Background
Lord Lyttelton was the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, 4th Baronet, by his wife Christian, daughter of Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Baronet.
Lord Lyttelton was the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, 4th Baronet, by his wife Christian, daughter of Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Baronet.
He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1741 he was also elected for Old Salisbury, but chose to continue to sit for Okehampton.
He was one of the politicians who opposed Robert Walpole as a member (one of Cobham"s Cubs) of the Whig Opposition the 1730s. He served as secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, from 1737, and as a Commissioner of the Treasury in 1744. After Walpole"s fall, Lyttelton became Chancellor of the Exchequer (1755).
In 1756 he was raised to the peerage as Lord Lyttelton, Baron of Frankley in the County of Worcester.
James Thomson addresses him throughout his poem The Seasons, and Lyttelton arranged a pension for Thomson. He wrote Dialogues of the Dead in 1760 with Elizabeth Montagu, leader of the bluestockings, and The History of the Life of Henry the Second (1767–1771).
The former work is part of a tradition of such dialogues. Henry Fielding dedicated Tom Jones to him.
Lyttelton spent many years and a fortune developing Hagley Hall and its park which contains many follies.
The hall itself, which is in north Worcestershire, was designed by Sanderson Miller and is the last of the great Palladian houses to be built in England. In the 1740s, Lyttelton and Gilbert West went to Oxford. Each planned to do a painstaking job, taking a year to establish his case.
West eventually wrote "Observations on the History and Evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ".
Lyttelton wrote a lengthy text titled "Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of Saint Paul. in a Letter to Gilbert West, Esq." West became convinced of the truth of the Resurrection, and Lyttelton of the genuine conversion of Saint Paul on the basis of lieutenant Foreign example, Lyttelton wrote to West in 1761,
Lord Lyttelton married firstly Lucy, daughter of Hugh Fortescue, in 1742.
He died in August 1773, aged 64, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral.
Whigs, Tories.
Royal Society]
He was Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) for Okehampton from 1735 to 1756.