Down the Rabbit Hole with Alice (Perrers) | A Guest Post by Emma Campion, Plus Giveaway

My work on Alice Perrers began as a bit of a mea culpa; I’d used her as a pantomime villainess in a few crime novels, the rapacious mistress everyone loves to hate, the character who’s easy to write, almost a shorthand. But eventually I realized, considering all I knew about the lives of 14th century women, as well as about Edward III, his family, and his court, that I could not accept the Alice I’d so glibly used, the off-the-shelf Alice, processed to the consistency of cardboard. So I set out to reconstruct a plausible biography of Alice.

King Edward III of England

Some of the journey has been hilarious. Over time Alice has been extraordinarily vilified. In a popular book from the late 1940s, Six Criminal Women: More Deadly than the Male, the author had this to say about Alice Perrers: “To a very large extent the public are prepared to regard the acquisitions of a king’s mistress as lawful perquisites. It takes an unusual degree of covetousness in such a woman for her to be regarded as an evil-doer because of it, but this rare distinction was gained by the mistress of Edward III. Not only was the greed of Alice Perrers monstrous, but the means she took to satisfy it remove her from the ranks of the merely expensive and put her definitely among the criminal.” And I must share the title of another book in which she was vilified: Lives of Twelve Bad Women: Illustrations and Reviews of Feminine Turpitude Set Forth by Impartial Hands (1897).

Considering that no powerful supporters stepped forward to rescue her when she was brought before Parliament, how much of a threat could she have been? Even her family was silent.

Edward III and The Black Prince

The old story was that as Edward—a strong, charismatic king—aged, he allowed a teenage girl from the countryside, an orphan with no powerful patrons, to take over the reins of government and even go so far as to succeed in controlling access to the king himself; despite his living heir being the immensely popular war hero Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, and despite the wealth, ambition, and power of another son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who many believed manipulated his father behind the scenes. This didn’t fit either the political reality or human nature. Edward and his sons had buckled under the will of this young nobody?! But bits of the story did suggest that Alice Perrers was someone the prince and the duke found useful.

Such exaggeration turned a blind eye to common sense, to the political and economic climate, and to the personalities and ambitions of the major players. It was just temper, venom spit out in frustration.

Queen Philippa

Consider the atmosphere of Edward III’s court. King Edward and Queen Philippa set out to erase their subjects’ memory of his father’s scandalous reign by dazzling them with court spectacles and martial strength. To a great extent they succeeded, but only by incurring serious debt, which made them increasingly dependent on their subjects, as well as on foreign merchants and bankers, for loans to finance their war with France and their extravagant lifestyle.

The background: Edward III was such a splendid king for most of his reign that he seemed larger than life, and he was blessed with a loving, supportive, popular queen in Philippa—so it’s easy to forget his childhood. Much has been made of the uncertainty and downright terror in which Queen Elizabeth I was raised, but Edward’s parents were quite dysfunctional in their own right.
His childhood—father Edward II, the old stories of his passion for the executed Piers Gaveston, later his reckless attachment to Hugh Despenser the younger, his mother Queen Isabella and her darling Roger Mortimer leading a successful uprising against the king and forcing his abdication, the rumors of his father’s brutal murder in Berkeley, his uncle Edmund’s insistence that his father was still alive—and Edmund’s

Queen Isabella & her son, the future Edward III,
paying homage to her brother, King
Charles IV of France

horrible execution for trying to rescue his brother. Do you think that the 12-year-old Edward understood when he joined his mother in France in 1325 that she intended to lead an insurrection against his father? How did he feel about the rift between his parents? Did he know the truth of his father’s fate? What sort of insecurities woke him in a sweaty panic in the dark of the night?

It’s understandable that Edward was keen to present his family as a unified front, shining examples of chivalry and strength—and to keep his barons busy with wars. He and his sons achieved this agenda with careful orchestration.

Historians working in academia rather than the road I chose can’t write about gut feelings or a hunch that something must be so because they can’t document it, can’t defend it with hard facts. But they are enthusiastic about my taking the ideas and running with them. Such as what care someone must have taken to hide the increasing weakness Edward experienced from his series of strokes, or how curious it was what fine gifts John of Gaunt gave Alice, but then abandoned her to parliament.

