The strange case of John Lovell

On 18th March 1455, William Lovell, future grandfather of Francis, began making his will, adding two codicils on 5th June 1455, shortly before his death on 13th June of the same year. His oldest son John was at the Inquisition Postmortem said to have been twenty two at the moment of his father`s death; the ages of his younger sons William, Robert and Henry were not given, but at least the two youngest would definitely not have been of age., and it is doubtful if William was.

It were, naturally, his sons William was most concerned with when making his will, and, as J.M.William`s notes in her essay "The Political Career of Francis Viscount Lovell (1456-?)" he left quite a lot to his younger sons, perhaps in the knowledge that John would eventually be heir to his mother`s, William`s wife Alice Deincourt`s, estates and wealth. Nothing about the provisions in the will is out of the ordinary; and while it does not note what exactly was left to John, this is a problem for researchers trying to find out what he owned, and would not have been too much of a problem at the time, as everything not explicitly bequeathed to something else would have fallen to him.

There are two notable features of the will and its codicils; both showing a curious distinction between William`s eldest son John and the three younger ones. While the will repeatedly names William, Robert and Henry, and they are clearly identified by William as "sonne", it never once mentions John by name, and never identifies him as William`s son. When mentioned, he is only "my next heire", in stark contrast to the flowery and often repetitive language used in writing at the time and also elsewhere in the will.

Secondly, notably, William chose to leave a "Bedd of Bawdekyn with qwischens and thapparrell thereto", a valuable item, not to his firstborn but to his second-born, William.

While this could well be simply an oddity, explained perhaps by there being no need of mentioning John very often as his inheritance stood and did not need to be clarified, and him already being in possession of an equally valuable personal item as was left to William, there are other instances of John Lovell being treated strangely by his family.

The most notable of these is found in an action by John`s only son, Francis.  When, during Richard III`s reign, he was granted license, together with his former guardian John of Suffolk and the Bishop of Lincoln, to found a fraternity, he chose to have masses said for his grandfather William rather than his father John. This is not only curious as John of Suffolk chose to have masses said for his father, and further instructions existed for masses to be said for "the King`s father", it is made even more notable by the fact that Francis, having only been born in 1456, never met his grandfather.

While Francis, having been only eight when his father died, may not have remembered him well, given his grandfather`s death day, this was clearly not the reason why he chose not to have masses said for him. Nor is it likely to have been a scribe getting John`s and William`s names getting mixed up, for while this is not categorically impossible, it is unlikely. It was not Francis`s father, John, who had the unusual name, but William. With the expection of him and Francis, all lords Lovell had been called John.

The reason for Francis`s decision not to have the masses read for his father is unknown. Even John`s Lancastrian leanings do not offer an explanation, for William Lovell shared those.

The behaviour of Francis`s sisters is also interesting. The youngest sister, Frideswide, who has been estimated to have been at least four or five, or possibly even up to seven, years younger than Francis, followed tradition and named a son - her first son - after her father. The older sister, Joan, born in around 1457 according to J.M.Williams, and therefore around a year younger than Francis, did not. Despite otherwise choosing traditional names for her children (her oldest boy being named after her husband), she did not follow it to call one after John.

This does not have to be significant at all, of course. Perhaps Joan simply disliked the name “John” for aesthetic reasons, or named the son who was meant to be called after her father after a saint in thanksgiving instead. However, it is notable that the two siblings, Francis and Joan, who would have been old enough to remember their father after his death, showed no signs of traditional behaviour of remembrance from what evidence we have.

Finally, it seems that John`s wife Joan Beaumont, did not mourn his death a lot. Before even her traditional year of mourning after his death was up, she had married William Stanley, younger brother of Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby. This may well have been for political reasons, though the speed with which she remarried is of note.

With the exception of Francis choosing not to have masses said for him instead of his grandfather, all of this could well be only insignificant oddities by themselves, but together, a picture emerges of John Lovell being less than beloved by his family.

Why this was, we have no indication. Whether he was a drinker and deemed to be an embarrassment to his family, a gambler, possibly violent and abusive to wife and children, we cannot tell. We can just tell that something was wrong between John Lovell and his family.