A Levett family settled in
Derbyshire was extinct by the early sixteenth century. A family of the name resident in Sussex at
Warbleton and
Salehurst also held the manor of
Firle until it passed from family control in 1440 due to the debts of Thomas Levett, whose bankruptcy also necessitated the loss of Catsfield, East Sussex. Sussex deeds indicate instances of 'Levetts' attached to place names, indicating possession by individuals and families of that name. In 1620, John Levett, of Sedlescombe, Sussex, was forced by financial hardship to sell his half-interest in Bodiam Castle, inherited family land and property across Sussex and Kent, including at Ewhurst, Salehurst, Battle, Sussex and Hawkhurst, Kent, to Sir Thomas Dyke, for £1000; this represented the end of these Levetts as prominent landowners. Families of the name Levett (also Levet, Lyvet, Levytt, Livett, Delivett, Levete, Leavett, Leavitt, Lovett and others) would subsequently settle in
Gloucestershire,
Yorkshire,
Worcestershire,
Suffolk,
Warwickshire,
Wiltshire,
Kent,
Bedfordshire and
Staffordshire. By the mid twentieth century, only two prominent Levett families remained; that of
Milford Hall, Staffordshire and that formerly of
Wychnor Hall, Staffordshire (and
Packington Hall). Milford Hall passed in the female line to the Haszard family, and Wychnor Park was sold by the Levetts to Lt-Col W. E. Harrison in 1913, this later becoming a country club. The Levett-Scrivener family (descending from a daughter of the Milford Hall family) retains the ruin of
Sibton Abbey, which they have made available to historical societies and researchers; the Levett-Prinseps (a branch of the Wychnor Park family) were unable to maintain
Croxall Hall; it was sold in 1920 and the estate was broken up. By 1871, although family tradition of a common ancestor of the Milford Hall and Wychnor Park Levett families was mentioned in the latter pedigree, the earliest listed ancestors of each family were, respectively, William Levett of Savernake, Wiltshire, page to King Charles I at the time of his death in 1649, and Theophilus Levett, who died 1746. Even the 1847 edition, produced at a time when Burke's publications were inclusive of vague, unproven 'family traditions' (a practice subsequently widely criticised), makes no mention of any earlier ancestors or Norman origin in either family's pedigree. , descendant of merchant
Francis Levett, dueling in a
trilobite exoskeleton. Drawn by his friend
Gideon Mantell, fellow member of
The Royal Society Individuals of the name of Levett (and its variants) appear in all social strata: John Levett, a guard on the London to Brighton coach, was convicted of petty theft and transported to Australia in the nineteenth century; English records reveal Levetts embroiled in bastardy cases or relegated to poorhouses. A Francis Levett was a factor living in Livorno, Italy, travelling back and forth to Constantinople for the Levant Company. He subsequently failed at British East Florida as a planter; his son Francis Jr. returned to America, where he became the first to grow Sea Island cotton. , to which he was accompanied on the scaffold by courtier
William Levett, Esq. A notable individual of the name was the 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. 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. ==Levetts elsewhere==