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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 earliest Levett family in England, the de Livets were lords of the village of Livet,〔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.〕 and undertenants of the de Ferrers, among the most powerful of William the Conqueror's Norman lords.〔(The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, David C. Douglas, Lewis C. Loyd, 1951. New edition, (1980). Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8063-0649-1 )〕 ==History== One branch of the de Livet family came to England during the Norman Conquest, nearly a thousand years ago, and were prominent first in Leicestershire, and later in Derbyshire,〔The Levetts of Derbyshire were a gentry family whose last heiress married a Shakerley of Great Longstone. The family was extinct by the time of the first Visitation of the Heralds.()〕 Cheshire, Ireland and Sussex,〔(County Genealogies: Pedigrees of the Families in the County of Sussex, William Berry, Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, London, 1830 )〕 where they held many manors, including the lordship of Firle.〔(John Livet, lord of the manor of Firle, 1316, The Archaeological Journal, British Archaeological Association, 1851 )〕 The name Livet (first recorded as ''Lived'' in the 11th century), of Gaulish etymology, may mean a "place where yew-trees grow".〔François de Beaurepaire, ''Les noms des communes et anciennes paroisses de L'Eure'', éditions Picard 1981. p. 136.〕〔Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing, ''Dictionnaire étymologique des noms de lieux en France'', Librairie Guénégaud 1979. p. 406.〕 Like most Normans, the family's origins are probably partly Scandinavian.〔The village of Livet predated the family, who simply took its name from their holding.〕 The year of the family's arrival in England is uncertain. But the family name appears in the records of William the Conqueror.〔(Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: the Acta of William I, 1066–1087, David Bates (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1998 )〕 The first family member in England, Roger de Livet, appears in Domesday as a tenant of the Norman magnate Henry de Ferrers. de Livet held land in Leicestershire, and was, along with Ferrers, a benefactor of Tutbury Priory. By about 1270, when the Dering Roll was crafted to display the coats of arms of 324 of England's most powerful lords, the coat of arms of Robert Livet, Knight, was among them. Ancient English deeds subsequently refer to many lands across Sussex as 'Levetts,' indicating family possession of broad swaths of Sussex countryside.〔(Archive of the Gage Family of Firle, 1255–1849, East Sussex Record Office, The National Archives )〕〔(Ashburnham family archives: deeds, 1200–1836, East Sussex Record Office, The National Archives )〕 Among the family's holdings was the manor of Catsfield Levett, today known simply as Catsfield, located a scant three miles (5 km) from the battlefield where Duke William of Normandy ('William the Bastard,' as he was dubbed) thrashed the English forces to become King. Like most medieval Norman families, the Levetts depended on the web of feudal hierarchy. They held their lands as overlords in return for knight's 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,〔(Miscellanea Genealogic et Heraldica, Joseph Jackson Howard (ed.), Vol. I, Third Series, Mitchell and Hughes, London, 1896 )〕 Worcestershire, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Bedfordshire and later in Staffordshire. The Anglicisation of this Norman French surname took many forms, including Levett, Levet, Lyvet, Levytt,〔(Sussex Archaeological Collections Relating to The History and Antiquities of the County, The Sussex Archaeological Society, Vol. XIV, George P. Bacon, Lewes, Sussex, 1862 )〕 Livett, Delivett, Levete, Leavett, Leavitt,〔(Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4, ancestry.com )〕 Lovett〔At least one branch of the Levett family bore as their coat of arms 'three wolves heads erased.' The armiger is attributed by Bernard Burke to a list of Knights in Normanton, Nottinghamshire. Curiously, the same coat of arms was also borne by several Lovett families. It is the only known branch of the Levett family which bore these arms. ()〕 and others.〔(The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, John Bateman, Harrison and Sons, 1883 )〕 Levett family members were early knights and Crusaders — many members of both English and French branches of the family were Knights Hospitallers〔(Ancient and Modern Malta, as also, The History of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, Louis de Boisgelin, Vol. II, Printed for Richard Phillips, London, 1805 )〕〔There are also repeated references to Levett family involvement, particularly in Sussex and Ireland, with the Knights Templar.〕 — and they occupied a place in the English landed gentry for centuries.〔(Levet, Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, Vol. I, Third Series, Joseph Jackson Howard (ed.), Mitchell & Hughes, London, 1896 )〕 Unlike the French branch of the family, no members of the English branch were ennobled, although they intermarried with nobility〔Some critics of the family have queried whether the family's real aptitude lay in simply marrying well.()〕 and served as courtiers.