Author: Hanson, Levett
Biography:
HANSON, Levett (1754-1814: ODNB)
The only son of Elizabeth (Jackson) and Robert Hanson of Normanton, Yorkshire, he was born at Melton, Yorkshire, on 31 Dec. 1754. After attending school at Bury St Edmunds and at North Walsham, Norfolk (where Horatio Nelson was a schoolmate), he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge (pensioner 1773, matric. 1774) but migrated to Emmanuel in Jul. 1774. The year 1776 was a turning point in his life: he made his first tour to the Continent, began gathering materials for a history of orders of knighthood, and never returned to take a degree. He was welcomed at various foreign courts, where he appears to have collected aristocratic patrons and been granted the pick of the titles he was preparing to write about. ODNB identifies him as a “traveller,” but he did not write about travels, he simply moved from court to court. He was a knight of the order of St. Paul, vice-chancellor to the Duke of Holstein, chamberlain to the Duke of Modena, member of the Academy of Parma, knight-vice-chancellor of the order of S. Joaquim, etc. His Accurate Historical Account of All the Orders of Knighthood at Present Existing in Europe (1802 and later revised editions) was dedicated to Nelson, “a Hero and a Scholar,” himself the holder of many titles including one which Hanson had been instrumental in securing for him. His Miscellaneous Poems (1811), published in Copenhagen, was dedicated to Hanson’s friend Warren Hastings; it includes a list of subscribers, most of whom the author indicates subscribed also to the Orders of Knighthood. Hanson, who never married and returned to England only for four brief visits before 1790, died at Copenhagen on 22 Apr. 1814. (ODNB 28 Jan. 2022; ACAD; ancestry.com 28 Jan. 2022)