Note 178d — Chapter IX · THE FIELD OF THE BATTLE OF STOKE. [177a]

Francis Viscount Lovel was the son of John Lord Lovel; the latter was one of those Lancastrians who accompanied the Lords Scales and Hungerford to London, in hopes of gaining the citizens, and were obliged to take refuge in the Tower, in 1460; he died in the fourth year of Edward IV., leaving by Joan his wife, sister of William Viscount Beaumont, Francis, his son and heir. Francis Lord Lovel accompanied Richard Duke of Gloucester, in the expedition to Scotland, in the twenty-second year of Edward IV., and was advanced to the dignity of Viscount Lovel. In the reign of Richard III. he was made Lord Chamberlain, and had other important offices conferred upon him. He fought for Richard, at the battle of Bosworth, in 1485 (see Chap. VIII.), and, having escaped from thence, took sanctuary at St. John’s, at Colchester. He afterwards quitted it privately, and got away to Sir Thomas Broughton’s house in Lancashire, and lurked there for some months, from whence he proceeded to Flanders, to Margaret Duchess of Burgundy; and from thence went with Martin Swartz into Ireland, joined in the insurrection of the Earl of Lincoln, and was slain at the battle of Stoke. (See Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. i. p. 560.) He married Anne, the daughter of Henry Lord Fitzhugh, Baron of Ravenswath (by Alice his wife, daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury), but did not leave any issue.