Alice FitzAlan
Lady Holland
Countess of Kent
Lady of the Garter
Arundel Castle, birthplace of Alice FitzAlan and her siblings
Born1350
Arundel Castle, Sussex, England
Died17 March 1416 (aged 66)
Noble familyFitzAlan (by birth)
Holland (by marriage)
Spouse(s)Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent
Issue
more...
FatherRichard Fitzalan, 3rd Earl of Arundel and 8th Earl of Surrey
MotherEleanor of Lancaster

Lady Alice Holland, Countess of Kent (c. 1350[1] – 17 March 1416), LG, formerly Alice FitzAlan, was an English noblewoman, a daughter of the 10th Earl of Arundel, and the wife of the 2nd Earl of Kent, the half-brother of King Richard II. As the maternal grandmother of Anne de Mortimer, she was an ancestor of kings Edward IV and Richard III, as well as King Henry VII and the Tudor dynasty through her daughter Margaret Holland. She was also the maternal grandmother of Joan Beaufort, Queen of Scots.

She was appointed a Lady of the Garter in 1388.

Family

Alice FitzAlan was born circa 1350 at Arundel Castle in Sussex, England,[2] the second daughter of the 10th Earl of Arundel, and Eleanor of Lancaster. She had six siblings who included Richard Fitzalan, later 11th Earl of Arundel, and Joan FitzAlan, later Countess of Hereford, Essex, and Northampton. She also had three half-siblings from her parents' previous marriages.

Her paternal grandparents were the 9th Earl of Arundel and Alice de Warenne, and her maternal grandparents were the 3rd Earl of Lancaster and Maud Chaworth.

Joan Beaufort, Queen of Scotland was a granddaughter of Lady Alice FitzAlan.

Marriage and issue

In 1354, at the age of four, Alice was betrothed to her father's ward Edmund Mortimer who would in 1360 become the 3rd Earl of March. The marriage, however, did not take place. Alice married instead on 10 April 1364, 2nd Earl of Kent, one of the half-brothers of the future King Richard II by his mother Joan of Kent's first marriage to Thomas Lord Holland. She received from her father a marriage portion of 4,000 marks.[3] Upon her marriage, she was styled Lady Holland. She did not, however, become Countess of Kent until 1381, when her husband succeeded his father as Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent.

Lord Holland was appointed captain of the English forces in Aquitaine in 1366, and in 1375, he was made a Knight of the Garter. Two years later in 1377, his half-brother Richard succeeded to the throne of England, as King Richard II. Alice's husband would become one of the young King's chief counsellors and exert a strong influence over his brother which led to the enrichment of Thomas and Alice. Alice was appointed a Lady of the Garter, an order of chivalry, in 1388.

Together Thomas and Alice had ten children:

Later years

Alice's husband died on 25 April 1397. In 1399, King Richard was deposed, and the throne was usurped by Henry IV, the son-in-law of her elder sister, Joan. In January 1400, Alice's eldest son Thomas, who had succeeded his father as the 3rd Earl of Kent, was captured at Cirencester and beheaded without a trial by a mob of angry citizens as a consequence of having been one of the chief conspirators in the Epiphany Rising. The rebels had hoped to seize and murder King Henry, and immediately restore King Richard to the throne. Less than three years earlier, her brother Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel and a Lord Appellant, had been executed for his opposition to King Richard.

Alice herself died on 17 March 1416 at the age of sixty-six.

Descendants

Alice had many illustrious descendants which included English kings Edward IV, Richard III (and his consort Queen Anne) and Henry VII, from the latter of whom descended the Tudor monarchs. Alice was also an ancestress of Scottish king James II of Scotland and his successors, which included Mary, Queen of Scots and James I of England. Her other notable descendants include the last queen consort of Henry VIII, Catherine Parr; Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick—known in history as Warwick the Kingmaker; Cecily Bonville; John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester and the scandalous Anne Bourchier, 7th Baroness Bourchier. Living descendants of Alice FitzAlan include the current British royal family.

Ancestry

References

  1. ↑ Weir, Alison (1999). Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy. London: The Bodley Head. p.93
  2. ↑ Lundy, Darryl (1 December 2008). "Alice FitzAlan". The Peerage. cites: Weir, Alison. Britain's Royal Family. p. 93.
  3. ↑ R. R. Davies, Brendan Smith (2009). Lords and lordship in the British Isles in the late Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 153.
  4. ↑ Bradley, Helen (1 January 1994). "Lucia Visconti, Countess of Kent (d. 1424)". In Barron, Caroline; Sutton, Anne F. (eds.). Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500. London ; Rio Grande, OH, US: Hambledon Press. pp. 77–84. ISBN 9781852850852. OCLC 741690179, 939702568.
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