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Levett

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Bookplate of Rev. Thomas Levett, Arms of Levett and Gresley, Packington Hall, Staffordshire

Levett is an Anglo-Norman territorial surname deriving from the village of Livet-en-Ouche, now Jonquerets-de-Livet, in Eure, Normandy. Ancestors of the the earliest Levett family in England, the de Livets were lords of the village of Livet,[1] and undertenants of the de Ferrers, among the most powerful of William the Conqueror's Norman lords.[2]

One branch of the de Livet family came to England during the Norman Conquest, nearly a thousand years ago, and were prominent in Derbyshire, Chester, and Sussex, where they held many manors, including the lordship of Firle.[3] The name is Celtic, 'livet' meaning a swampy place traversed by water. But like most Anglo-Normans, the family's origins are probably mostly Viking.[4]

Although the date of the family's arrival in England is unknown, the family name appears in the records of William the Conqueror.[5] Ancient English deeds subsequently refer to many lands across Sussex as 'Levetts,' indicating family possession of broad swaths of Sussex countryside.[6][7]

Like most medieval Norman families, the Levetts were dependent on the web of feudal hierarchy. They held their lands of overlords in return for knights service (commonly called Knight's fees). As their feudal overlords thrived, so did they; conversely, their fate was tied to the unpredictable fortunes of those same overlords.

The Levetts and their descendants eventually held land in Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Bedfordshire and later in Ireland and in Staffordshire. The Anglicisation of this Norman French surname took many forms, including Levett, Levet, Lyvet, Livett, Delivett, Leavett, Leavitt and others.

Levett family members were early knights and Crusaders -- many members of both English and French branches of the family were Knights Hospitallers -- and they occupied a place in the English landed gentry for centuries. (Unlike the French branch of the family, no members of the English branch were enobled, although they intermarried with nobility and served as courtiers.)[8]

A branch of the Levett family still occupies Milford Hall[9], a family home in Staffordshire, England, where a Levett descendant is nominated for High Sheriff of Staffordshire for 2009.[10] Members of the family formerly occupied Wychnor Park (or Hall) and Packington Hall, two country mansions in the same county, where English artist James Ward (artist) painted three Levett children playing in 1811.[11]

As with many families of Anglo-Norman extraction, some branches thrived, while others fell on hard times. The vicissitudes of character -- and the collapsing feudal order -- played havoc with the fortunes of some family members. The lordship of Firle, East Sussex, for instance, passed from the family in 1440 on the indebtedness of then-lord Thomas Levett.[12] The bankrupt Levett also forfeited his inherited lordship of Catsfield, East Sussex.

File:Bodium Norman Castle, Sussex.jpg
Bodiam Castle, Sussex

Others fared just as poorly. John Levett, a guard on the London to Brighton coach, was convicted of petty theft and expelled to Australia in the nineteenth century.[13] English records reveal Levetts embroiled in bastardy cases or relegated to poorhouses. As with Thomas Hardy's hapless d'Urbervilles, noble Norman lineage was no guarantor of rectitude, ability or fate.

Some Levetts moved abroad in search of opportunity. A Levett relation, a British clerk in India, was friend to Rudyard Kipling and a minor Victorian novelist. Another was an English factor living in Livorno, Italy, shuttling back and forth to Constantinople for the Levant Company. (Francis Levett later moved to British East Florida, became a planter and the first to grow Sea Island cotton in America.)[14] The family became part of the British Empire's expanding grasp. In the eighteenth century John Levett, born in Turkey to an English merchant father and brother of planter Francis, became alderman and Mayor of Calcutta, India.

Over the generations, Levett descendants spanned the social ranks: one family relation, an English clergyman, is memorialized in Westminster Abbey where he dropped dead reading the Ninth Commandment; another, an assistant pantry steward aboard an ocean liner, perished when the RMS Titanic sank.

One family member was a unschooled Yorkshireman who, having worked as a Parisian waiter, then trained as an apothecary. Robert Levet returned to England, where he treated denizens of London's seedier neighborhoods. Having married an apparent grifter and prostitute, Levet was taken in by the poet Samuel Johnson, who eulogized him as "officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend."[15] (While Samuel Johnson adopted one Levet as boarder, he was apologizing to another better-placed Levett who held the mortgage on Johnson's mother's home in Lichfield.)[16]

In a few cases Levetts were forced by religious belief to flee England for the colonies. Among these were John Leavitt and Thomas Leavitt, early English Puritan immigrants to Massachusetts and New Hampshire, respectively, whose names first appear in seventeenth-century New England records as Levet or Levett [17](No paternal family relationship existed between the two men[18]).

