William Levett (courtier)

Levett accompanied the King during his flight from Parliamentary forces, including his escape from Hampton Court palace, and eventually to his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, and finally to the scaffold on which he was executed.

[9] The letter, signed by Levet on 29 April 1691, and incorporated into later editions of the work alleged to have been authored by the monarch, was celebrated by those who wished to see the dead King as saint for having given his life for the cause of the nation.

"I can testify also," Levett continued in his letter, "that Royston the printer told me, that he was imprisoned by Oliver Cromwell, the Protector, because he would not declare that King Charles the First, was not the author of the said Book.

"The names of these three gentlemen," notes the manuscript, "frequently occur in the histories and memoirs of that time as employed near the king's person, and much in his majesty's confidence.

Charles was buried in private on the night of February 7, 1649, inside the Henry VIII vault in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

Anthony Mildmay, Sir Henry Firebrace and Abraham Dowcett (sometimes spelled Dowsett) -- conveyed the King's body to Windsor.

Following the rule of Cromwell and Parliament, Levett, now acting as an officer in the militia, aided the Royal forces when they retook Marlborough, a former hotbed of Roundhead sentiment.

In a letter to Col. Charles Seymour of 1663, Levett wrote of riding into Marlborough, where he and a party of Royalist sympathizers "assaulted the burial place of the Quakers at Wanton and laid it waste, leaving all the prey to the owners' disposal.

"[16] William Levett lived out the rest of his life following his service to King Charles at his homes in Wiltshire, where he had secured a sinecure as an agent and surveyor for Francis Seymour, 5th Duke of Somerset.

[17][18] Levett frequented acted in legal matters on behalf of the county,[19] and subsequently served King Charles II of England as Page of the Backstairs, beginning at the Restoration in 1660.