page_title: Walter Leveson
section_title: Landowner
hierarchical_section_title: Walter Leveson / Landowner
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury (1528-1590), National Trust.
context_page_description: Sir Walter Leveson was an Elizabethan Member of Parliament and a Shropshire and Staffordshire landowner who was ruined by involvement in piracy and mental illness.
context_section_description: Leveson's main estates were at Lilleshall and Trentham, although he inherited or acquired many smaller estates and houses. The estates were assessed at £313 at the beginning of his wardship - an income commensurate with landed gentry status. However, Leveson was regionally powerful and influential, not least because he also had lucrative business interests in the North Sea trade - interests which were to prove his undoing. He was ruthless in pursuing his interests in his estates. After a long dispute, he managed to recover possession of Leegomery, near Wellington, Shropshire from his sister Elizabeth and her husband, William Sheldon.
  Leveson, like all his family, was a vigorous encloser. He did all he could to establish effective control of marginal or disputed lands around his estates. This was especially so in the Weald Moors, a large, extra-parochial area, stretching west of Lilleshall, where tenants in all the surrounding manors had common grazing rights. The landowners all wanted to maximise their profit from the moors by draining and improving them, and were determined to have defined boundaries. In 1574 Leveson and the lord of Kynnersley agreed on a fixed boundary. In 1582 George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, who was lord of Wrockwardine, sold his interest in the moor to Leveson for a perpetual rent. Leveson then set about enclosing and improving so that he could let out separate holdings. Very soon the whole area from Wrockwardine to Kynnersley was enclosed by Leveson or his tenants, apart from a few remaining areas of marshy soil. On Leveson's estate at Little Wenlock the tenants had access to the woods for timber, although both their tenth and the rest of the woodland were in poor condition because of poor management and constant extraction of timber for building. Leveson enclosed all the woodland, simply abrogating the commoners' rights.
  Agriculture and animal husbandry were not the only ways to exploit the estates. By 1580 Leveson had water-powered trip hammers at Lubstree on Humber Brook, on the moors near Kynnersley. It seems that these were operated by successive member of the Dawe family. Leveson had a bloomery by a pool in Lilleshall village. He also installed a blast furnace, one of the earliest in the West Midlands, possibly at Donnington Wood, near Wrockwardine, where both wood for charcoal burning and ironstone were available. This was also an area of coal mining, although coal was used for domestic heating rather than industrially.
  Landed property was the essential foundation for public office, and Leveson was wealthy enough to secure such office very quickly after coming into his estates. In 1575 he was made a Justice of the Peace in Shropshire and within two years he was also a justice in Staffordshire. He was pricked High Sheriff of Shropshire for 1575-6, although it was not until 1586-7 that he became High Sheriff of Staffordshire. By then he had been appointed deputy to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester in his position as Vice-Admiral of the Coast for North Wales. In 1587 he was knighted. This coincided with the onset of the problems which overwhelmed him with debt in later life.
  Financial problems forced Leveson increasingly to adopt emergency measures after 1590. In that year he sold two of the smaller estates to Sir Rowland Hayward: Little Dawley and Little Wenlock. However he kept together his main estates at Lilleshall and Trentham, ensuring that they remained part of the Leveson patrimony.
  Leveson constantly needed ready cash to keep his creditors at bay, and one way of realising the future value of his estates was to sell leases. In the areas of Lilleshall exploited by the open field system, where leases had typically been for periods of 21 years or less, he began to grant longer leases, generally for three lives. He resorted to this strategy also at Weald Moor, selling leases for three lives to his tenants so long as they agreed to maintain the infrastructure of roads, bridges and watercourses. In 1592 he granted 13 leases at Donnington Wood on a single day, this time mainly for sh
caption: George Talbot 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, a major landowner who made important concessions to Leveson
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