 The Royal Family of England has been snagging the headlines of our world for hundreds and hundreds of years. The Royal Family is a family filled with scandals and treachery, violence, seduction, and hunger for all-encompassing power. And of course, the Royal Family can make people disappear if they want to. However, there's one person who has disappeared within the realms of the Royal Family that the Royal Family is not responsible for. In fact, nobody really knows what happened to him. And even though this person has probably been dead since the late 1400s, historians are still scratching their heads over his disappearance. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. Also, thank you so much to all of our patrons who help support this channel. If you would like to become a patron, the link is down below. Again, a special thank you to Tiffany Monroe, who is a Ricky Master here in Atlanta, Georgia. She is one of our producers. If you would like to get into contact with Tiffany regarding her services, again, her contact is also in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce. And today on our very first Mystery Monday of 2021, we are going to be talking about the disappearance of Francis Lovell. This Lovell was the best friend of King Richard III. King Richard III's reign is full of controversy. This controversy involves the War of the Roses. The British royal family started its reign in 1066 with William the Conqueror, who came from France and well conquered England. Since William the Conqueror ruled over England, we have seen the same family on the throne. Yes, we have seen many different dynasties, but they're all the same family. Whenever we see a dynasty last name change, it's because the bloodline is then coming through the wife. And this family is one of the most scandalous and violent families that the history books will probably ever write about. Within this family, we've seen cousin fight cousin, uncle kill nephew, wife stab a husband in the back. It's all fun and games when you're born into the English royal family. Now many people who watch this channel and also watch David Sublux channel know that I am related to the English royal family. My great, great, great grandfather was born into the English royal family and his daughter escaped England coming to America and having her family here. Part of the reason why his daughter, my great great grandmother, got the heck out of dodge is because the royal family is batshit crazy. I mean, seriously, if you think your family has problems, your family's got nothing on these psychopaths that have sat on the throne of England. Well, one of the bloodiest battles between this family was known as the War of the Roses. The War of the Roses, it's what brought in the famous Tudor dynasty. With the War of the Roses, we had a battle between the Yorks and the Lancasters. The Yorks and the Lancasters were cousins. They all can be traced back to King Edward III. King Edward III lived in the 1300s and at that point he was in a battle with France. Not only is the royal family always battling itself, but it's always been kind of at war with France as well because they're all French and English and now German and they're all competing for territory to reign over. Well, in this battle, King Edward III's oldest son called the Black Prince died. This left King Edward III with three remaining sons. They were John Duke of Lancaster, Edmund Duke of York and Thomas Duke of Gloucester. Now, King Edward III died in 1377 and instead of leaving his throne to one of his living sons or heirs, he opted to leave the throne to his grandson who was the son of his oldest child, the Black Prince. Now, the new King Richard II was only 10 years old when he was put on the throne and in 1388, Richard II's uncle Thomas, Thomas of Gloucester, decided to raise a coalition of noblemen to fight against his nephew, King Richard II. One of the noblemen in this cast of nobility fighting with Thomas was a kid named Henry. Now, Henry is Richard II's cousin. Henry is a Lancaster. He's John of Lancaster's son. So we've got an uncle and a nephew charging their nephew and cousin. I hope this all makes sense. It's very complicated and pretty crazy, but it gets even crazier. Basically, both this noblemen named Henry who is John Duke of Lancaster's son and Richard II who was the Black Princess son. They're both cousins and the grandpa was King Edward III. I hope that all makes sense. It's just cousins fighting cousins and uncles fighting nephews because somebody wants to have power and they're trying to figure out who is going to take the throne from whom and it's all the same freaking family. Well, because of this attack from Uncle Thomas and cousin Henry, it lessened the power that King Richard II had. And in 1397, this pissed Richard II off. So he decided to dissolve the nobility. At that point, King Richard II has Uncle Thomas arrested and probably murdered, but we're not sure. However, he decides to