Today there are many Levetts living outside England, including in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland, where the first 'de Livet' ventured in the thirteenth century as part of the Norman invasion, becoming one of Dublin's earliest mayors. The spelling of the name varies from place to place.[19]

Members of the original de Livet family continue to reside in France.[20] The Normandy branch traces its descent to Jean de Livet, chevalier and banneret in 1216 to King Philip II of France, builder of the first Louvre fortress in Paris.[21][22] Chevalier Thomas de Livet, noted Crusader and son of Jean, was knighted by King Philip II's successor, King Louis IX of France in 1258.[23]

The de Livet family was among the ancient noble families of France, or noblesse d'epee. (The French revolution stripped the hereditary French nobility of its feudal privileges.) The English branch of the de Livet (Levett) family claims descent from Jean de Livet, seigneur of Livet (now Jonquerets-de-Livet) in 1040, prior to the Norman Conquest.[24]

Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, burial place of Lord Mayor Lyvet
Charterhouse Hospital, London
Normandy, France

People

Members of the Levett family include-

Roche Abbey, South Yorkshire
Portland, Maine, head light

Towns

Three towns were named after the Levett family-

Kew Palace, Kew, Richmond, Surrey
Samuel Johnson

Places associated with the Levett family

These places were associated with the Levett family-

St. Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex
Firle, East Sussex, early home of the Levetts
Old Ship Church, Hingham, Massachusetts, Puritan John Leavitt founding deacon 1681
Normanton All Saints Church, West Yorkshire

Further reading

  • "Sons of the Conqueror: Descendants of Norman Ancestry," Leslie Pine, London, 1973
  • "The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families," Lewis C. Loyd, David C. Douglas, John Whitehead & Son Ltd., London, 1951
  • "The Normans," David C. Douglas, The Folio Society, London, 2002
  • "Regesta Regum Anglo Normannorum, 1066-1154," Henry William Davis, Robert J. Shotwell (eds.), 4 volume, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1913
  • "The Levetts of Staffordshire," Dyonese Levett Haszard, privately printed
King Charles I of England

Trivia

  • Levett was the name given by Alfred Hitchcock to the villain in his first film, The Pleasure Garden, a 1925 silent movie
  • One branch of the family spell their name Livett[39], and produced five mayors of Hastings in the sixteenth century. These Livetts shared a coat-of-arms with the Sussex Levetts, except they changed their motto to read (in Latin): "Cruce Non Leone Fides" -- "I put my faith in the Cross and not in the Lion." One wonders what prompted the editorial comment.
  • The family name was carried into other English families through intermarriage, yielding the double-barreled names Levett-Scrivener[40], Levett-Prinsep[41] and Levett-Yeats[42]
  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a vicar's son, put it best:

"Howe'er it be, it seems to me
'Tis only noble to be good;
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."

