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
Alice Dudley, Duchess of Dudley Alice Dudley, Duchess of Dudley Alice Dudley, Duchess of Dudley (née Leigh; 1579 – 22 January 1669), also known as Duchess Dudley, was the second wife of the explorer Sir Robert Dudley. In 1605, after giving birth to seven daughters, she was abandoned by her husband, who went into exile in Tuscany, remarried, and eventually sold his English estates. In 1644, by way of reparation for her losses, King Charles I created Alice Dudley a duchess in her own right "for her natural life", the dukedom thus created not being heritable. Alice Leigh was a daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh,