Royal Mistress: Alice Perrers, 1348-1400

Unlike the kings of France, for the most part English kings liked to keep their private affairs private.  Rumors abounded about certain kings or other royal men and women but with few exceptions, their names or exact relationships with their royal paramours remain a mystery.  Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III in his later years, is a notable exception. 

Alice was born in 1348 to Sir Richard Perrers, a prominent landowner in Hertfordshire and sometime MP, who had been sheriff of Hertfordshire and Essex.  Sir Richard had a long-standing feud with the Abbey of St. Albans, probably about land.  Since much of what is known about Alice and her career comes from Thomas Walsingham, the St. Albans Chronicler, most of it is uncomplimentary and some is probably not true.  Walsingham alleged that Alice was actually the daughter of a common tiler and tavern wench, that she was extremely ugly, and that her hold on Edward could only be explained by witchcraft.  Tavern wenches daughters didn't become ladies in waiting to queens, and Kings weren't known to pay attention to ugly women.  The witchcraft allegations were a common charge thrown at women when their power over a man couldn't otherwise be explained.  At 1362, when she was about 14, Alice came to court as a lady in waiting to Edward's Queen, Philippa of Hainault.  Edward and Philippa had a close marriage but, toward the end of her life, Philippa's health was failing and Edward saw no problem taking his pleasures elsewhere.  He and Alice began their relationship soon after her arrival at Court, which made her about 15 and Edward 52.  While Philippa lived, they kept their relationship discreet.  Philippa died when Alice was bout 21, and Edward saw no reason to conceal their relationship anymore.

Edward came to depend on Alice for her companionship and social savvy.  He soon began to gift her with property, jewelry and other favors.  Alice was believed to have received funds from the royal treasury totaling 20,000 pounds, some of it through embezzling.  Aware that she was disliked, the King had Alice arrayed in cloth of gold and paraded around London dressed as the Lady of the Sun.  Alice continued to enjoy the King's favor, and sought property and jobs for her relatives and many friends.  As Edward III's health began failing, Alice began to concern herself with state business, until some believed that it was actually she who was running the country, an unheard of degree of power for a woman of the time.  Courtiers began to suspect that her hold on the King was to his own detriment, that she was privately making his life a misery.  However, fear of her power over Edward discouraged anyone from acting.  Edward and Alice were known to have three children, a boy and two girls, who all married well in later life.  As Edward aged, Alice knew she would need a place to land and secretly married Sir William Windsor.  To keep their relationship secret, she had Edward appoint William his Lord Lieutenant in Ireland. 

Alice continued her father's feud with St. Albans about certain properties of land.  Finally, in 1376, the Commons of the Good Parliament had had enough of Alice and forced Edward to banish her from Court.  They also forced her to let go of the money and land Edward had given her and, within months, Alice was back at Edward's side, and began accumulating more land and money.  Edward died in 1377, and Sir William Windsor died in 1384.  Alice was a wealthy woman several times over.  She retired to her manor of Upminster in 1400, at age 52 and was buried in the Church of St. Laurence, but her grave hasn't survived.