1710), was speaker of the House of Commons from 1698 to 1700, and treasurer of the navy from 1700 to 1710. Macaulay thus sums up the character of Speaker Littleton and his relations to the Whigs: “He was one of their ablest, most zealous and most steadfast friends; and had been, both in the House of Commons and at the board of treasury, an invaluable second to Montague” (the earl of Halifax).
LITTLETON, SIR THOMAS DE (c. 1407-1481), English judge and legal author, was born, it is supposed, at Frankley Manor House, Worcestershire, about 1407. Littleton’s surname was that of his mother, who was the sole daughter and heiress of Thomas de Littleton, lord of Frankley. She married one Thomas Westcote. Thomas was the eldest of four sons of the marriage, and took the name of Littleton, or, as it seems to have been more commonly spelt, Luttelton. The date of his 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. He is said by Sir E. 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 II., De Donis Conditionalibus. His name occurs in the Paston Letters (ed. J. Gairdner, i. 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 a Sir William Trussel as a reward for his services as counsel. He appears to have been recorder of Coventry in 1450; he was made escheator of Worcestershire, and in 1447/8 was under-sheriff of the same county; he became serjeant-at-law in 1453 and was afterwards a justice of assize on the northern circuit. In 1466 he was made a judge of the common pleas, and in 1475 a knight of the Bath. He died, according to the inscription on his tomb in Worcester cathedral, on the 23rd of August 1481. He married, about 1444, Joan, widow of Sir Philip Chetwind of Ingestrie in Staffordshire, and by her had three sons, through whom he became ancestor of the families holding the peerages of Cobham (formerly Lyttelton, q.v.) and Hatherton.