Christopher Levett

Captain Christopher Levett (15 April 1586 – 1630) was an English writer, explorer and naval captain, born at York, England. He explored the coast of New England and secured a grant from the king to settle present-day Portland, Maine, the first European to do so. Levett left behind a group of settlers at his Maine plantation in Casco Bay, but they were never heard from again. Their fate is unknown. As a member of the Plymouth Council for New England, Levett was named the Governor of Plymouth in 1623 and a close adviser to Capt. Robert Gorges in his attempt to found an early English colony at Weymouth, Massachusetts, which also failed. Levett was also named an early governor of Virginia in 1628, according to Parliamentary records at Whitehall.

Levett was the son of Elizabeth and Percival Levett, a York merchant and innkeeper, and was admitted a freeman of York as a merchant himself. Levett was also admitted to the Company of Merchant Adventurers in the City of York, along with his brother Percival. There is evidence that the English attempts to colonise North America caught Levett's interest even while a York merchant. Rev. Alexander Whitaker, an early Anglican minister and English immigrant to the Virginia Colony made note in his will of 1610 that he owed a debt of some £5 to "Christopher Levite, a linen draper of the city of York."

Perhaps Levett's contact with Whitaker and other Englishmen stoked his zeal to become an explorer. Levett apparently grew restless, and instead turned his sights towards a career as an explorer. He served as His Majesty's Woodward of Somersetshire to King James I, and wrote a tract on timber harvesting that became the standard for selection of trees for the Royal Navy.

Later, operating from his adopted home in Sherborne, Dorset, in the shadow of Sir Walter Raleigh and other adventurers, Levett became interested in the colonisation of New England. Levett became associated with Sir Ferdinando Gorges and was appointed to the Council for New England. He was granted 6,000 acres (24 km²) of land by King James I of England for a settlement in present-day Maine, which Levett proposed to call "York" after his birth city.

On 5 May 1623, records for the Council on New England say, "Christopher Levett to be a principal patentee; and to have a grant of 6,000 acres of land." The next month, on 26 June 1623, the records note "the King judges well of the undertaking in New England, and more particularly of a design of Christopher Levett, one of the Council for settling that plantation, to build a city and call it York." The king proclaimed that Anglican churches across England should take up collections to aid Levett in his settlement attempts.

Levett was helped with his settlement ambitions, according to some historians, thanks to a deepening friendship with George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, the favoured courtier who acted as advocate for the young Yorkshireman. Levett's alliance to a powerful patron probably accounted for Levett's move to Sherborne and his appointment in the Royal forest in Somersetshire, putting him closer to Gorges and other early adventurers.

On 26 June 1623, Secretary of State Lord Conway wrote to Lord Scrope, President of the Council of the North, urging him to assist Levett in his plan to settle a plantation in New England with a company of Yorkshiremen and found "a Citty and call it by the name of Yorke." Noted the historian Charles Herbert Levermore: "So the first New York that was planned for America was to be located in Portland harbor."

Oblivious to the high-flying spiritual message of early Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, his partner John Mason and other merchant adventurers zeroed in on profit. From what we know of Levett, he seems more nuanced: his dealings with Native Americans seem solicitous, especially given the era, and his first wife was the daughter of a prominent Puritan rector.