Sir Richard Levett (1629 – 20 January 1711) was an English merchant and politician who was elected Lord Mayor of London in 1699.

Born in Ashwell, Rutland, he moved to London and established a pioneering mercantile career, becoming involved with the Bank of England and the East India Company.

The Levett brothers were abetted in their rise by profound changes in the evolving English economy, with trade opening and feudal privileges diminishing in favour of a growing mercantile middle class.

As the British Empire began to expand, bolstered by increasing military might, aggressive merchants like the Levetts leapfrogged other foreign and domestic competitors.

Eventually, their empire became among the largest factors of its day in England, with an immense working capital estimated between £30,000 and £40,000 in 1705, buying tobacco and other goods around the world for import into the English market.

The firm they set up came to embrace trade with the Levant (principally Turkey and Syria), India, Africa, the West Indies, North America, Ireland as well as Russia.

Contemporaneous records show Levett often immersed in the details of arranging shipping terms and trading voyages to places as disparate as Guinea and the English Southern Colonies.

[6] Detailed records of tobacco transactions at the time between Levett and Virginia planters reveal that the London merchant drove a hard bargain.

[16] Levett's home, formerly that of the controversial Bloodworth, who served as Lord Mayor at the time of the Great Fire of London, was a large town house on the old Noble Street near Lily Pot Lane.

[18] (After Levett's death, his daughter Mary Thoroton leased the Dutch House to Queen Caroline, wife of King George II, for use as a children's nursery, likely accounting for the decision of Frederick, Prince of Wales, to settle at Kew with his wife, Augusta, Princess of Wales.

Edmund Calamy, the English nonconformist churchman, refers to "Lady Levett" in his memoirs as his great "friend", and who was noted in other accounts as a generous donor to religious and educational causes.

[23] Samuel Pepys, the diarist and Secretary of the Admiralty (and friend of Robert Blackburne, his predecessor and brother of the Archbishop of York), apparently socialised with Alderman Levett.

"[24] Levett also figures prominently in the recently published diaries of politician Roger Whitley, Member of Parliament from Wales and then from Chester.

Given the discovery, Dame Mary Levett made a codicil to her will directing that the valuable paintings be sold with the proceeds going to her granddaughters.