Richard Leveson (admiral)
Sir Richard Leveson | |
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Relations | Son of Sir Walter Leveson and Anne Corbet |
Sir Richard Leveson (c. 1570 – 2 August 1605)
Family background
Richard Leveson's parents were
- Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries. The most important estates were at Lilleshall, where James Leveson had bought first the Abbey[2] and then the entire manor,[3] and at Trentham, where James bought the lands of the dissolved priory.[4] Walter was initially an enclosing and improving landlord, raising the family's profile still further, and serving as MP for Shropshire three times.[5]
- Anne Corbet, the daughter of English parliament.
- Anne Corbet, the daughter of
The Leveson and Corbet families were the most powerful of the landed gentry families in Shropshire, a county without a resident aristocracy.[7] Both underwent a crisis in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods as a result of overspending and succession problems, coupled with unwise exposure to the vagaries of the State. In Richard Leveson's case, the problems stemmed almost entirely from his father's impulsive and irrational behaviour, stemming apparently from a serious mental illness.
Leveson took to the sea in his teenage years and his career was secured by marriage in 1587 to Margaret, the daughter of Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, who had been appointed Lord High Admiral in 1585.
In 1588 Leveson served as a volunteer on board the
Early in 1602 Leveson was appointed to command a powerful fleet of nine English and twelve Dutch ships, which were to infest the Spanish coast. The Dutch ships were, however, late in joining, and Leveson, leaving his vice-admiral
In 1603, during the last sickness and after the death of the queen, Leveson commanded the fleet in the narrow seas, to prevent any attempt to disturb the peace of the country or to influence the succession being made from France or the Netherlands. This was his last service at sea. On 7 April 1604 he was appointed jointly
Member of Parliament
The parliament of 1589
Richard Leveson was elected a member of the English parliament for the first time on 7 November 1588,[6] sitting in the 1589 parliament. He was one of two members for the county of Shropshire, the other being his own father, Walter. In the previous election, in October 1586, Walter had been paired with Richard Corbet, his brother-in-law, and the two families had decisive influence over the choice of MP for several decades. At the time of his election he was only 18 years old, unusual but not unique in this period. The parliament lasted only from 4 February 1589 until 29 March. Leveson was not a prominent and the journals for the 1589 Parliament mention that he asked for leave of absence.[14]
The parliament of 1604
The summoning of the first parliament of
Throughout Elizabeth's reign, Shropshire had been represented by eight families, mainly based in the north of the county, of which the Levesons were one.[16] Leveson must have seemed an obvious choice at the time and two of the prominent county gentry took the unusual step of countersigning the return to mark their approval: Vincent Corbet, Leveson's uncle, and Francis Newport. Newport's endorsement was significant: a former MP, and three times High Sheriff of Shropshire, he knew Leveson's difficulties well, as the Privy Council had sent him to arrest three of Sir Walter's servants in 1593.[17] The second member was Robert Needham, a cousin of Leveson and Corbet whose family estates were mainly around Cranage in Cheshire but whose seat was Shavington Hall in Shropshire.[18]
When the parliament assembled on 19 March 1604, Leveson was one of those deputed to administer the Oath of Supremacy to the rest of the House of Commons, He was soon nominated to two committees directly concerned with family affairs of his patron, the Earl of Nottingham. One was the committee to deal with the naturalization of Nottingham's wife. Leveson's mother-in-law had died shortly before the queen. The earl then married a Scottish woman, about fifty years his junior, Margaret Stuart, a daughter of the so-called "Bonny Earl", James Stewart, 2nd Earl of Moray. The second committee dealt with provision for Leveson's sister-in-law, Frances Howard, known as Lady Kildare, as she was the widow of Henry FitzGerald, 12th Earl of Kildare. Her second husband, Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham had been condemned to death in November 1603 for his part in the Main Plot to install Lady Arbella Stuart on the throne. He was not executed but held in the Tower of London until his health broke down in 1617.[19] As proposed by the committee, Parliament granted Cobham's lands to Lady Kildare.
Parliament also drew on Leveson's professional expertise. He was named to a committee dealing with the relief of soldiers and sailors who had served in the
Leveson was nominated to a committee to consider Union between the kingdoms of Scotland and England; another proposal that came to nothing at this stage. On 2 May there was a complaint the House's proceedings were not accurately reported to the king by those who had access to him. As a gentleman of the privy chamber, Leveson felt impelled to reply and stood up to do so. However, the puritan Sir Francis Hastings rose at the same time to press home the complaint. The House ruled in favour of Hastings and Leveson was forced to sit down. However, on 5 June he did address the House on a bill for the continuance and repeal of expiring statutes.