〔(A Narrative by John Ashburnham of his Attendance on King Charles I From Oxford to the Scottish Army, and from Hampton-Court to the Isle of Wight, Vol. I, Payne and Foss, London, 1830 )〕 The Levett name was joined with such well-known English clans as the Byrons, the Darwins, the Ashley-Coopers, the Hulses, the Bagots, the Prinseps, the Ansons, the Feildings, the Holdsworths, the Reresbys, the Breretons, the Suttons, the Kennedys, the Cullums, the Gargraves, the Gresleys, the Legges and others.〔(The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal, The Mortimer Percy Volume, The Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval & Staff, Heritage Books, Westminster, MD, 2001 )〕 But the most common choice of professions among Levett men down the ages was the Anglican clergy – although one combined the ministry with the secular in an unusual way. Rev. William Levett of Buxted, East Sussex, inherited the iron foundries built by his brother John in the 16th century. Rather than sell them, Parson Levett became the first to cast iron cannon in England, served as 'Chief Gunstonemaker' to the King, and laid the foundation for an English industry. A branch of the Levett family still occupies Milford Hall,〔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 went to Virginia in the late nineteenth century as an Episcopal rector. He was the son of Hon Rev. Frederick Anson.〕 a family home in Staffordshire, England, where Richard Byrd Levett Haszard, a Levett descendant, recently served as High Sheriff of Staffordshire.〔(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 )〕〔(High Sheriffs.com )〕 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 painted three Levett children playing in 1811.〔(Group Portrait of John, Theophilus and Frances Levett, James Ward, November 1811, Christie's, christies.com )〕 Ultimately, the two distant branches of the Levett family of Sussex, living nearby each other in Staffordshire, intermarried.〔(Tomb of Lt Richard Levett, Church of St Thomas, Walton on the Hill, Staffordshire, Flickr )〕 Another branch of the Milford Hall Levetts occupy the family residence The Hall, Angle, Pembrokeshire, Wales, although the name is now Mirehouse because of an inheritance.〔Lieut.-Col. Richard Walter Byrd Mirehouse, formerly Levett (1849-1914), an Old Etonian, moved to family properties at Angle by 1886. He served as High Sheriff of Pembrokeshire in 1886, and bequeathed the family holdings to his descendants.() His descendant Councillor John Allen-Mirehouse serves as Pembrokeshire County Council Deputy Leader.()〕 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, longtime seat of the family, passed from family control in 1440 on the indebtedness of then-lord Thomas Levett.〔(Debts of Thomas Lyvet, West Firle, Chancery Records, The National Archives )〕 The bankrupt Levett also forfeited his inherited lordship of Catsfield, East Sussex. Similarly, in 1620 John Levett of Sedlescombe, Sussex, Gentleman, sold his half-interest in Bodiam Castle, as well as inherited family lands called Northlands, Parklands, Eastlands and Grovelands, as well as properties across Sussex and Kent, including in Bodiam, Ewhurst, Salehurst, Battle, Wartling, Penhurst, Newfield and Catsfield, Sussex, as well as Hawkhurst, Kent, to Sir Thomas Dyke for £1,000, from whom the properties subsequently passed to the Earl of Thanet. The distress sale left Levett's descendants listed as simple yeomen, instead of the knights, esquires and gentlemen of previous generations.〔(Descriptive Catalogue of the Original Charters, Royal Grants, and Donations, Monastic Chartulary, Constituting the Muniments of Battle Abbey, Thomas Thorpe, London, 1835 )〕 Other ancestral lands passed from the family with the marriage of Levett heiresses. Those inheriting from the Levetts included the Eversfields, the Gildredges, the Chaloners, the Ashburnhams, the Hulses and other prominent Sussex, Kent and Yorkshire families. Other Levetts fell on hard times as the family's fortunes sometimes dwindled, or were carried into other clans. John Levett, a guard on the London to Brighton coach, was convicted of petty theft and transported to Australia in the nineteenth century.〔(John Levett of Lewes, Newspaper Accounts of Trials 1842 & 1845, Rootschat.com )〕 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 ultimately failed; his son Francis Jr. returned to America, where he became the first to grow Sea Island cotton.) 〔(Julianton Plantation, English Plantations on the St Johns River, Florida History Online )〕 The Levett family became part of the British Empire's expanding grasp. Sir Richard Levett was one of the first Governors of the Bank of England, a member of the original London East India Company and the Lord Mayor of London in 1699. He resided at his estate at Kew, later sold to the Royal Family. 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. Among the earliest English explorers of North America was Captain Christopher Levett, granted some by the King to found the third English colony. The settlement failed. Capt. Levett died on a return voyage to England in 1630 after conferring with John Winthrop. Over the generations, Levett descendants spanned the social ranks: one family relation,〔Rev. Evelyn Levett Sutton was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the son of Roosilia Thoroton, great-granddaughter of Lord Mayor of London Sir Richard Levett, and Roosilia's husband, Admiral Evelyn Sutton, R.N., of Screveton, Nottinghamshire, who was her cousin. Both were descendants through illegitimacy of the Manners-Sutton family, Dukes of Rutland.