spare his cousin Henry. I would probably spare my cousin too because I grew up with my cousins like they were siblings and I always think that's how everybody grows up with their cousins as siblings. But this was also a time period where like first cousins married each other and these guys are first cousins, even though they're two males. So it's just a very different time. But Richard II, he spares cousin Henry. But then after he spares cousin Henry, cousin Henry gets really, really mad and throws a little bit of a temper tantrum. And so King Richard II banishes his cousin Henry from the court. Now in 1399, things get even more tense because Henry, his father, John Duke of Lancaster, who is Richard II's uncle, dies. And so Richard II, just to really make matters worse for Henry, holds on to his uncle's titles and his uncle's estates. And so when Richard II goes to Ireland to campaign, cousin Henry builds up an army and comes and invades England, taking hold of the English power. So now we have a Lancaster in power. When Richard returns back to England, he knows the gig is up and so he surrenders to cousin Henry. And cousin Henry has former King Richard II put away in prison. This now makes this Henry Lancaster King Henry IV. King Henry IV then passes down the throne to his son, King Henry V, who dies in battle. And when he dies in battle, he then passes down the throne to his son, who is King Henry VI. Now at this point, King Henry VI is an infant. When King Henry VI, the infant King Henry VI takes the throne, he has to rule through proxy, through Richard Duke of York. Now Richard Duke of York is another cousin. He's the great grandson of King Edward III and the actual grandson of Edmund Duke of York. Again, this all goes back to King Edward III and his children. So by title alone, at this point, we have a Lancaster King on the throne that's being managed by a York person, but literally it's all the same family. Now when Henry VI was old enough to get married, it is arranged for Henry to marry Margaret of Anjou, a French princess who was freaking hungry to devour power. Now Margaret of Anjou did not like Richard Duke of York, the man who was kind of ruling England through her now new British husband. So when Margaret gets to England, she sends Richard to Ireland and takes his titles away and gives Richard's role to a man named Somerset, who is a Lancaster. So now the Yorks are completely out of power. It is strictly Lancasters in control. King Henry VI always had this reputation for being a little bit incompetent. He really did not take to being a king. He had panic attacks and some people thought he was a little bit stupid. To be honest with you, Margaret of Anjou seems like she was pretty abusive to him and she had a bunch of henchmen she brought with her and it was almost like she was manipulating her husband in order to gain control of the empire herself. And because of this, by 1450, nobody in England liked the Queen. She was a total tyrant as well as her henchmen. Now Richard Duke of York did come back and march on London. He eventually got captured and had to swear loyalty to Margaret of Anjou in 1453, but of course that did not last for long. At this point, the battle of power became between Richard Duke of York and the Queen Margaret of Anjou. And then King Henry VI had a total mental breakdown and I don't blame him. I just cannot imagine living this life because he was seriously incompetent because of his own stress and anxiety. Richard Duke of York became his proxy again. And by doing that, he was able to have Somerset, the Lancastrian Somerset picked by Margaret of Anjou, arrested and thrown in prison. Once this happens, Margaret of Anjou runs to King Henry VI, her husband, who is having a complete psychotic breakdown and basically demands that he release Somerset from prison. Oh, and revoke Richard Duke of York's powers from him yet again. At this point, Richard Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick create an army in Northern England. And on May 22nd, 1455, they invade London and the War of Roses officially begins. I told you this shit is complicated. Well, the Yorkist, Richard Duke of York and the Earl won the first battle, but it wasn't long until Margaret of Anjou and her cronies build up an army of their own, which forces Richard and the Earl to flee London. Now the Yorks, Richard Duke of York had something that Margaret of Anjou did not have. The Yorkist were adored by the people of England. They needed the support of the local citizens to help build up bigger armies. And of course, they did not like Margaret of Anjou. She was super corrupt and super shady and the people did not like her. So after the Yorkist fled with the help of the people, the Earl of Warwick was able to come back into London and capture King Henry VI. At that point, Richard Duke of York came in and held Henry captive and just made a proclamation that his children would be the one to take the throne once Henry VI