William Levett (rector of Buxted)

[2] William Levett continued to perform his ministerial duties while building an early munitions empire, and left the riches he accumulated to a wide variety of charities at his death.

[3] The first iron cannon manufactured in England was cast in Buxted in 1543 by Ralf Hogge, an employee of Parson Levett, a Sussex rector with broad interests, paradoxically enough, in the emerging English armaments industry.

The earliest cannons cast by the foundry belonging to the Levetts were of the Italianate style originating in Venice and copied by the English.

Because of the proximity of timber, the importation of foreign (primarily French) ironworkers, and effective new forging methods, the English guns were superior to those manufactured on the European continent.

This curious overlapping of church and state – the vicar as tax collector – demonstrated Levett's talents, his ambition and his ability to navigate the shoals of politics, business and religion.

The founder of the family's interest in iron founding, John Levett instructed the executors of his will (who included his brother Rev.

Four years later, in 1545, Levett had proven himself so indispensable to the Crown that the Privy Council noted in haste: "Parson Levet ordered by letter to send hither such pieces of artillery as he has already made.

Contemporaneous records show that Levett was also producing munitions and weaponry at a site close by the Tower of London, where the Royal stores of armaments were warehoused.

Apparently he was a natural, so efficient that the Privy Council appointed him in 1546 to oversee the Sussex iron mines that had belonged to the attainted Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and were confiscated by the Crown.

[20] Levett employed master gun founders Charles Garrete and Pierre Baude at his Buxted furnace, as well as five other aliens (probably Frenchmen) in 1543, and six in 1550.

[21] "In the begyning", said Ralf Hogge in a statement of 1573, "there was none that cast any gonnes or shott of yron but only pson (parson) Levet who was my mr. (master) and my p'decessor who mayde none but only for the service of the Kynges matie (majesty)."

Among the earliest beneficiaries of this change were some of England's oldest families: the Nevilles, the Sackvilles, the Sidneys, the Boleyns, the Dudleys and the Howards.

[24] Their enormous landholdings translated into wood for furnaces, and combined with their political clout, made them candidates for the ranks of the magnates of the coming age of iron.

[25] A trade consisting mostly of weapons would evolve into other more common tools as well: fire-backs, andirons, anvils, hammers, pots and pans and even grave slabs.

[27] Eventually, the dwindling woods of the Weald, combined with new coke-fired technology, pushed England's ironworking industry north toward the Midlands and abundant coal.

"[3] In the intervening two centuries, though, the Weald pulsed with industrial activity, providing jobs and riches to those willing to navigate the ever-changing technology.

"In its prime it had employed a notable proportion of the inhabitants, and was not only a means of prosperity to the countryside, but a source of strength to the nation.... Little, save some of the ponds, remains to be seen to-day; many a once busy site is hardly to be distinguished in the dense tangle of brushwood and bracken that has overgrown it.

The voluminous document, in which Levett named Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu as executor, demonstrates the riches that accrued to the entrepreneurs of the coming Iron Age.

But if Levett's straddling of the gulf between the military-industrial complex and the Holy Scripture troubled him, there was little sign of it, save for extensive donations to charity in his will.

He also left £100 to be given to poor scholars by his executors on the advice of his friends the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop of Winchester and Sir Anthony Browne.

Levett's will, in which he bestowed more than 40 individual bequests, shows this ironmaster clergyman with a law degree was no ordinary country vicar.

(John Eversfield lies buried near rector Levett in the chancel of Buxted's church, and in his will of 26 August 1550, Edmund Pope of Little Horsted leaves to "Rauf Hogg, Mr Parsone Levetes servunte tenne shillings).