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 FitzAlan, Baroness Cherleton Eleanor of Lancaster, and her maternal grandparents were William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton and Elizabeth de Badlesmere. On 21 September 1397, her father was executed at Tower Hill, Cheapside for high treason against King Richard II of England. Sometime before March 1392 Alice married John Cherleton, 4th Lord Cherleton (25 April 1362 – 19 October 1401). According to popular belief, following her marriage she became the mistress of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, and bore him an illegitimate daughter, Jane Beaufort. In Philip Yorke's "The Royal Tribes of Wales", he states that "Cardinal Beaufort left an illegitimate daughter by Alice,