()〕 an English clergyman who served as chaplain to the House of Commons, is memorialized in Westminster Abbey where he dropped dead reading the Ninth Commandment; another family ancestor was among the founders of an Oxford University college;〔(A Genealogical Account of the Mayo and Elton Families of the Counties of Wilts and Hereford, Charles Herbert Mayo, Privately Printed by Charles Whittingham and Co., London, 1882 )〕 another, an assistant pantry steward aboard an ocean liner, perished when the RMS ''Titanic'' sank; a fourth, a simple Suffolk butcher, emerged as leader of populist Kett's Rebellion in the sixteenth century.〔(Rebellion and Riot: Popular Disorder in England During the Reign of Edward VI, Barrett L. Beer, Kent State University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-87338-840-2, ISBN 978-0-87338-840-5 )〕 Another descendant, a Yorkshire knight and Speaker of the House of Commons, became one of the country's most powerful men, celebrated by Shakespeare. The family dynasty he built imploded when his son was hanged at York for murder, and his brother gambled away his legacy, dying in a London flophouse. One family member was an 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 neighbourhoods. 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."〔(The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Vol. I, Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murray, London, 1810 )〕 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.〔(Letter from Samuel Johnson to John Levett, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, by James Boswell, London, 1799 )〕 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.〔Both John and Thomas Leavitt initially landed at Boston, with Thomas moving on to New Hampshire and John ultimately to nearby Hingham, Massachusetts. The parentage and English origins of both men are uncertain, 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, South Yorkshire. So far there is no definitive proof concerning either. Ongoing Y-DNA testing shows the men do not share the same male ancestor. Descendants of John Leavitt of Hingham belong to the somewhat rare Haplogroup R1a1, indicating possible Norse ancestry. Descendants of Thomas Leavitt belong to Haplogroup R1b1b2, a common Western European Y-DNA, and therefore inconclusive about his origins. The several different coats of arms registered to the Levett family may point to different origins for several branches.()〕 John Leavitt was a tailor; Thomas a simple farmer. No paternal family relationship existed between the two men, and their exact connection to the original family in England remains uncertain.〔(Recent DNA testing by descendants of these two men reveal there is no blood relationship between them )〕〔The birthplace and parentage of both John and Thomas Leavitt are uncertain. As the two men appear unrelated, their different haplogroups could speak to different origins of the name, or several different founders of Norman origin, or an adoption or non-paternity event. Future Y-DNA testing in England is needed to resolve the matter.〕 Today there are many Levetts living outside England, including in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand,〔(What's in a Name? Wychnor, A New Zealand Story, Stephanie Boot )〕〔(Herbert Cuthbert Levett, The Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington )〕 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.〔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.〕 Members of the original de Livet family continue to reside in France.〔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.〕 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.〔(Jean de Livet, banneret to King Philip II of France, ca 1216, Dictionnaire de la Noblesse, Francois Alexandre Aubert de La Chesnaye-Desbois, 1775 )〕〔(The Norman People and Their Existing Descendants in the British Dominions and the United States of America, Henry S. King & Co., 1874 )〕 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.〔(Levett, Packington Hall, Mansions and Country Seats of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, Alfred Williams, Walter Henry Mallett, 1899 )〕 The de Livet family of Normandy bore as their coat of arms since medieval times three gold mullets on an azure field.〔(Nobiliaire universel de France, M. de Saint-Allais, Librairie Ancienne et Moderne, Paris, 1877 )〕〔(Dictionnaire Historique de Toutes Les Communes du Département de l'Eure, Anatole Caresme, Charpillon, Paris, 1879 )〕 The de Livet family was among the ancient noble families of France, or noblesse d'épée. (The French revolution stripped the hereditary French nobility of its feudal privileges.) Following the French revolution, several members of the de Livet family were made Knights (Chevaliers) of the Légion d'honneur.〔(Dictionnaire Historique de Toutes Les Communes du Département de l'Eure, Anatole Caresme, Chez Delcroix, Paris, 1868 )〕 The English branch of the de Livet (Levett) family claims descent from Jean de Livet, seigneur of Livet (now Jonquerets-de-Livet) in 1040, before the Norman Conquest.〔That the first name John became the most common Levett given name from earliest times is probably due to these Norman French ''Jean'' ancestors.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Levett」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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