Egerton Bagot Byrd Levett - Scrivener Captain Egerton Bagot Byrd Levett - Scrivener ( 1857 - 1954 ) was a Royal Navy Flag Lieutenant and aide to Vice Admiral George Willes in the Far East . He was later promoted to Captain , and following his retirement became Bursar of Keble College , Oxford University . Born Egerton Levett , he changed his name to Levett - Scrivener on an inheritance from his aunt of Scrivener family properties at Sibton Abbey , Suffolk , which he later managed . Levett was married to the daughter of English diplomat and ambassador Sir Harry Smith Parkes . Egerton Levett was the son of Col . Richard Byrd Levett of Milford Hall , Staffordshire and his wife Elizabeth Mary ( Mirehouse ) Levett . Egerton Levett entered the service of the Royal Navy , where during a posting as aide to Admiral Willes in 1884 , he met Mabel Desborough Parkes , the daughter of Ambassador Parkes , who was then serving as British ambassador to China and Korea . Levett and Miss Parkes were married in 1884 , and in 1885 their son Evelyn Harry Byrd Levett was born , prompting Ambassador Parkes to write " one of his happiest letters . . . written in January 1885 to his daughter , Mrs . Levett , on the memorable occasion when he became a grandfather . " In 1889 , Levett inherited the Sibton Abbey Manor from his aunt . The property , which was the only Cistercian abbey in East Anglia , had been in the Scrivener family since its purchase in the early seventeenth century by John Scrivener , son of an Ipswich barrister and bailiff grown rich in the wool trade . The Scrivener family later purchased from the Duke of Norfolk to add to their Suffolk holdings . After inheriting Sibton Abbey , Egerton Levett changed his name to Levett - Scrivener in accordance with his aunt ' s wishes . In 1890 , six years after their marriage , Levett ' s wife Mabel was killed in a fall from her horse . A year later , in 1891 , Levett married in Bristol his cousin Mary Millicent Mirehouse . ( Levett ' s mother was a Mirehouse , and his brother Richard Byrd Levett ultimately also changed his name to Richard Walter Byrd Mirehouse on succeeding to Mirehouse family property at The Hall , Angle , Pembrokeshire , where by - then Richard W . B . Mirehouse served as High Sheriff of Pembrokeshire as well as Lieutenant Colonel of 4th Batt . North Staffs Regiment . ) Levett - Scrivener became an avid agriculturalist and farmer on the Sibton Abbey estate . He improved the farmland , and studied the manorial records of the Sibton properties , which were still in family hands , and shared them with historians . Levett - Scrivener tracked the produce grown on the farms , the cost of labor and the rentals accruing to the Scrivener owners . He also opened the Abbey periodically to county historians and antiquarians so they could investigate the ruins of the once - wealthy abbey , which had fallen during the Dissolution of the Monasteries to the Howard family . The Levett - Scrivener family has longstanding ties to the Royal Navy . Egerton Levett - Scrivener ' s son Evelyn Harry Byrd , named in part for his grandfather Parkes , also joined the Royal Navy , where he rose to the rank of Commander . Among the ancestors of the family is another Royal Navy stalwart , Admiral William Bligh , captain of the ill - fated HMS Bounty during its mutiny . Royal Navy Commander Egerton Levett - Scrivener died in 1954 . He had two siblings , and the three were baptized at the Berkswich , Staffordshire , church where their father Levett - Scrivener worshipped as a child . The Levett - Scriveners , and most of their Scrivener relatives , are buried at St . Peter ' s Church in Sibton , near Yoxford , Suffolk . Among the descendants of Egerton Levett - Scrivener is a branch of the Joly de Lotbiniere family of East Anglia . In 2005 , the Levett - Scrivener family felt compelled to purchase the local village post office and shop facing closure in this quiet corner of rural England .