The Parliament was not dissolved and was to last until 1611. However, Leveson died before the next session was held in 1606. He was replaced as MP after a by-election by the immensely wealthy Shrewsbury lawyer and businessman Sir Roger Owen.
Finances
For most of Richard Leveson's life he was heir to great estates, and in his later years he was forced to look on helpless as they were endangered and dissipated. He lived occasionally at Lilleshall, Trentham or Wolverhampton, but was on active service for long periods. Although his personal wealth was largely derived from his maritime activities, including his naval service,
It was his father, Sir Walter Leveson, who placed the Leveson patrimony in great danger, as he was accused of
Essex referred the Leveson case to Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, who engineered an agreement in June 1601.[15] Richard Leveson was to take on his father's assets and liabilities in return for an annuity of £580, a generous allowance, as Sir John Leveson later valued the estates at only £600 a year. However, Sir Walter had to guarantee that there were no hidden liabilities. The agreement was never implicated because Richard suspected Sir Walter was plotting to transfer assets to his sister, Mary Curzon - a suspicion confirmed by Susan Vernon. He also foiled an attempt to transfer assets to his illegitimate half-sister, Penelope, by intercepting one of his father's servants. Writing to Robert Cecil in December 1601, Leveson pointed out that
- "the miserable wrecks of my father’s torn estate are well-known. His want of care, and my want of credit with him to take up loose ends before they ravelled into extremities, are the cause that my lands are now by forfeitures brought into the hands of strangers....What land soever I may discover in the Queen’s service upon a foreign coast, I am never likely to see any profit of my own lands at home"[23]
Not until 1602 did Leveson inherit the estates on the death of his father, imprisoned to the last in the Fleet. This did not end his problems, but only added to them, as he was now responsible for his father's vast debts. In 1603 he and his step-mother faced legal action from Sir Julius Caesar, who was trying to recover £800.[15] Caesar was a dangerous opponent as he was a powerful and wealthy judge and government minister. The capture of the Portuguese carrack gave considerable relief, but the £3000 Leveson was awarded was far from sufficient to clear his debts. Worse, still it was later to create further financial difficulties.
By this time the wreck of Leveson's finances was complete, and he was forced to put the estates into the hands of trustees, headed by his first cousin, Sir John Leveson of Halling, Kent. Sir John Leveson made progress, but little was achieved before the death of Sir Richard Leveson, less than three years later.
Rumours then began to circulate that Sir Richard had actually been fabulously wealthy as a result of his seafaring profits. In 1607 Leveson's cabin steward, Walter Grey, claimed that Leveson had concealed and stolen vast quantities of
After Sir John's death in 1615, his widow, Christian, took up the challenge of stabilising the Leveson family finances. After numerous further setbacks, she paid off the debts in 1623. This allowed the estates to pass later that year to Sir Richard Leveson's designated heir, the son of Sir John and Christian, and another Sir Richard Leveson.[3]
Death and succession
Richard Leveson fell ill while staying in the home of a friend, Hugh Bunnell, next to
Leveson had made his will on 17 March 1605.[14] In it he chose to characterise life in terms of the travails of landholding:
- "calling to mind the uncertainty of all earthly things, and that we hold and enjoy ourselves together with all our temporal blessings but as tenants at will to our good God that gave them." Always alive to the possibility of death on active service, on 23 March he had also drawn up a deed conveying all his property to a group of trustees headed by his friend and distant relative, Sir Robert Harley, who were responsible for raising £10,000 to settle his debts.[15] A second deed on the same date named his heirs.
As he had no male issue, he left the bulk of his property to his godson and third cousin,
Marriage and family
At the age of 17, Leveson married by licence, dated 13 December 1587, Margaret, daughter of the
- "I am very sorry to have such a subject to write of, which is that my son Lewson is most dangerously sick and to be much doubted of his recovery. For he is the weakest man that ever I saw and is still in the extremity of the burning fever and now in a very great looseness. There is little hope of him. And as you know my poor daughter, his wife, in what case of weakness she is; and I know how ready men are to seek after such things at his Majesty's hands, and because I know it chiefly concerns your offer, although I know her state is not so weak as by law she can be found so imperfect, yet I would be loth it should come in question being my daughter. Therefore in your love to me prevent it and let me have the custody of my own daughter, that her imperfection which it has pleased God to lay on her may not be so known to my great grief in the end of my years. It is well known what she was till God called her only child away, which her nature and weak spirit could not resist; and with all that, which you know of, her bad father-in-law's dealing with her, whom God forgive for it. If God call him, the King shall lose a worthy servant and myself one that I accounted rather my natural son than a son-in-law. Good my lord, you are a father and therefore you best know my case in this.—Chelse, 2 August."[25]
The wardship was instead granted to her brother, William Howard, 3rd Baron Howard of Effingham. Margaret's wardship finally passed to her father after Effingham's death in 1615.
