John Russell (died 1405) military service in Ireland under Sir William Windsor, the King's Lieutenant there, sailing across in 1373. Later, he was given the lease of lands in Northamptonshire forfeited in 1378 by Windsor's wife Alice Perrers, the disgraced mistress of King Edward III. In that year he had been knighted, and was elected MP for Worcestershire in both the 1378 and 1379 Parliaments. By 1382 he had married and the next year he became a retainer of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Four years later he transferred to the Royal Household as a King's knight, with a lifetime salary. During the Merciless
John of Gaunt the closing of Parliament on 10 July left John with all the reins of power. He immediately had the ailing king grant pardons to all the officials impeached by the Parliament; Alice Perrers too was reinstated at the heart of the king's household. John impeached William of Wykeham and other leaders of the reform movement, and secured their conviction on old or trumped-up charges. The parliament of 1377 was John's counter-coup: crucially, the Lords no longer supported the Commons and John was able to have most of the acts of 1376 annulled. He also succeeded in forcing the Commons to