LEVESON, Sir Richard (1598-1661), of Whorne’s Place, Cuxton, Kent; Lilleshall Lodge, Salop, and Trentham, Staffs.; later of Boswell Court, nr. St Clement’s Well, London.

Leveson’s family was descended from the Levesons of Prestwood Hall, Staffordshire – a residence that Leveson’s father claimed had been in the family’s possession at least 350 years.41PROB11/126, ff. 247v-8; N and Q cxvi. 63. Leveson’s great-grandfather had settled at Halling in Kent by the 1530s, and within two generations the Levesons were leading figures in Kentish affairs.42Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. lxxv), 4-5. His father, having sat for the Cornish borough of Bossiney in 1584, represented the Kent constituency of Maidstone in 1597 and 1601 and the county itself in 1604.43HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘John Leveson’.

Leveson’s prospects were transformed in 1605 by the sudden death of his distant cousin and godfather Admiral Sir Richard Leveson†. The admiral, who died without legitimate offspring, had nominated the young Leveson as his heir, who thus inherited an extensive estate in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire worth about £4,000 a year.44HP Commons 1604-28, ‘Sir Richard Leveson’; C78/250/11. However, this settlement was vigorously contested by the admiral’s aunt and her husband, involving Leveson’s father in years of costly litigation to confirm his son’s inheritance.45HP Common, 1604-28, ‘Sir John Leveson’. Somehow he managed to avoid bankruptcy; and in his will, drawn up in 1615, he was able to charge his estate with bequests in excess of £7,000.46PROB11/126, ff. 246-50. After his elder brother’s death in 1613 and that of his father in 1615, Leveson inherited the family’s lands in Kent to add to those of his deceased godfather (although half of the admiral’s lands were held in jointure by his widow until 1642).47C142/349/174; Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/35; HMC 5th Rep. 140.

Leveson spent much of his early twenties touring Italy, and on his return to England he opted to make his main residence in Kent rather than in the north midlands. Nevertheless, his estate at Trentham, and his family’s historic links with the area, were sufficient to secure his election at nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1624.48HP Commons 1604-28, ‘Richard Leveson’. Similarly, his estate in Shropshire may well have been a factor in his return for that county in 1626, although he may also have required the backing of his brother-in-law, Sir Richard Newport, who had sat as knight of the shire himself on four other occasions.49VCH Salop, iii. 239; HP Commons 1604-28, ‘Richard Leveson’. Leveson began to sell his off his lands in Kent in the late 1620s, and by the early 1630s he had established his main residences at Lilleshall Lodge in Shropshire and Trentham in Staffordshire.50E134/13CHAS1/EAST30; Coventry Docquets, 581, 606, 625; Hasted, Kent, iii. 375, 383, 393; iv. 502. Through his wife he acquired an extensive estate in Warwickshire, which he sold in 1633 for £8,250 and used the proceeds to develop his manor house at Trentham.51C54/2995/21; Staffs. RO, D593/R/1/2.

Leveson was an active member of the Staffordshire bench during Charles I’s personal rule; and by 1640, he was clearly one of the county’s most prominent gentlemen.52Staffs., RO, Q/SO/4, ff. 1-283v. It is therefore surprising that he failed to secure a seat anywhere in the county in the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640 – perhaps he opted not to stand. In the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, he was returned for Newcastle-under-Lyme, taking the senior place.53C219/43/2/184. Between December 1640 and May 1641, he was named to seven committees – including those on Ship Money, to draw up a charge against Matthew Wren, the Laudian bishop of Ely, to examine the proceedings of the councils in the north and in the Welsh marches and for abolishing superstition and idolatry.54CJ ii. 45b, 52a, 56a, 57a, 59b, 84b, 158a. He was evidently trusted to support Parliament’s efforts to suppress popery, receiving appointment in August 1641 as a commissioner for disarming recusants in Staffordshire.55CJ ii. 267b; LJ iv. 385a. And he was certainly committed to easing the kingdom’s financial and military burdens, pledging £1,000 in November 1640 and again the following March towards securing City loans to maintain the armies in the north.56Procs. LP i. 228, 232; ii. 628, 629, 654, 655.

