Born on Christmas Day 1281 at Denbigh Castle, Alice was the only daughter and heir of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and Margaret Longespée, Countess of Salisbury suo jure (in her own right).
Her mother Margaret was the great-granddaughter and ultimate heir of one of the illegitimate sons of Henry II of England, William Longespée (Longsword), whose nickname became his surname.
This made Alice the presumptive heiress to two Earldoms, one from her father and one from her mother, which she would inherit if her parents had no further children.
In other words, even if Alice and Thomas had no children together, her estate would devolve upon her husband's heirs rather than upon her blood relatives.
Alice mostly lived alone in her castle of Pickering, Yorkshire, while Thomas took a host of mistresses and fathered at least two illegitimate children.
A couple of years later, on the death of her father in February 1311, Alice became the Countess of Lincoln suo jure (in her own right).
There is a story that one of the Knights who abducted her on Warenne's behalf, described as an undersized hunchback named Richard de St. Martin, claimed that Alice was his wife on the ground that he had carried her off and married her before she was betrothed to the Earl of Lancaster.
On 22 March 1322 he was executed for treason at what had been Alice's family home of Pontefract Castle but that had become his favourite residence.
A few days later in March 1322, the King had Alice arrested and imprisoned at York,[5] along with her stepmother, Joan Martin, whose second husband, Nicholas de Audeley, had died 5 years earlier in 1316.
It could have been out of spite from the King who in 1318 had accused Joan of "scheming to thwart" the hearing of a legal case,[5] or simply because she was there at the time of Alice's arrest.
[1][3] Imprisoned and under the threat of execution, Alice surrendered into the King's hands on 26 June 1322, a great part of the lands which she had inherited from her father, in order to secure the confirmation of some portion of these possessions to herself.
Eubulus described her in documents as his 'dear and loving companion' and never claimed the title of Earl of Lincoln by right of his wife as he was entitled to do.
The King was worried, however, and required that all the estates that Alice had been forced to relinquish before this marriage had to be confirmed so that Eubulus could not make a claim on them by right of his wife.
He assumed most of Alice's inheritance and gave it, including the lordship of Denbigh, to William Montacute, his great friend who had helped him to overthrow Mortimer.
As frequently happened in medieval cases of rape, the couple soon married; it is possible that she was not a wholly unwilling victim.The marriage had taken place without the King's licence, so orders were sent to the Sheriffs of Lincoln, Oxford, and many other counties, to take into the King's hands the lands, goods, and chattels of Hugh de Freyne and Alice, Countess of Lincoln, and to keep the same until further order; the said Hugh and Alice having escaped from the castle of Somerton, where the King had ordered them to be kept separately, because Hugh took her from the castle of Bolingbroke by force.
Apparently, the offence was condoned, probably by payment of a fine, as an order was issued on 20 March 1336, to deliver to Alice and Hugh de Freyne a message at Newbury, Berkshire, and other manors were restored to her in the following year.
[4] Hugh de Freyne didn't live very long to enjoy her vast inheritance as he died in December 1336 or early 1337, and she returned to her vow of chastity.
Eubulus's nephew and heir Roger le Strange (who would succeed on Alice's death to such property as Eubulus had held in his own right), together with Sir John de Lacy of Lacyes (Alice's illegitimate half-brother), and others, broke into her castle of Bolingbroke, imprisoned her there, took away 20 of her horses, carried away her goods, and assaulted her men and servants.
Nevertheless, historian Linda Mitchell believes that his assumption of responsibility on Alice's behalf can be seen "as a mark of respect for the woman wronged so shamefully by his family.
[5] However, weighed against the extensive manors which Alice had once possessed in right of her inheritance as Countess of Lincoln and of Salisbury, she had comparatively little to leave after her death.