died. Well, of course, this pissed off Margaret of Anjou more than anyone. She wanted her beloved son to be the one to obviously take the throne when her husband kicked the bucket. At this point, Margaret of Anjou goes up to Scotland and strikes a deal with their royalty in Scotland to build up an army to back her as she goes and challenges Richard and the Yorkist for power again. This big battle was the Battle of Wakefield and Richard Duke of York was killed in this battle along with his second oldest son, Edmund. Just because it's England and it's the English family and they're super violent and they like to terrorize people, Margaret of Anjou cut off Richard's head as well as Edmund's head and put them on spikes for everyone to see. Told you it got more complicated. Well, Richard Duke of York, his oldest son, a kid named Edward, was really upset about that. I mean, his dad just got his head killed and had chopped off and put on a spike and his like kid brother got the same fate. So he's just like super pissed and upset. And so he builds up an army himself and like goes all out and invades London. At this point, he has the help of the Earl of Warwick and they do defeat Margaret of Anjou and King Henry VI. The Margaret of Anjou hightails it back to France and now King Edward takes the throne from Henry. Once King Edward became King Edward IV, the Earl of Warwick was going to find an arranged marriage for him to hold power, but in secret, he goes and he marries a commoner, a woman named Elizabeth. She was a widow and she already had a few children and that really pissed off the Earl of Warwick. And so what does he do to retaliate? He goes back to France and he strikes an alliance with his enemy, Margaret of Anjou. And he also takes with him, Earl of Warwick takes with him, one of Edward's brothers, another Yorkist by the name of George. Now this left one other brother standing in camaraderie with King Edward IV and this was his brother Richard. Now this is when the story gets really interesting and a lot of different channels have done many series based on this this part of the War of the Roses. In fact, I believe it was called The White Queen, which was about Edward IV and his his wife and they had a lot of kids. They were really, really fertile, which we're going to get to in a minute. For this story, I'm just skimming through the highlights to get to our main person, which is Francis Lovell. Now when the Earl of Warwick invaded London, King Edward IV and his brother Richard fled. At this point, the Earl of Warwick put our mentally challenged King Henry VI back on the throne and basically at this point Warwick is now in charge of London because King Henry VI, I think, probably led one of the most miserable lives of any other human being I've ever known. He literally was just done at this point mentally just gone and at this point there's like two kings kind of in England. There's King Henry VI and now King Edward IV and so in 1471 King Edward and his brother Richard invade London again. Finally they defeat Warwick. They capture and imprison Margaret of Anjou and send her ass back to France. Oh, and they also executed her son, so her son could not challenge them for the throne. You might think this is the end of the War of the Roses, but last it's not because King Edward IV, one of my ancestors that's the line, he suddenly dies in 1483 and he kind of like leaves his queen, his wife with all these kids and the country is pretty much torn apart by war. And so his younger brother who had been his backer, his comrade, decides to take his two sons as little boys and take them to the Tower of London and under the idea that he would become their proxy. Well, many of you know the stories of the princes and the towers who basically disappeared and this is going to go into our video next Monday, little foreshadowing and once they disappeared Richard made himself King Richard III in 1483. Now this is when Francis Lovell enters the picture because Francis had been best buddies with Richard since they were children. When King Richard III was on the throne he made his buddy Francis Lord Chamberlain and this made Francis Lovell one of the most powerful men in England. This wasn't some obscure guy in the monarch or the government system of England at the time. Everybody knew who Francis was. These were the celebrities. In fact, Francis Lovell became one of the four most hated men in England by the Lancasters because remember they were Yorks. Even though they had screwed over, probably screwed over Edward IV's kids, Richard's nephews and maybe killed them in the tower, who knows, so he could be the king. They're still all Yorks. So these four guys that all the Lancasters hated in England was yes, King Richard III and yes, Sir Francis Lovell and also Sir William Catsby and Sir Richard Ratcliffe. Now remember the War of the Roses is not over. There's another person waiting in the side wings that is also of Lancastering descent. This is a man