Sir Richard Levett | |
|---|---|
-2.jpeg) 1699 portrait byGodfried Schalcken | |
| Born | 1629 |
| Died | (1711-01-20)20 January 1711 |
| Resting place | St Anne's Church, Kew,Richmond-upon-Thames |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | Elizabeth, Mary, Frances, Anne, Richard |
| Parent(s) | Revd Richard Levett Katherine Brademore |
Sir Richard Levett (1629 – 20 January 1711) was an English merchant and politician who was electedLord Mayor of London in 1699. Born inAshwell, Rutland, he moved toLondon and established a pioneering mercantile career, becoming involved with theBank of England and theEast India Company.
Acquainted with many prominent individuals during his time in the City of London, among themSamuel Pepys,Sir John Houblon,Sir William Gore,Sir John Holt,Sir Charles Eyre, andDr Robert Hooke, Levett acquired several properties inKew andCripplegate.[1]
Although born into a once-powerful SussexAnglo-Norman family (its surname derives from the village ofLivet inNormandy), the future Lord Mayor grew up in straitened circumstances after the family lost much of its medieval wealth. Levett's father was an intruding minister[2] and he wasejected in 1660 after theRestoration when the legitimate incumbent returned to theliving. Although born with connections, Richard Levett and his brotherFrancis were thrown onto their own resources, and were as much pioneers in business as they were in society.
Despite their impressive Norman lineage, the Levett brothers weremiddle-class. They represented an emerging England, an England of meritocracy and hard work that trumped the feudal aristocratic England. (Perhaps it was not an accident that their father, Rev. Richard Levett, heldPuritan sympathies.) The enterprising brothers demonstrated that through hard work, ordinary Englishmen could move into the upper-middle classes. The Levett brothers were abetted in their rise by profound changes in the evolving English economy, with trade opening and feudal privileges diminishing in favour of a growing mercantile middle class. Although Levett was nominally a Tory, he was by practice a free market capitalist.[3]
Levett and his brother Francis began as smallhaberdashers, trading everything from tobacco totextiles. The sons of a country parson inRutland, the two Levett brothers imported goods into England, which they then sold tochapmen atfairs across the country, including those atLenton,Gainsborough,Boston,Beverley and elsewhere. As theBritish Empire began to expand, bolstered by increasing military might, aggressive merchants like the Levetts leapfrogged other foreign and domestic competitors. From their small operation grew a behemoth, with the Levett brothers using their ownships to import everything from tobacco to linens.
Eventually, their empire became among the largest factors of its day in England, with an immense working capital estimated between £30,000 and £40,000 in 1705, buying tobacco and other goods around the world for import into the English market. The firm they set up came to embrace trade with theLevant (principallyTurkey andSyria),India,Africa, theWest Indies,North America,Ireland as well asRussia. Contemporaneous records show Levett often immersed in the details of arranging shipping terms and trading voyages to places as disparate asGuinea and the EnglishSouthern Colonies. Like many London merchants of the period, Levett was involved in theAtlantic slave trade, overseeing the transportation of African slaves from variousWest African ports for sale in the English colonies ofVirginia andMaryland.[4]
In 1705, Levett sent a letter to theBoard of Trade and Plantations to complain about interference with his ships. "The Governors of Virginia and Maryland", Levett complained to the Board, "had refused to permit two ships of theirs to saile from those colonies with their ladings.... And it being alleged in the petition that the masters of those two ships (who came away in ballast) were obliged to give security to touch at the Maderas in their way home." The Board directed its agent to "write to the said masters at Bristol for further information in that matter."[5]
By the early eighteenth century, the firm of Sir Richard Levett and Company had become one of England's largest, dominating especially the enormous tobacco trade with theVirginia Colony, as well as the tobacco coming fromTurkey.[6] Detailed records of tobacco transactions at the time between Levett and Virginia planters reveal that the London merchant drove a hard bargain.[7]
Levett eventually was named a Merchant Adventurer of theLondon East India Company,[8] one of the first directors of the newBank of England,[9] and even, on 17 February 1698, a member of theNew England Company.[10] With his deep interests inshipping, Levett was also one of the earliest investors in what becameLloyd's of London, the insurance market place. He wasknighted atKensington in 1691.[11]
In the close-knit world of London traders at the dawn of the eighteenth century, Levett often found himself acting in conjunction with, or competing against, most of the other large traders known to him. At a meeting of the Governors and adventurers of the London East India Company held on 30 April 1701, for instance, Levett found himself in the company of his fellow London traders and ranking India servants "Gov. Thomas Cooke, Deputy Sir Samuel Dashwood, Sir Thomas Rawlinson, Sir Jonathan Andrews, Sir John Fleet, Sir William Gore, Sir Henry Johnson, Sir William Langhorne,Sir William Prichard and Mr. Peter Vansittart."[12]
In the year of 1695, Levett's increasingly powerful firm accounted for 3,894,864 pounds of tobacco imported into England. Of that, the firm subsequently re-exported some 1.3 million pounds toHolland,Germany and theBaltic. Acting as middlemen in an increasingly vertically integrated corporation, which was coming to resemble a modern trading company, Levett and his partners began raking in enormous profits, partly due to their access to large amounts of capital, as well as their access to a proprietary shipping fleet.