In the final years of his life, Leveson set up home at
In January 1605 Leveson talked to one of the royal physicians, and had courtiers praise Mary Fitton's sister Anne Newdigate to the pregnant Anne of Denmark in an unsuccessful attempt to get her made nurse to Princess Mary.[27]
Portraiture
There are three examples of a
St Peter's Collegiate Church has a striking statue and monument to Leveson. The bronze statue is by Hubert Le Sueur, another Huguenot artist who made a career in England. It originally formed part of a family group in the chancel. After damage during the English Civil War, it was detached and reassembled in the lady chapel. A bronze plaque now recites Leveson's main naval achievements, while another gives details of his family connections. Le Sueur went on to work for Charles I, producing a well-known equestrian statue of him now at Charing Cross.
A portrait of Sir Richard Leveson, said to be by
References
- ^ a b Wisker 2004.
- ^ Victoria County History: Shropshire, Volume 2, Chapter 14: The Abbey of Lilleshall.
- ^ a b c Baggs, A P; Cox, D C; McFall, Jessie; Stamper, P A; Winchester, A J L (1985). Baugh, G C; Elrington, C R (eds.). "Lilleshall: Manor and other estates". A History of the County of Shropshire: Volume 11: Telford. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
- ^ Victoria County History: Staffordshire, Volume 3, Chapter 16: The Priory of Trentham.
- ^ a b History of Parliament Online: Members 1558-1603 - LEVESON, Walter (1551-1602) - Author: J.J.C.
- ^ a b History of Parliament Online: Constituencies 1558-1603 - Shropshire - Author: P. W. Hasler.
- ISBN 978 1 906663 47 6, p.40
- ^ Thomas Birch, Memorials of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 2 (London, 1754), p. 49.
- ^ Lediard, T. The Naval History of England. Published by John Wilcox and Olive Payne, 1735. Page 354
- ISBN 978-1-85182-551-6
- ^ Sir Amyas Preston to the Earl of Nottingham, 9 December 1601
- ^ The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, in Publications of the Navy Records Society, v. 43, 1912 (London, 1913)
- .
- ^ a b History of Parliament Online: Members 1558-1603 - LEVESON, Richard (1570-1605) - Author: J.J.C., accessed 26 September 2013
- ^ a b c d e f g h Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (editors): History of Parliament Online: Members 1604-1629 - LEVESON, Sir Richard (1570-1605), of Lilleshall Lodge, Salop; Trentham and Parton, Staffs. and Bethnal Green, Mdx. - Author: Andrew Thrush, accessed 23 September 2013.
- ^ Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (editors): History of Parliament Online: Constituencies 1604-1629 - Shropshire - Author: Simon Healy, accessed 23 September 2013.
- ^ History of Parliament Online: Members 1558-1603 - NEWPORT, Francis II (c.1555-1623), of High Ercall, Salop - Author: J.J.C., accessed 26 September 2013
- ^ Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (editors): History of Parliament Online: Members 1604-1629 - NEEDHAM, Sir Robert (1567/8-1631), of Shavington Hall - Author: Simon Healy, accessed 23 September 2013.
- ^ History of Parliament Online: Members 1558-1603 - BROOKE, alias COBHAM, Henry II (1564-1619), of Cobham Hall, Kent - Author: P. W. Hasler, accessed 26 September 2013
- ^ Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (editors): History of Parliament Online: Members 1604-1629 - WROTH, Sir Robert I (c.1539-1606) - Author: Andrew Thrush, accessed 24 September 2013.
- ^ Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 8, 1-15 December 1598.
- ^ Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 10, 1-15 April 1600.
- ^ Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Elizabeth, 1601-3
- ^ History of Parliament Online: Members 1558-1603 - LEVESON, John (c.1556-1615) - N. M. Fuidge
- ^ Giuseppi, M. S., ed. (1938). "Cecil Papers: August 1605, 1-15". Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 17: 1605. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
- ^ Kathy Lynn Emerson (2008-13): A Who’s Who of Tudor Women: F
- ^ Anne Newdigate-Newdigate, Gossip from a Muniment Room: Being passages in the lives of Anne and Mary Fitton (London, 1897), pp. 68-72.
- ^ Wallace Collection Online - Sir Richard Leveson
- ^ Royal naval exhibition, 1891: the illustrated handbook and souvenir
- ^ a b Henry Rumsey Forster, The Stowe Catalogue Priced and Annotated 1848, London, David Bogue, Fleet Street, p.178, Item 318
- Wisker, Richard (2004). "Leveson, Sir Richard (c.1570–1605)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16538. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 33. London: Smith, Elder & Co.