named Henry Tudor and even though his claim to the throne is a lot weaker than Richard III's, he mounts an army and he invades. He ends up killing King Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Sir Richard Ratcliffe was also killed in the Battle of Bosworth and Sir William Catsby had the worst luck of all. He was captured by Henry Tudor and his army and held prisoner for three days before he was executed. Now Henry Tudor would then become the King of England. He would become King Henry VII after the death of King Richard III. Now he married King Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth of York. This was supposed to unite the Lancasters and the Yorks to form the Tudor dynasty. Now again, his wife was one of his distant cousins but she also carried the Plantagenet blood. That's why I always say it's one bloodline. This time it came through the wife. Now at that fateful Battle of Bosworth where King Richard III was killed along with Francis Lovell to other friends, Francis managed to escape and Francis saw Henry Tudor's war on the Yorkist, on his buddy Richard, as a personal tragedy. And so he quickly soon tried to build up another militia against King Henry VII. This militia was formed in 1486 with a man named Humphrey Stafford. Now King Henry VII was not stupid. He had spies everywhere, spies who had found Francis Lovell and knew that he was planning to attack. So before Francis Lovell and Humphrey Stafford could attack, there were arrest warrants issued for them. Humphrey Stafford was arrested and executed but once again, Sir Francis Lovell had escaped. At this point, Sir Francis Lovell made his way over to Flanders on the continent. Now Flanders is modern day Belgium and this is where a woman named Margaret of York lived and she obviously was a Yorkist and a huge supporter of Sir Francis Lovell. He continued to plot against the Tudor family and in 1487 with a person that came to be known as the Pretender, he once again challenged the Tudor dynasty. This is in what was called the Battle of Stoke Field. King Henry VII and his military won this battle. They arrested the Pretender, which we'll get into a little bit more next week, but again, Sir Francis Lovell disappeared, vanished without a trace. Most people believe that Sir Francis Lovell went up to Scotland at this time where he was given sanctuary by the King of Scotland. But people are pretty baffled by this altogether because at this point, Sir Francis Lovell would have only been about 31 years old. Even though in today's standards 31 is a lot younger than it was back then, it's still pretty young and the fact that he never once tried again to battle the Tudor dynasty, he just kind of disappeared. We have no letters from him. We have no letters from him to anyone. There's no trace of Francis Lovell anywhere. We don't really know what happened. We just assume he probably ended up in Scotland. However, in 1708, a skeleton was found in a mansion in Oxfordshire, England. People believe this could be the skeletal remains of Francis Lovell. People believe that he possibly hid in this mansion and starved to death trying to evade the Tudor dynasty. One of the interesting things about this mansion is that it carried the name Lovell. However, this Lovell family, this namesake, really had no relation to Sir Francis Lovell. And historians do scratch their heads because the property was governed and managed by somebody who was loyal to the Lancasters and the Tudors. So how could it even be possible that he was able or wanted to or tried to hide in property where he definitely would not been safe? It's still pretty amazing to think that over 500 years later, historians and scholars are still trying to figure out what the hell happened to Sir Francis Lovell. So what do you guys think? Are there any history buffs out there who have ideas of what happened to this man? We know he wasn't executed. We know he wasn't arrested because there would have been documentation of that. Do you think he made his way up to Scotland where he possibly was granted sanctuary and then changed his name and his identity to live a quiet life? If so, why did he all of a sudden give up battling the Tudor dynasty? Or do you think he was hiding in a mansion and just ended up starving to death, getting stuck? And that is his skeleton that was found in 1708. Or do you think something else happened to him? Did he fall through a portal in time? Did he fall into a different multiverse? I don't know. Let me know your opinions in the comments below. All right, thank you so much again for sitting through another video. Again, next week we're going to look at another mystery surrounding this whole interesting time in English history. Thank you again to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase the opening song, it's down in the description box below. And thank you to Todd Broderick for helping me get this video out to you guys on the interwebs. All right, I will talk to you soon. Bye.