By far Leveson’s most important contribution to the Long Parliament’s proceedings came on the very first day of business, 6 November 1640, when he was a majority teller with Sir Edward Bayntun in support of referring Irish affairs – and the controversy surrounding Ireland’s lord lieutenant, the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) – to a committee of the whole House rather than to a select committee.57CJ ii. 21b. This was a highly partisan division. The losing tellers, Sir John Clotworthy and Sir Henry Mildmay, were leading members of the anti-Straffordian ‘junto’ at Westminster and had calculated that having Irish affairs referred to a select committee would better enable their faction to manage Strafford’s business to the maximum disadvantage of the earl and his royal master. The case made by one recent authority for identifying Bayntun’s partner as Sir Richard Lee, on the grounds that there was no MP called Sir Richard ‘Luson’ – which is how the clerk of the Commons rendered Leveson’s name and how Leveson himself would have pronounced it – is mistaken.58Adamson, Noble Revolt, 96-7, 572. Leveson’s tellership suggests that regardless of his feelings towards Strafford, he was against allowing the reformist agenda to be hijacked by a godly, pro-Scots clique.

Leveson’s apparent disenchantment with the junto may explain his withdrawal from the House at some point during the second half of 1641. He certainly received no appointments in the Commons after late May 1641. Parliament’s lord lieutenant of Staffordshire, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, commissioned Leveson as one of his deputies in April 1642, but this was probably more in hope than expectation.59Staffs. RO, D593/S/5/1. One of Leveson’s correspondents complained a few weeks later about the ‘impunity with which the fractious zealots [at Westminster] triumph daily ... in any country but here some heads before this time had paid for their tongues’; another correspondent identified Essex among the ‘potent super-monarchs’ who were troubling the kingdom – all sentiments that Leveson probably shared.60HMC 5th Rep. 178, 182. The king’s party was on firmer ground than Essex had been in April when it appointed Leveson to the Staffordshire and Shropshire commissions of array that summer.61Northants. RO, FH133; Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/1. On 6 August, it was reported in the Commons that Leveson and his kinsman Francis Newport* had been ‘very active’ in putting the commission in execution in Shropshire, whereupon the House summoned the two men to Westminster.62PJ iii. 284; CJ ii. 706b. Leveson ignored this summons – indeed, on 20 August he attended a meeting of the Staffordshire commissioners at which he pledged to maintain ten horses for the king’s service.63Staffs. RO, D948/4/6/2; The Ingagement and Resolution of the Principall Gentlemen of the County of Salop (1642). The description of Leveson as a ‘neutralist’ who was ‘driven over to royalism by Parliament’ is therefore inaccurate.64R. Hutton, Royalist War Effort (1982), 40. Admittedly, his willingness to serve the king was tempered by a desire not to embroil Staffordshire in conflict before it was necessary; hence, on 5 September, he and several other commissioners informed their counterparts in Shropshire – who had proposed a royalist military association between the two counties – that

since the commission of array is by special allowance of his Majesty forborne to be put in execution in this county [Staffordshire], nor have we yet admitted any alteration in the management of the soldiery differing from our ancient discipline, our shire being hitherto in peace and many conceiving hopes of continuance therein, it is not thought safe for us without supreme authority or greater motives of more demonstrable danger, to raise the arms of our county upon any pretence whatsoever.65Staffs. RO, D868/2/37; HMC 5th Rep. 141.

Nevertheless, Leveson’s strong commitment to the king’s cause cannot be doubted and predated parliamentary action against him by several months. It was not until 24 November that the Commons disabled him from sitting. Moreover, his principal offence in the eyes of his former colleagues at Westminster – that of assisting the Yorkshire cavalier Sir Francis Wortley in ‘plundering and pillaging of divers men’s houses [in Staffordshire] ... that refused to assist the king’ – does not sound like the action of a disgruntled neutralist.66CJ ii. 862a; Add. 18777, f. 69; A Perfect Diurnall no. 24 (21-28 Nov. 1642), sig. Aa2v (E.242.27). The Commons further ordered that those plundered by Leveson be compensated out of his estate.67CJ ii. 862a. His motives for siding with the king, beyond his apparent dislike of the junto and their Scottish allies, are obscure.68HMC 5th Rep. 141.