Just as I reached the point of settling for one of the less than convincing backgrounds for Alice posited by historians and antiquarians in the past, I learned of new evidence. W.M. Ormrod used as an example of the extraordinary work coming out of the digitizing of the documents in the Public Records Office in London, a petition that revealed that Alice Perrers had been married before she met the king. As one of the executors of his estate, Alice was being sued for debts incurred by her husband, Janyn Perrers. Perrers was her married name, not her maiden name. These petitions, literally small slips of parchment that had sat in the archives tied in small bundles until being transcribed for the first time for the project, shone an entirely new light on Alice. She’d come from the London merchant community rather than the countryside. Ah. Now her role in the queen’s household made sense. Although it was not unusual for a wealthy woman of the merchant class to have a modest role in the queen’s household, as Alice did, it was even less odd in Queen Philippa’s household. In Hainault, Philippa’s homeland, merchants and nobles moved in the same circles. But the culture of the court was quite different from Alice’s community of London merchants.

18th Century depiction of Edward III at war

I considered the worldview that would inform the patterns found in the records of Alice’s life and the lives of her community. In the early years of Edward III’s reign the expense of his wars created a desperate shortage of cash in the kingdom. Merchants hoarded coin and then when the wool staple returned to London after the pestilence and cash flowed once again into the city the Londoners had the money to invest in properties in the city and in the country. The plague also caused a shortage of labor, so country estates went for bargain prices.

In accruing property Alice was following the example of the London mercantile community. In a list of the property owned by Nicholas Brembre, merchant and mayor of London in the early years of Richard II’s reign, I saw an echo of Alice. His holdings weren’t quite as valuable as hers, but the extent of both his London and his rural holdings was considerable.

Pragmatic. Practical. Shepherding her wealth so that she could take advantage of investment opportunities that came along. Planning for the future security of her son and daughters. Imagining Alice as a young woman whose life strategies were molded by her first marriage to a merchant created an image that seemed quite in line with the facts of her later life. She’d begun accruing property before she was noticed at court. There is a record of her negotiating a property transaction in 1360. In the Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls for 1364 Richard Lyons of London was ordered to “keep the peace with Alice de Perers, and not to interfere with her going where she wished on the King’s business and on her own.” She was the widow of a merchant, and King Edward evidently found her financial acumen valuable. Of course she was resented by the nobles and the clerical snobs—she was not of noble blood, but a merchant. No matter how elegantly dressed, how impeccably mannered, how beautiful, how graceful, she was not a member of the aristocracy—not even the gentry. The resentment became less about her and more about what she represented.

Later, as the expense of the wars with France far outweighed any economic advantages, the commons grew querulous and the royal family needed a scapegoat. Alice was convenient. She had not managed to gather around her powerful allies.

“The Good Parliament” of 1376 was called to
expel corrupt officials. It also brought about
the explusion of the king’s mistress, Alice Perrers

The thoroughness with which they stripped her of property and any shred of respectability was astonishing. Parliament behaved in much the fashion of Lewis Carroll’s king and queen:

“At this moment the King… called out ‘Silence!’ and read out from his book, ‘Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.’
‘I’m not a mile high,’ said Alice.
‘You are,’ said the King.
‘Nearly two miles high,’ added the Queen.”

And Alice was forbidden to speak during her appearances before parliament. As if she might shatter their arguments with her voice. But truly, she was easy to attack, a fish out of water.

Even so, the royal family did not send her into exile. Instead, she was controlled through marriage to one of John of Gaunt’s men, who gradually won back her forfeited estates—for himself and his heir, a nephew.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster

What a lot of fuss. Edward of Woodstock, John of Gaunt, the powerful barons, any of them might have squashed Alice at any point. Yet she died in apparent comfort at Gaines in Upminster, leaving money to her parish church and property to her daughters.

I left academia when I realized I wanted to recreate history, tease out the personalities I researched, flesh them out, set them in motion. My heart always races when a character rebels against my agenda, refusing to cooperate, tugging me in an unexpected direction. Alice surprised me all along the way. We’ve had a difficult relationship at times, but she is real to me now, no longer the pantomime rapacious mistress. I have grown to like, even admire, her.

The experience led me to question other reputations. I’m currently fleshing out another member of Edward’s court, his daughter-in-law Joan of Kent. She’s led me on rather a wild ride so far. I can’t wait to see where we end up!

About the Author

EMMA CAMPION did her graduate work in medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature and is the world’s foremost scholar on Alice Perrers. She has lived most of her adult life in Seattle, which she and her husband love for its combination of natural beauty and culture. Emma enjoys walking, hiking, and gardening, and practices yoga and vipassana meditation. She travels frequently to Great Britain. Emma’s current passion is exploring fuller and more plausible interpretations of the lives of women in the 14th century than are generally presented. The King’s Mistress is Emma Campion’s first novel. She also writes historical crime novels under the name of Candace Robb.

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