Description:Sir John Leveson’s papers include a letter addressed to him from Hampton Court dated August 1603 concerning ‘one John Stockwell of lewd and most villainous mouth’. Richard Wisker notes that Sir John Leveson ‘reported treasonable talk against the new king’ in the early seventeenth century. This letter could be a request for further details about his report, reflecting Sir John Leveson’s important role in the Jacobean Court.
The letter refers to ‘John Stockwell of lewd and most villainous mouth where with a prisoner in the gaol of Maydston called Richard Hartrip is by him Hanged.’ The letter goes on to state that the Court require Leveson ‘againe to examine the person arrested and those whoe were present when those lewd speeches were uttered and to make certificate thereof…that order may be taken for the punishment of suche lewd and notorious offenders as shall be thought meete to be inflicted vpon them’.
The letter demonstrates that the uttering of ‘lewd speeches’ was a serious offence in Renaissance England, with ‘notorious offenders’ being severely punished.
Biographical information from Richard Wisker, ‘Leveson, Sir John (1555–1615)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46972]