page_title: Theophilus Levett
section_title: Descendants
hierarchical_section_title: Theophilus Levett / Life / Descendants
caption_attribution_description: English: Market Square, at the corner of Breadmarket Street and Market Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom.
context_page_description: Theophilus Levett was an attorney and early town clerk of Lichfield, Staffordshire, a prominent early Staffordshire politician and landowner, and a member of a thriving Lichfield social and intellectual circle which included his friends Samuel Johnson, the physician Erasmus Darwin, the writer Anna Seward and the actor David Garrick, among others.
context_section_description: Theophilus Levett's daughter Anne was, according to Anna Seward, the early paramour of actor David Garrick. Garrick, wrote Seward, "was the lover of her early youth. When he quitted Lichfield to become a theatrical adventurer, he had her promise to be his the instant his situation became profitable." The romance was not to be: Anna Levett ultimately married her cousin Rev. Richard Levett of West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The episode prompted Seward to pen her poem Portrait of Miss Levett about the fickle Lichfield beauty.
  The descendants of Theophilus Levett and his wife Mary Babington went on to become prominent in Lichfield and Staffordshire for more than two centuries, serving as High Sheriffs of Staffordshire, Members of Parliament, investors in Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory at Birmingham, as well as rectors of the local church at Whittington and elsewhere. Several streets in today's Lichfield are named for the early town clerk and his family. The family is of Anglo-Norman descent and originated in Sussex, arriving in Staffordshire from Cheshire. Theophilus Levett was named for Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon, whose wife the Countess of Huntingdon was Levett's godmother.
caption: Samuel Johnson home on Lichfield's Market Street. Theophilus Levett loaned his 31-year-old friend Johnson £80 secured by a mortgage on the home where Johnson's mother lived
exif: {}