Book Launch: What is Better than a Good Woman?: Alice Chaucer, Commoner and Yorkist Matriarch, by Michèle Schindler

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Alice Chaucer, Countess of Salisbury and Duchess of Suffolk, is one of the very rare people, and the only woman, not born to nobility who became an important political player in the upheaval of fifteenth-century England. 

Widowed, remarkably enough, at the age of 11, that ‘marriage’ nevertheless set her on the road to power and riches. Her second husband, the Earl of Salisbury, would die at the Siege of Orléans during the Hundred Years War. 

Her third husband, William de la Pole, was Henry VI’s Chief Minister ‒ and paid for that allegiance with his life, murdered and thrown into the English Channel. Alice survived all this and more – including a state trial in 1451 – and at the same time was a patron of the arts, commissioning artworks depicting empowered historical female characters, notably St Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary. Alice possessed a large library. 

Tomb of Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Ewelme. (Wikimedia Commons)

As late as 1472, Alice became custodian of Margaret of Anjou, her former friend and patron. She ruthlessly protected the inheritance of her son John de la Pole, and three of his four sons would pursue the Yorkist claim to the throne against Henry VII: they would all die in the attempt. 

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About the Author

Michèle Schindler studied at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, reading English Studies and history with a focus on mediaeval studies. At the same time she worked as a language teacher, teaching English and German as a second language. In addition to English and German, she is fluent in French, and reads Latin. You can find Michèle on Facebook and Twitter @FLovellInfo