As their trading grew, Richard Levett became a prominent fixture on the London scene. Master of theHaberdashers' Company (1690 and 1691),[13] he was elected as a City Alderman before serving asSheriff for 1691/92, and thenLord Mayor of London (1699/1700).[14] As Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Levett played a key role in building fellow Master of the Haberdashers' Company SirRobert Aske's Hospital, with Levett's friend Robert Hooke serving as architect.[15]
From his home inCripplegate, formerly the home ofSir Thomas Bloodworth, a previous Lord Mayor, Levett conducted his trading empire and the mayoral business.[16] Levett's home, formerly that of the controversial Bloodworth, who served as Lord Mayor at the time of theGreat Fire of London, was a large town house on the old Noble Street near Lily Pot Lane. (The home was later occupied by printerCharles Rivington.)
Also available for Levett's use were two country homes at Kew,[17] including the Dutch House (nowKew Palace), as well as the large estate surrounding them.[18] (After Levett's death, his daughter Mary Thoroton leased the Dutch House toQueen Caroline, wife ofKing George II, for use as a children's nursery, likely accounting for the decision ofFrederick, Prince of Wales, to settle at Kew with his wife,Augusta, Princess of Wales. Both Levett homes as well as the estates surrounding them were sold to the royal family in 1781 by Sir Richard's grandson Levett Blackburne, Esq., a prominentLincoln's Innbarrister).[19]
Sir Richard Levett was married to Mary Crispe, likely the daughter of merchant adventurer Sir Nicholas Crispe ofFulham, Middlesex.[20] The couple were prominent in London during the years following theRestoration. Levett was mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his diaries; he was frequently mentioned in contemporary accounts of weddings and soirées of the age, and became a philanthropist, donating to charities likeSt. Thomas' Hospital inSouthwark, and church charities in theWest Country and Ireland.[21]
Sir Richard Levett's wife, in particular, was a generous donor to religious causes.Edmund Calamy, the English nonconformist churchman, refers to "Lady Levett" in his memoirs as his great "friend", and who was noted in other accounts as a generous donor to religious and educational causes.[22] Minister Calamy even dedicated a sermon to Lady Levett.[23]
Samuel Pepys, the diarist andSecretary of the Admiralty (and friend of Robert Blackburne, his predecessor and brother of theArchbishop of York), apparently socialised with Alderman Levett. "After staying here a great while at Westminster", Pepys noted in his diary of 14 March 1668, "we (went) back to London, and there to Philips's, and his man directed us to Mr. Levett's, who could not come, and he sent us to two more, and they could not; so that, at last, Levett as a great kindness did resolve he would leave his business and come himself, which set me in great ease in my mind."[24]
Levett also figures prominently in the recently published diaries of politicianRoger Whitley, Member of Parliament from Wales and then from Chester. Whitley was a prominent figure in Chester and Whig politician. Whitley's massive diaries reveal frequent meetings between the two men.[25]
Sir Richard Levett died in 1711.[26] He and his wife and several of their daughters[27] are buried in thechurchyard at Kew, where there are memorials to them in the church as well as to the Blackburne family with whom they intermarried.[28][29] The inscription carved into a mural slab set in the tower ofSaint Anne's Church, Kew, reads: "Within this vault lie the remains of Sir Richard Levett, Knight, of Kew. Also of Lady Mary Levett, his wife, who died October 15th, 1722." In 2018, Levett was commemorated in the name of a new street in Kew, Levett Square.[30]
Sir Richard Levett's son Richard, also an Alderman (1722) andSheriff of London, inherited his father's interests, but apparently mismanaged them, filing for bankruptcy in 1730.[31] Consequently, many heirlooms of the Levett family of Sussex[32] passed to the family of the Lord Mayor's daughter and her husband, the Hulse family ofHampshire, and are today atBreamore House, theHulse family seat. (Alderman Levett, son of the Lord Mayor, died and was buried atTemple Church in 1740).[33]
The third brother of Richard and Francis Levett wasVery Rev.Dr. William Levett, Principal ofMagdalen Hall, Oxford, andDean ofBristol. The brothers' uncle, brother of their father Rev. Richard Levett ofRutland, was courtierWilliam Levett Esq., who accompaniedKing Charles I during his flight fromCromwellian forces, and thence to his imprisonment atCarisbrooke Castle and to his eventual execution.
Some twelve years following Sir Richard's death, his widow Mary, by then living atBath, changed her will to exclude two paintings she had previously bequeathed to a friend at Bath upon discovering that the portraits of King Charles I and his Queen were painted by the artistAnthony van Dyck. Given the discovery, Dame Mary Levett made a codicil to her will directing that the valuable paintings be sold with the proceeds going to her granddaughters. Presumably the Levett family had inherited the paintings from the Lord Mayor's uncle, groom of the bedchamber to the late King.[34]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)| Civic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by |  1699– 1700 | Succeeded by |