Although ‘of an infirm and weak body’, Leveson did sterling service for the king during the civil war, garrisoning Lilleshall Abbey and helping to sustain Shropshire’s royalist government.69Cent. Kent. Studs. U269/C11; Mercurius Aulicus no. 13 (24-30 Mar. 1644), 908 (E.42.26); VCH Salop, i. 78; HMC 5th Rep. 142; CSP Dom. 1625-49. p. 660; Newman, Royalist Officers, 231. He should not be confused with Colonel Thomas Leveson, who commanded the royalist garrison at Dudley. Leveson attended the Oxford Parliament in 1644 and signed its letter to the earl of Essex on 27 January, requesting that he arrange a peace treaty.70Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. By early 1645, Leveson was a member of the royalist garrison at Shrewsbury and was listed among the prisoners when the town was seized by the parliamentarians in February.71Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 58; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 40, 242. Imprisoned at Nantwich, he petitioned to compound in November 1645, pleading debts in excess of £16,000, losses to his personal estate amounting to £24,000 and damage to his real estate (including the destruction of Lilleshall Lodge) of at least £6,000.72Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 84; ii. 141; SP23/188, pp. 270, 276, 281, 284, 297. His fine was set at an enormous £9,846 – which, he complained, was ‘greater than many earls and noblemen’. This sum was abated on petition to £3,846 on his agreement to alienate tithes and six rectories worth £380 a year for the use of various godly ministers.73Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/17, 35; CCC 990. In addition, he was ordered to pay £1,500 to the Committee for Advance of Money* – although after private negotiations between Leveson’s friends in London and some of the committee’s leading members his fine was reduced to £500.74CCAM 428; HMC 5th Rep. 179.

In January 1650, Leveson was approached by the Staffordshire royalist Ralph Sneyde* ‘with a proposition of raising some money for supply of the king’s wants’.75Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/33; Staffs. and the Great Rebellion ed. D. A. Johnson, D. G. Vaisey (Stafford, 1965), 58-9. But Leveson ‘utterly refused to meddle in the business’ and instead informed against Sneyde to the council of state.76Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/33. In mid-May, however, Leveson was summoned to appear before the council, and at the end of the month his composition fine was restored to £9,846, suggesting that he, too, was suspected of complicity in royalist plotting.77Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/34; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 541; CCC 990; HMC 5th Rep. 143; Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, i. 240-1. He petitioned the Rump in January 1651, pleading his great and many debts and that the full fine – of which he claimed he had paid half – was greater than his estate could bear.78CJ vi. 519b; Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/26. Unmoved, the House ordered him to pay his fine in full.79CJ vi. 523b.

Leveson suffered further financial penalties in 1655, when he was assessed at £110 for the decimation tax by the commissioners under Major-general Charles Worsley*.80Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/44-5, 49. In November he wrote to Worsley, claiming that he had been ‘compelled to make many leases upon fines and small rents purposely to raise money for supply of my pressing extremities under which I still labour, so as in truth my present rents are smaller and necessities greater than I doubt will be easily credited’.81Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/44. Early in 1656, Leveson joined Sir Hervey Bagot* and six other Staffordshire royalists in a petition to the protector, expressing their regret at the folly of ‘some rash and inconsiderate persons ... whose actions we wholly disown’ and requesting that ‘since we have given no new occasion to be distinguished from the most obedient people of this commonwealth ... we may be freed from such payments and penalties as are now demanded of us by new instructions’.82Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/1/6/36. At some point in the late 1650s, Leveson’s name was put down for Staffordshire on a list of possible leaders of a projected royalist uprising, but that he was prepared to stick his neck out in this fashion seems unlikely.83Bodl. Eng. hist. e.309, p. 21. His arrest in connection with Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion in August 1659 was probably merely a precautionary measure.84CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 197.

Leveson undoubtedly welcomed the Restoration and profitted by it, regaining many of his pre-war offices. It was at Leveson’s own request that the new lord lieutenant of Staffordshire granted him a commission in October 1660 as captain of a troop of volunteer horse.85Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/1/6/66; D593/S/5/5; Tildesley, Hist. of Penkridge, 59. However, his enjoyment of the fruits of his loyalty was cut short by his death on 2 June 1661. He was buried in the parish church of Lilleshall three days later (5 June).86MI, Lilleshall. In his will, he confirmed a deed made in 1653 conveying his estate (still heavily encumbered with debts) to trustees acting for his wife.87PROB11/315, ff. 12-15v. He charged his estate with legacies in excess of £1,600.88PROB11/315, ff. 14v-15. He died childless and was therefore the last of his line to sit in Parliament.