References

  1. ^ The Norman invaders of England were the first in Western Europe to use surnames. They usually styled themselves after the name of the village that was under family feudal control by use of the particule de indicating ownership.
  2. ^ The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, David C. Douglas, Lewis C. Loyd, 1951
  3. ^ John Livet, lord of the manor of Firle, 1316, The Archaeological Journal, British Archaeological Association, 1851,
  4. ^ The village of Livet predated the family, who simply took its name from their holding.
  5. ^ Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: the Acta of William I, 1066-1087, David Bates (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1998
  6. ^ Archive of the Gage Family of Firle, 1255-1849, East Sussex Record Office, The National Archives
  7. ^ Ashburnham family archives: deeds, 1200-1836, East Sussex Record Office, The National Archives
  8. ^ A Narrative by John Ashburnham of his Attendance on King Charles I From Oxford to the Scotch Army, and from Hampton-Court to the Isle of Wight, Vol. I, Payne and Foss, London, 1830
  9. ^ The Milford Hall family has descendants in America. Alfred Anson, whose family came from nearby Shugborough Hall and who was born at Windsor Castle, married Mary Anne Levett of Milford Hall and came to Virginia in the late nineteenth century as an Episcopal rector. He was the son of Hon Rev. Frederick Anson.
  10. ^ The Levetts of Milford Hall received a letter in 1824 from York Herald Sir Charles George Young delineating the Levett coat-of-arms and genealogy, archives.staffordshire.gov.uk
  11. ^ Group Portrait of John, Theophilus and Frances Levett, James Ward, November 1811, Christie's, christies.com
  12. ^ Debts of Thomas Lyvet, West Firle, Chancery Records, The National Archives
  13. ^ John Levett of Lewes, Newspaper Accounts of Trials 1842 & 1845, Rootschat.com
  14. ^ Julianton Plantation, English Plantations on the St. Johns River, Florida History Online
  15. ^ The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Vol. I, Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murray, London, 1810
  16. ^ Letter from Samuel Johnson to John Levett, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D By James Boswell, London, 1799
  17. ^ Both John and Thomas Leavitt initially landed at Boston, with Thomas moving on to New Hampshire and John ultimately to nearby Hingham. The parentage and English origins of both men are unknown, although some speculate that John was the son of Percival Levett the younger, a Yorkshire merchant and relation of explorer Capt. Christopher Levett. Thomas, some have speculated, might have come from Lincolnshire of a family long settled at High Melton, Yorkshire. So far there is no definitive proof concerning either. Ongoing DNA blood testing shows the men do not share the same male ancestor, meaning either may descend from later French (probably Norman) emigrants to England.
  18. ^ http://www.familytreedna.com/public/Leavitt/ Recent DNA testing by descendants of these two men reveal there is no blood relationship between them
  19. ^ In all likelihood not all Levett families in today's England are related. Later in-migration by Normans following the Conquest means some Levett families may have divergent antecedents. Future DNA testing will likely delineate these vagaries. An effort has been made to be inclusive rather than exclusive.
  20. ^ There are indications that at least one member of the de Livet family emigrated to London as part of the Huguenot flight of Protestant refugees from Catholic France.
  21. ^ Jean de Livet, banneret to King Philip II of France, ca 1216, Dictionnaire de la Noblesse, Francois Alexandre Aubert de La Chesnaye-Desbois, 1775
  22. ^ The Norman People and Their Existing Descendants in the British Dominions and the United States of America, Henry S. King & Co., 1874
  23. ^ Levett, Packington Hall, Mansions and Country Seats of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, Alfred Williams, Walter Henry Mallett, 1899
  24. ^ That the first name John became the most common Levett given name from earliest times is probably due to these Norman French Jean ancestors.
  25. ^ Portrait of Ada Ellizabeth Levett, Staff of St. Hilda's College, Oxford, National Portrait Gallery, npg.org.uk
  26. ^ The Theaetetus of Plato, Myles Burnyeat, M.J. Levett, Hackett Publishing Co., 1990
  27. ^ John Leavitt's Family Gathers in Hingham for His 400th Birthday, The Patriot Ledger, June 30, 2008
  28. ^ John Levett, Oath of Freeman, Boston, March 3, 1635-6, Records Relating to the Early History of Boston, Boston Registry Dept., Municipal Printing Office, Boston, 1900
  29. ^ Considerations on India Affairs, William Bolts, East India Company, London, 1772
  30. ^ John Levett-Yeats Esq., Tunbridge Wells, Kent, The Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1858, John Henry and James Parker, London, 1858
  31. ^ Lord Mayor Richard Levett was elected a member of the The New England Company in 1698.[1]
  32. ^ The Eton Register, Eton College, Old Etonian Association, Spottiswoode & Co., Eton, 1907
  33. ^ The monks of Battle Abbey often took the names of prominent figures associated with the Abbey. In some documents, monk Thomas Levett is referred to as 'otherwise Cranebroke,' which may indicate that the man's surname was instead Cranbroke, and he had taken the name of the Levett family, or vice versa.
  34. ^ Packington Hall, Home of Rev. Thomas Levett, Whittington, Staffordshire, ca 1900
  35. ^ Mansions and Country Seats of Staffordshire, Alfred Williams, Walter Henry Mallett, F. Brown, 1899
  36. ^ The Parliamentary Papers reported a certificate of Archbishop Juxon that "the bearer William Levett was one of the five persons whom his late Majesty (Charles I) the death before his death did, in consideration of his loyalty and faithful service, recommend to the care and provision of his present Majesty."[2]
  37. ^ Roche Abbey
  38. ^ Levett Blackborne, grandson of Sir Richard, sold the Levett properties at Kew to the Royal family. Blackborne was a prominent Lincoln's Inn barrister in London and longtime adviser to Charles Manners, 4th Duke of Rutland.
  39. ^ Canon Grevile Marais Livett, Rochester Cathedral and founding member of Kent Archaeological Society, Kentarchaeology.org.uk
  40. ^ Manor of Sibton, Levett-Scrivener, The Manors of Suffolk, wikispaces.com
  41. ^ Levett-Prinsep, Croxall Hall, Mansions and Country Seats of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, Alfred Williams, F. Brown, Lichfield, 1899
  42. ^ Rudyard Kiping on his friendship with Sidney Kilner Levett-Yeats at the Punjab Club, Lahore, India, Writings on Writing, Rudyard Kipling, Cambridge University Press, 1996
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